Chapter 26 #2
A roar broke from him, and the chaos and shouts from the reporters immediately ceased. All eyes were on him, but he didn’t care. He was racing toward the sedan. Desmond and his plain cars. Always saying they helped him to blend in, that they made guarding Atlas easier.
The driver’s side door hung open. No sign of Lily. He’d told her to go to the car just because he’d wanted her away from the flames. He’d wanted her to be safe.
He surged forward, grabbing for that door. Something seemed to snap beneath his foot. He looked down…
A broken syringe.
“No.” Atlas shook his head. “Lily?” The car was empty. No Lily. He whirled around. “Lily!”
The cameras were rolling. The reporters gaping at him.
“Lily!”
She was not there.
“We’ll find her.”
Atlas sat on the couch. His hands were between his knees, his head sagging forward.
“I’ve got every cop and federal agent in the county searching for Lily,” Gage continued as the Fed paced in front of him. “We will find her.”
Atlas had been taken home by the cops. They’d wanted him to go to the hospital. To get checked out. Screw that. He had no intention of seeing freaking Dr. Phillip Owen again.
Gage had arrived at the scene as the cops and EMTs had been trying to get Atlas in the back of an ambulance. The Fed had needed to physically force Atlas into the back of his government-issued SUV. Atlas had been so desperate to keep searching. To find Lily.
She’d been taken from him. Taken while he’d been busy hauling Carl out of the wreckage. There one moment, and gone the next.
“We’re reviewing every bit of footage that the reporters on scene had,” Gage continued. He paused near Atlas. His voice was grim but determined, as he added, “Maybe someone picked up something that we can use. Something that will help us.”
Lily was gone. The bastard had taken her. And Atlas was helpless. “She knew who he was.”
“What?”
The doorbell rang. He was so damn tired of that doorbell ringing. Cops and Feds. In and out.
No Lily.
Where would the bastard have taken her? Where would they have gone? He wanted to find Lily. He would find Lily.
No tracker. He left her ring behind. I can’t trace her. She taunted the freak, dared him, and he saw…the bastard was there. Right there while I was hauling out Carl. So close.
And Lily was gone.
Footsteps rushed across the marble floor. The clatter of high heels. Automatically, his head lifted. His head turned toward the sound. “Lily?” He began to rise.
But it wasn’t his Lily.
Lily wore flats, not heels. Flats and the beautiful dress that had fluttered around her.
A woman with strawberry blonde hair and chocolate eyes rushed toward him. She’d been the one at the door. Tear tracks were on her face. Her heels clattered to a halt as she stopped just a few feet from him. “I’m Sloane.”
“I know.” He’d already recognized her from the pictures he’d obtained…back when he’d been making his Lily file.
Where are you, Lily? He needed the Feds out of his house. He needed to scorch the earth. He needed to crucify the bastard who’d taken her.
“He…has her?” Sloane asked as her lower lip trembled.
They’d known she was coming from the airport. Desmond had left orders for the guards to allow her access to the house. Unless you had a badge or you were Sloane Armstrong…everyone else was being kept at the edge of the property’s perimeter.
Gage turned to confront Sloane. “There was a bomb in the limo. My team thinks it was detonated using a remote, that the bastard was nearby. Watching, waiting…”
And while Atlas had been busy, he’d taken his target. “It wasn’t Hatch Davis or Westin Blanchard.” As Lily had thought. “They weren’t the next targets. He was here, waiting for her. He wanted her.” Lily had been the next victim.
Gage glanced back at him. “Hatch Davis has been missing for six days. Found that out right before I got news of Lily’s, ah, disappearance.” A grimace.
Disappearance? Screw that. Lily had been abducted. Kidnapped. Taken.
“Hatch went on a camping trip, so no one thought anything was even wrong at first. Until he didn’t come home. Until the Feds went looking for him—because you pulled more strings than I had and you got them moving in Oklahoma City, helluva fast.”
Desmond had been watching silently from his position near the fireplace. He stepped forward. Fast steps. “Is he dead?”
“Probably,” Sloane said. She swiped at her cheeks. “If it’s been six days, yeah, I’d say the poor bastard is dead by now.”
Atlas shook his head. He stood fully, stretching and moving away from the couch.
“Lily’s files were only just taken. Just taken,” he emphasized.
“Not taken six days ago. Hatch can’t be dead.
The killer shouldn’t have him. The kid doesn’t even know who his father is.
Lily figured that out…” His words trailed off.
The kid couldn’t be taken, not unless the killer knew about him before the break-in at Lily’s place. And that would mean the killer had seen Lily’s files before the theft at her home. The killer would have needed to get access to the intel on Hatch Davis at least a week ago.
Atlas’s gaze sharpened on Gage. Gage had appeared on the scene of the limo fire so quickly. As if he’d been close by?
More than that, though, Gage had been in Dallas very fast, too. Right after Atlas and Lily’s abduction, he’d been there. Just when had Gage first arrived in Dallas?
Atlas’s gaze raked Gage. He really didn’t like the bastard. Mostly because he suspected the jerk was still in love with Lily.
Get the fuck in line.
Atlas sucked in a breath. And then—he lunged at the Fed. He slammed his hands around the prick’s shoulders and threw Gage against the nearest wall. “If you’ve hurt Lily—”
“Stop! I didn’t! I wouldn’t!”
Like Atlas was gonna believe that. “She knew who the killer was! She’d figured it out, and Lily was about to tell me. She knew, dammit, and he took her! We went back to the scene at the cabin, Lily talked to the inspector, and she—” Atlas broke off.
Gage glared at him. Gage, the Fed who’d let Lily slip through his fingers.
Atlas’s head turned.
Sloane stood nearby, another tear sliding down her cheek.
Desmond’s hands were clenched at his sides. Fury evident in every tight line of his body.
Atlas felt the same fury. No, not the same. His was so much stronger. So much hotter. It burned. He had no control. All he wanted to do was attack. Destroy. Kill.
And, as he stood there, as the pieces clicked in his mind, as he thought of everything that had happened recently…
The blast at the cabin…
A blast that hadn’t touched the basement. But had killed a cop.
The motive of the killer…the violence…
The perp was so determined to punish the guilty. To make them suffer as much as possible for their crimes.
And Atlas thought of Hatch Davis. Potentially killed days before, long before Lily’s files had been stolen.
But if that was the case, if Hatch was already dead, then the murderer would have needed access to Lily’s data sooner.
Especially since the info about Hatch being the child of a serial wasn’t public knowledge.
That was knowledge that Lily had possessed.
The killer would have needed to be in Lily’s house in order to get the info on Hatch.
He would have needed to get close to her…
He would have needed…
“Sonofabitch,” Atlas breathed. He let go of Gage. “Get out of here. Go find my Lily.”
Gage glared but straightened his shirt. “I will,” he snarled back. “This might fucking stun you, but I actually care about her. I will get her back. I will save her.”
“You think I don’t care?” Lethally soft. “You think I don’t care?”
“Can you?” Gage’s nostrils flared. “I’ll have police officers and Feds stationed close to your estate.” A slant of his gaze toward Desmond. “Seeing as how your guards can’t seem to do the job of keeping you and Lily protected.”
“Oh, you’re a sonofabitch,” Desmond noted. “Understood.”
“My partner is still at the recent crime scene. She’s gathering data and evidence. Know that we will track the bastard. We’ll check all the video footage. We will find Lily.”
“Then go be the hero.” Go the hell now.
“I will. Because being a hero is something you sure as hell will never be.” Gage stormed out. The front door slammed moments later. Atlas stood there, his hands balling into fists as his mind whirled. So many things to do…
“Lily never loved him.” Sloane’s low voice.
His head turned toward her.
“She’s so reserved. So controlled. A lot of people get confused about her because of that.
They think—they think she doesn’t feel anything.
That she’s cold as ice.” A hard shake of her head even as the tears gleamed on her cheeks.
“It’s the opposite. She feels too much. Too strongly.
She keeps her control because she’s afraid of all the emotions inside herself. ”
Atlas had thought he had such great control. Such a fool. And to think, he’d boasted to Lily that he could turn on and off his emotions.
Fury blazed through him. Fear choked him.
Could he turn them off? No. Dammit, no. “Lily loves me.” Something that both gave him comfort and tormented him.
He pulled in a breath. The Fed was gone.
That meant he could get to work. “She loves me, and I will kill for her.” He’d always known that he would.
Fuck being the hero. The bad guy was needed more now than anything else.
Desmond stalked closer. “Atlas?”
He flashed his dimples at his old friend. “I know who the killer is, too.” More than that, though…He nodded. “I think I can find the bastard.” No, correction. “We can find him.”
Desmond nodded. “Then let’s fucking go.”
He was already going. Rushing to his office, grabbing his phone, his laptop.
Calling in favors with frantic phone calls even as his fingers flew over the keyboard of his computer.
Research and damn development. Yeah, that was what he did.
Security research for the government. Medical research for health companies.
Computer hacking and data retention. Information was his life.
No, Lily is my life.
He called the right people. He asked the right questions. He demanded his intel.
Lily loves me. I will kill for her.
Because…
I love Lily. “Hold on, sweets. Hold on.”