40. Chapter 39
Siobhan
A s Coop drove the truck, Carter held me tight. I kept going to the Guardian app, hoping the results would change. I hated how I felt so damn useless when the app couldn’t locate Stephanie’s phone.
The only solace was that Carter’s teammate had a good idea of the direction. At least, he claimed he did.
We got to a fork in the road. Coop rolled the car to a stop and then leaned his head out the window to sniff the air. He’d done this a couple of times thus far. Although, unlike the previous times, he didn’t immediately turn in that direction. Instead, he was debating something.
Carter’s touch was the one thing that kept me sane. It was so damn soothing as he rubbed his hand up and down my arm.
Then, Carter said, “Let’s go ahead and turn on the listening feature.”
I nodded, although it killed me to turn it on.
It was one of those privacy things that the two of us didn’t like about the app, but at a time like this, it seemed like a lifeline.
I clicked through to see if we could hear anything from Stephanie’s phone.
I heard a muffled sob that broke my heart. I needed to find her.
Other than Stephanie’s tears, there was nothing useful from the microphone feature. It was good to know she was alive, but she was upset and crying.
If only the GPS feature would work, but it couldn’t get a solid lock. It kept pinging all over the place, which meant relying on Coop, who was sniffing the air and the ground like he was some sort of tracking dog. It was weird as fuck, but if it worked, who was I to question it?
Coop hopped into the truck and put the truck into drive. I didn’t get how he could smell her, but he was so sure of himself.
I trusted Coop since we were driving through some of the GPS triangulation spots. It didn’t seem like a human skill, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I didn’t have to understand what Coop was doing to be grateful if he could help us find my daughter.
As I heard Stephanie’s cry, I heard a muffled voice. It was a female voice that was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. “You picked her up too soon. The plane won’t take off for another hour. Also, why is the brat crying?”
Then, there was a slap. If that monster hit Stephanie, I would kill them.
The woman cried, “What was that for?”
Then I heard the undeniably familiar male voice that chilled me to the bone. “She’s not a brat, and stop your hysterics.”
It was my ex. The one person I never thought would be trying to do something like this. He knew the terror the stalker caused and how much it shook both Stephanie’s life and mine.
Was he upset that I’ve moved on from him? Why would he take our daughter? What was his game?
“I’m going to kill him,” Carter said with a voice that sounded foreign with the amount of malice in it. I couldn’t blame him for being livid, and quite frankly, we were going to be on the same page.
Coop just shook his head. “You need to call the police. We will swoop in, but isn’t he some major movie star? If we don’t do this on the up and up, he’s going to sue our asses into the ground.”
As much as I hated to say it, Carter’s teammate was right. Russell was the type to sic his lawyers on a person, blogger, or tabloid. As much as we might want to kill Russell and his girlfriend, we needed to get law enforcement involved.
Carter grabbed the phone. Although, to my surprise, he didn’t call the police. Instead, he said, “Yo, Lou. We have a situation. Can you meet us over at the Boundary Bay airfield?”
I couldn’t quite make out what Lou was saying on the other side of the line, but I liked the idea of getting some backup.