Chapter 40
Elijah
Cotton hadn’t exaggerated even a little bit. He’s good. Maybe the best I’ve ever seen. We’ve spent the last three hours combing through all the evidence Cal has found.
Grizzly was taken by a small team of men. This was always a given. There’ no way one or two guys could ever get the drop on Grizzly. We still don’t know how his car came to be sitting on the side of the road. There were no obvious signs of foul play, but that could be for a number of reasons.
Grizzly would’ve stopped to help anyone. That’s just who he is. The ruse could’ve been as simple as a flat tire. Once he was pulled over, they could’ve pulled a gun, or hell, even spoken his home address aloud. He’d risk his life in a heartbeat over Johna and his girls.
We know there were four guys who came for Grizzly because Cotton hacked their whole damn system. We know exactly how many men are here, when they got here, and a fair bit about the company’s overall financial situation. Way more information than I imagined we’d get. He’s incredible.
Two weeks ago, they received their biggest payment to date on a single transaction.
One person for thirty million dollars. Seeing that put some things into perspective.
This is why they’ve concentrated their efforts on me.
They’ve already sold me. It never occurred to me that’s what they could want.
Now that it has, it makes perfect sense.
I’ve made plenty of enemies in my years with the Navy.
There’s no shortage of wealthy criminals with more money than sense who’d like to put one between my eyes.
More than that, even. I’ve left messages all over the world.
Whenever possible, I made sure the pieces of human waste I’ve dispatched had time to beg and regret the direction they took their lives in.
Whoever they left behind would surely to return that favor to me.
Clicking. Murmuring. There’s commotion and talking all around me.
Cal is still typing and clicking away while Jax hovers over his shoulder, making note of each new detail.
Eve and Marshall are going over the financials.
Cotton is on the phone, just as he has been on and throughout the time since I got here. My people. My unlikely team.
Whatever happens to me doesn’t matter. As long as Vaughn is safe, this will all be worth it.
We also know that six men came for Vaughn.
It was actually Winston who came back with that bit of information, though.
He had six witness accounts and video surveillance from three different shops.
No idea how he spoke to so many people so quickly.
He even had the video ready to send to me.
He knew when and where their plane landed and even when it left.
They got Vaughn and left immediately. They spent such a short time in Barbados, I’m surprised at the amount of information Winston was able to get.
As for Cal, he found so much more. The video surveillance from Abbi and my mom’s houses was erased using their passwords.
This means that either they tortured Mom and Abbi into giving up the passwords, or mom and Abbi freely offered them.
The latter is possible. Mom and Abbi both would’ve done anything to keep little Abel safe.
It just doesn’t feel right, though. Why would they want to disguise the fact that they took them?
They left a message with John’s wife to make sure I know it’s them.
To add to this uneasy feeling, a neighbor’s Ring camera caught Abbi’s car leaving from her garage in the middle of the night.
It was too dark to see inside the vehicle, but she left the night after Vaughn and I left for Barbados.
Before Vaughn or Grizzly either one were taken.
Thanks to Cal and Winston, we know that Vaughn and Grizzly were taken within minutes of each other.
The attempted abduction of Eve was also at the same time. What does it all mean?
Why would they coordinate those three attacks to line up and not the previous two abductions? It’s smarter to take them all at the same time. That way no one can alert anyone else to be on guard.
We’re still missing something very important, and going in with a blind spot could get someone hurt.
Could get someone killed. Unfortunately, there’s no time.
There never was. Cal found a connection to the Latvians here in Texas.
Days ago, they wired money to an oil magnate who owns an industrial park with several large warehouses on it in San Antonio.
This is it. This is where they’ll take my wife. She’s the bait. I’m the target.
They’ve made no attempt to reach out to me since they took everyone, but we know tonight is the night, thanks to Cal’s intel.
He even came through with names. We know who the four new leaders are.
We also know that only two of them are here, Juris Vasiljevs and Aleksandrs Ozols.
Pēteris Ozols and Artūrs Kanin? remained in Latvia.
Cal is a marvel. It truly seems that nothing is out of his reach, and the speed at which he finds information is nothing short of remarkable.
“I can get people and guns here within the next couple of days. They could also kill my family in that time. None of you are obligated to help. This is my problem, and I’m going to fix it one way or the other.”
“Are you talking to them? Or all of us? Pretty fucking insulting if you’re including us in the ‘not obligated’ speech.” Jax motions between himself and Marshall when he asks if I’m including them.
“Thank you.” Truly, I expected they would come with me, but hearing that it’s a foregone conclusion in their minds eases something in my chest.
“Come on, BB. You can’t mean the rest of us either. It’s my family they’ve got too. Besides, it’ll be fun to see the Tweedle Twins in action. I’ve heard good things.”
Jax and Marshall look back at Eve while waving finger guns before blowing the non-existent smoke from the barrels.
“Yeah, man. We’re in. No one comes at us and lives to make that mistake again.
Guns are nearby. Maybe not quite the stock you had, but it’ll get the job done.
We can all shoot. We can all fight. And we all know what’s at stake.
Bottom line, you need us.” Cotton is clinical in his delivery.
The man oozes intelligence and an air of confidence that belies his age.
“You have weapons?”
This is the first chink in Cotton’s armor I’ve seen. He pauses, flexing the fingers of his right hand three times. He doesn’t want to explain why they have a sufficient amount of weaponry nearby.
“A story for a different day. I suppose it’ll be necessary to get into all that at the end of this, but, for now, Adam’s dad is sending some guys and with them...plenty of weapons. He came and got Ada this morning. He tried to take Eve, actually, but I can imagine you already know how that went.”
Eve is family. There’s no way she would leave me to get Vaughn back on my own.
There’s no way she wouldn’t want to exact her own brand of revenge on the people who took the sister she chose for herself.
If I’m being honest, I need her. I need all of them and any help they can provide.
I’d love to say that I’m not going to drag them into my problems. Chances are, someone is going to get hurt.
Someone could die. The thing is, there is nothing I wouldn’t do to get my wife back.
No life I wouldn’t risk. No world I wouldn’t burn to ash.
“Yeah. I can imagine.”
When I look over to Eve, she’s rising from her seat and heading straight for me.
We wrap each other up in another one of the hugs we can’t seem to stop giving each other since I’ve been back without Vaughn.
We’re both just doing our best to hold it together.
We know there are a million different ways this thing could go sideways.
We’re outnumbered. Outgunned. Fortunately, it’s starting to look like my ragtag group of vigilantes isn’t quite as unskilled as I had originally feared.
“Hey. They’re here.” Jax is looking out the front window, watching the front yard.
Three Yukon XLs pull up out front just after Adam reemerges from upstairs. His hair is wet, and his blood-speckled clothes have been changed. The hostage stopped making noise about forty-five minutes after I left them alone in the room. Adam didn’t come out for another hour.
Eve’s house is secluded. It’s located on a private drive, and no other homes are visible from anywhere on the property.
They have at least ten acres here with their house situated dead center.
It’s the ideal location to game plan. If they’re trying to keep eyes on us, they can’t do it while we’re here.
I can’t help but wonder if battle planning had anything to do with Adam choosing this place.
Although I know he let Eve pick whatever home she wanted.
Either way, this privacy is crucial to our plan. If they’re watching, we don’t want them to know how many we are or when we come and go.
“We’ll meet you guys in the den.” Adam strides to the front door to greet the newcomers as the rest of us walk toward the den to wait for them.
“Wow. Incredible man.” Marshall claps Cal on the back while looking wide eyes at the on-screen images.
Cal has projected his findings onto the large television in the den so that the industrial park is visible to everyone in the room.
“Here.” My finger lands on an entry point in the back of the park.
“And here. We can’t forget about these spaces between structures either. Like this one and here.” Cotton points exactly where I was going next.