Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
JAX
The second I hit the locker room, I’m pulling out my phone to text my girl. I see a message from her already. I click it.
“The fucking media teacher?” I grit out. Damon glances down at my phone, reading the text from Kinsley about the information she’d gotten from Alice.
“Isn’t Kins in the media room?” Damon asks. I’m already grabbing my shit, not bothering to change. “I’m sure she’s fine.” I shake my head. She’s not fine until I have eyes on her. I’m already checking her location, and it says she’s still there.
I jog toward the classroom. Damon is with me. When we get there, the door is shut and locked. I can see in through the glass; the lights are off. I pop the lock, flipping on the lights.
“It says she’s here.” I glance around, not seeing any sign of her until I get around the teacher's desk to see her phone on the ground along with a small bag. My whole world tilts on its axis as I snatch both up from the floor. “I’ll kill him.”
Damon already has the phone to his ear. “I’m calling Mac.
” I nod while I call my dad. There is no way she left her phone here.
I take a deep breath, trying to get all the emotions that are rushing through me under control so that I can think straight.
Anger is not going to help Kinsley right now.
There will be time to have those emotions later. I need to keep a level head.
“He took her. Jim fucking McIntyre took Kinsley,” I tell my father the second he answers the call. So much for containing my emotions.
“Mac is pulling up surveillance,” Damon says.
“Stay calm,” Dad tells me.
“Don’t tell me to stay fucking calm,” I snap back at him.
“Get your ass to you guys’ warehouse. We’ll meet you there.”
“I’m not going to the warehouse. I want him tracked now.”
“I hear you, but just head in that direction.”
“Dad, I—”
“Trust me, Jax.”
“Okay,” I say, knowing he would never steer me wrong. I don’t know what the fuck we’ll do to find Kinsley.
“Come on.” Damon grabs my arm. We both take off on a dead run to my car. I keep the speakerphone on; my line is still connected with my father. It doesn’t take us long to make it to the warehouse.
“What do you have?” I ask Mac when we enter.
“Footage.” She points up to one of her monitors but doesn’t take her eyes off the one right in front of her. Mac's fingers are still flying across the keyboard.
When I catch sight of Kinsley, my chest tightens, almost painfully. I watch, barely able to breathe, as she steps out into the back parking lot, Blair right behind her, and then Jim, a dead man walking.
I don’t miss his hand inside his coat pocket. A coat that’s too heavy for this time of year. I know he’s got a gun. Damon comes to stand beside me to watch. Blair opens the back door to a white SUV, and Kinsley gets in.
Jim shuts the door, saying something to Blair, who nods, going around the SUV and getting into the passenger seat.
“Is she a part of this?” I hiss out through clenched teeth.
“Fuck me,” Damon mutters, shaking his head. He told me she was good, but I can’t blame him. I thought she was, too. I watch as they pull out through the gates of the school.
Mac has already tracked to the next set of cameras; she’s able to follow for a few miles before he pulls into a packed five-story garage.
“I lost them there.” I can hear the disappointment in her voice with herself.
"Blair's phone?" I ask, going to one of the other computers to see if there’s anything I can do. I hear more people enter the warehouse. I glance back to see my dad and Ronan.
"Nothing. It's off, but I can tell by the way it was powered down that it died." Mac tells us.
"Fuck!" I slam my hand down onto the desk.
"Did you get what I sent over about McIntyre?"
"Yes," Mac answers my father.
"I want to see it." Mac nods, and a second later it's on the screen in front of me. I start shuffling through what they have. "It's all fake." His whole identity is made up. "The school fingerprints new hires," I tell her. "Run those prints through everything."
"Oh damn, I didn't know that." It doesn't take Mac long to pull the prints. They had linked back to the fake identity, but we started to run them through every program we could.
I can only stand there and watch as the program shuffles through them, waiting for a hit.
"Breathe, son." Dad's hand comes down on my shoulder, giving a squeeze.
"Where is War?" I ask.
"In a meeting with the chief of police with Eros." I cock my head to the side to glance over to my dad.
"A meeting?" Dad smirks. Yeah, that’s not a fucking meeting. I’d join him, but I can’t bring myself to do anything but rage. Each second we can’t find her, it claws deep inside of me.
Finally, a match hits.
“The fuck?” I bark. So does everyone else as we get a glimpse of who this motherfucker is. It’s not just that. It’s who he’s linked to. The Bianco family. It's been a while since I heard that name. "Are they even in the States?"
The family is a small one at this point. Pretty much a forgotten one, but then again, that's when it's best to strike if you're looking to remake a name for yourself.
“Yes, I have passport logs for when they entered the States.” Mac brings them up on the screen. I know two of the men. The sons of Joseph Bianco. Then my eyes land on the next one. It’s a female, Elisabeth Bianco.
“That’s the dead girl.” The second I see her face, I fucking know it. I turn toward my dad. “They were trying to plant that body but didn’t expect us to show up.” We wouldn’t have recognized her. If anything, she would have ended up a Jane Doe.
"That's some ruthless shit," Ronan says. "Killed their own sister and tried to leave her in a Marino warehouse." They'd be able to blame us for it later. That wouldn't go over well with the other families. All the while bleeding drugs into the city, trying to create chaos. That's my best guess.
Rage that matches my own shows on my father's face. "They have to be staying somewhere."
"I'm running them now." Mac barely finishes her sentence when an address comes up on the screen. That's all I need.
"Wait." My dad grabs my arm, stopping me.
"Let go," I growl at him.
"You can’t go in there half-cocked. It could be a trap, or you could also get Kinsley hurt."
"It's not a trap." This wasn’t part of their plan.
It would be stupid to take her from the school.
They really thought they would get away with this shit.
That we wouldn't figure it out, but then again, we don't let most know the things this family is capable of or the ties that we do have with the police and government.
"Still, they took her. That means they're not going to kill her. Does this Jim know you're with Kinsley?"
"Yes." I brace my hands on the desk in front of me, trying to temper the rage coursing through my veins, but it’s useless. I grab the edge of the desk and fling it as hard as I can, sending everything on it flying.
“Feel better?” Ronan asks.
“No.” I rub the center of my chest, a hollow ache there. It is like a pain I’ve never felt before. This is my fault. If I had waited till after graduation, like my first plan, but I let my emotions and need for her control me.
I won’t let that happen again. All that matters now is getting my girl back, no matter the cost.