Chapter 34
34
KILLIAN
W ar and Jamie pretend they believe me when I tell them Raine left the house with my permission. They’re giving me a chance to smooth things over, rather than raising the alarm with Crue bosses. They’re covering their own asses, too, since we were all upstairs when she walked out. But their reactions are chill rather than confrontational, which is good because the fuse on my temper is short.
In the afternoon, Jamie and I row out onto the river to an uninhabited isle to swim offshore into dangerous eddy currents. Jamie’s the best I’ve ever seen at navigating out of and around currents in the water. He was a lifeguard and surfer in Ireland and can spot hazards most people would never notice.
When we’ve got time to kill, we do maneuvers. Today, I’m restless so we go out in life jackets and I practice rolling into what he calls a soft spot between upstream and downstream eddies. I’ve gotta swim hard to keep control. The goal is to prevent myself from being dragged into solid obstructions .
As always, the water is a fucking ass-kicker. By the time we’re done, my arms shake as I start to drag myself up into the boat. Jamie laughs as I pause, panting, when I’m only halfway over the side.
“Mother fucking nature. Gotta love her,” he says.
“Fuck me,” I mumble, shaking my arms out after I take my seat. “Gonna be a slow slog back to shore.”
“Ah, nah. If I know you, you’ll get your second wind, mate. Drink some sugar, and we’ll go.”
After guzzling a sports drink and resting for a few minutes, I nod. “Yeah, good enough.”
We wouldn’t win any races now, but we’re at no risk of being pulled downriver either. We’ve been rowing together for months, and we’re both strong oarsmen despite the fatigue.
When we come ashore, War walks out and tosses me my phone.
“Phone’s been blowing up the past hour. C texted me, wanting to know where you were.”
My brows rise. “You told him?”
“Yeah, said you were both on the river. Didn’t take your phone cuz you thought you might flip the boat a time or two while training.”
I grab my phone and call C straightaway.
“Yeah?” C says.
“Hey. We just got back. What do you need, C?”
“Where’s the girl?”
“The girl? You mean Raine?”
“I’m asking you, so who the fuck else?”
The world around me starts to recede as my mind drills down on his question. “She’s in Boston visiting her dad.”
“When did you last talk to her?”
I hesitate for a beat. “She texted me around lunchtime. Why?”
“Better call home.”
“Someone called you?” I ask, trying to piece together why anyone would.
“Liam called Trick, to verify whether you were out of touch because you were working.”
“Right. Sorry he bothered you. ”
“No bother, since I got news that interests me. Didn’t expect Raine to be out of pocket already. We’ll talk about that later, though. First, find out where she is and go get her.”
“Yeah.” I end the call with C, so I can call her. I go straight to voicemail like her phone’s off. My next call is to Liam.
“Killian,” he says.
“What’s going on with Raine?”
“You don’t know anything about it?”
“No.”
There’s a pause. “You sure, brother?”
“Yeah, I swear. Tell me what the hell’s going on.”
“She went to a coffee shop to do some schoolwork. Was supposed to be back in the afternoon to go to the movies with Ma and Peter. Never showed up. Not answering calls or texts.”
“It’s almost sundown,” I mumble, my mind racing. Raine wouldn’t walk around downtown alone after dark.
“I assume you’ve got an app to show you where she is?”
My throat constricts like it’s filling with blood from someone dragging a knife down it. Normally, I would be able to find her instantly, but right now I can’t because she restored the factory settings on her devices, wiping them clean. It was a scorched earth approach to covering her tracks.
“I don’t have an easy way to track her right now, but there are backchannel ways—I’ll check where the car is. She took Peter’s like she usually does?”
“Yeah. Listen, Aiden’s ready to roll. We held off because?—”
“Yeah, you thought I took her. The last place I had a text from her was Leventhal Park. That was four or five hours ago. Tell Aiden to start that way. I’ll text him the car’s location in a few minutes.”
“All right.”
I end the call and look up. Jamie and War are both staring at me.
“Someone took her.” My voice sounds strange. Strained. Almost… worried. “I might have the guy’s name, but I don’t know where or why—I could use…” I stop short of the word help. That word is not normally in my vocabulary .
“Yeah, mate,” Jamie says, leaning in. “Give me the name. You get on with finding her phone and car. I’ll start hunting down the guy.”
For a second, my mind’s blank. My memory that holds a repository of every detail of my life, big and minute, suddenly feels empty.
I’ve gotta go. I need to find her right fucking now.
Where my mind usually lives, there’s only a churning sound. My heart pounds. I realize what I’m hearing is the sound of my own blood pulsing. What the fuck?
War’s deep voice booms through the haze. “Killer. The name?”
“Yeah, I know it. I wouldn’t forget. I don’t forget things.” My hand grabs my forehead and squeezes. “Something’s fucking off with me.”
I can feel my arms and legs and still control them. This is no stroke or seizure.
Slowly, it dawns on me. This is what fear does. I’m so desperate to know where she is and that she’s all right I want to race the Corvette all the way to Boston, doing a hundred and fifty miles an hour. The urge is so strong it’s all my brain can focus on. Adrenaline overload. I shove my fingers against my hammering pulse.
“Get a mother fucking grip,” I whisper to myself.
To find the fucking guy who took her, you won’t use your legs or your car. To find him, you have to outrun him electronically. Come on. Focus.
Even though I know what needs to be done, it still takes another ten or fifteen seconds for me to smother the wildfire my emotions are lighting in my skull.
“His name is Josh Jones. He’s a Lambda Delta alum.” Once I start talking, I spew out every fact I know.
Jamie and War listen until I finish and then they go into the house to use Jamie’s laptop. I follow, talking to myself like I’ve got an IQ of fifty, which it feels like I fucking do at the moment.
It takes a few minutes for me to drill down on an organized plan and to see things clearly. Two-factor authentication is required to change her personal email login, and a long time ago, I changed the verification phone number to mine. Which means she didn’t change her password to that because she couldn’t.
I log in, so I can locate everywhere else she’s been logged in for the past day. She was last connected to wifi in or near the Hanley Bank building. And that connection was after I talked with her. Then nothing. She either logged out or her phone went dead. When I check the tracker I put under the back bumper of Peter’s car, I find it’s parked in the structure right next to the high rise.
I send a text to Aiden.
Killian: Dropped a pin. Raine’s car parked next to Hanley building. She was taken from street or parking garage. Check for CCTV camera locations around the structure n building. I’ll get footage.
“Killian,” War says.
I look up.
“Your guy is a ghost. No address in Foxgrove or in GU graduate housing. And the bio from the Lambda website is bullshit. The high school he listed has no record of him. We looked through the yearbook pictures for all the years he was supposed to be enrolled. Not there.”
“Could he have just skipped having his photo taken?”
War shakes his head. “The names of the kids without pictures are listed. No one by the name Josh Jones was in that school six to ten years ago.”
“Tell Jamie the guy’s on the WildSide app. Have him check the database for username NightOn.” I spell the username and nod. “If we can get his phone number, we’ll find him. Even if he’s got his phone off right now, in the past few days, he’ll have been to wherever he’s taken her because if he’s turned himself into a ghost, he’s organized, not acting on impulse. If he plans to keep her for a while, he’ll have a private location. He’d stock it with supplies. If he plans to kill her, he’ll have scouted locations to dump her body. Either way, that’s his electronic tell. It’s how we’ll find him.”
My mind is clicking along now. This is a puzzle, and I’m great at puzzles. Also, I’ve stalked Raine for the past three years. I’m fucking great at that, too. All that practice means I know exactly what to do now.
My phone pings with a series of texts from Aiden. He’s got pictures of cameras and street addresses .
His last text, though, is ominous.
Aiden: Found car. Locked tight. No signs of trouble. Building has coffee shop. Closed at five pm. Lobby locked since six and empty. Street deserted. No sign of Raine.
My throat constricts, and my chest feels like a gorilla is standing on it. What if she’s already dead? He’s had hours to use her and dispose of her body. Stomach acid churns until I’m ready to puke.
I fight the feeling, typing a text to my brother instead.
Killian: Pretty sure she was taken from that city block.
Aiden: Ill look around. If there’s something to find, Ill find it.
When I got into trouble drag-racing, some of the case hinged on CCTV footage of the race and the crash. Liam paid a cop to make the evidence disappear from lockup. And I hacked the other systems to erase the original footage that had been downloaded. So, this is not my first rodeo. I know all the CCTV system weaknesses.
After I find the local network for the best target camera, I hack in through an open port and go into storage. The capture rate is one per second, so I have to scroll through pages to get back to the time of Raine’s last connection with the local network in the building.
I start watching footage from three minutes before the last connection and two minutes in, I spot a lone girl entering the frame. It’s not Raine, but she’s carrying a tote bag that looks like Raine’s. I lean forward. I’ve only got part of the girl’s profile until she turns her head to look over her shoulder.
Alicia Zenker.
My mind skids to a stop momentarily as I process several thoughts at once and settle on the most important one.
I’ve got her phone number.
I open another browser window and put in Alicia’s mobile. While the tracking software searches, I watch the rest of the footage. Alicia passes the building, stops and reaches in the bag. I can’t see what she’s doing, but I bet I know. She’s gotta be powering Raine’s phone down.
When I return to my mobile search, it’s narrowed down the location of Alicia’s phone to three houses.
I take a screenshot and text it to Aiden. As I’m starting to type a message, my phone rings because Aiden’s calling me.
“Hey,” I say.
“What are these addresses?” he asks.
“A girl named Alicia is in one of those houses. She knows what happened to Raine.”
“Got a burn phone?” Aiden asks.
“Yeah.”
“Give me five minutes, and I’ll call you back to give you a number. Use the burner to call it.”
“Okay.” I rise from the couch with my laptop and jog upstairs. “Have you guys got anything?”
Jamie’s sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop, and War’s standing in front of the couch where he has a row of assault rifles laid out with boxes of ammunition next to each one. On the opposite couch, he’s got the white suits we use for wet works. He’s prepping for war. Hence the nickname.
“Our ghost has a credit rating that started three years ago,” Jamie says. “I’m looking through city records to see if I can find out who he was before he was Josh Jones.”
“I think he has a connection to a girl named Alicia Zenker. Maybe wherever he’s living is in her name. He could be her pimp or boyfriend. Alicia went to high school with Raine and me for about a year. I’m?—”
My phone rings.
“Hang on, Jamie.” I swipe to answer. “Yeah, I’m here, A.”
Aiden reads me a phone number. “You got it?”
“Yeah. I’ll call you right back.” I end the call and look at War. “I need a burner.”
War takes out his keys and walks to a closet with a padlock. He opens it, grabs a phone and tosses it to me.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Jamie says.
War and I turn .
“I’ve got him.” Jamie turns his laptop to show me a large picture on his screen. In it, NightOn is a teenager sitting in front of a woman in a red and white sweater. There’s a little blond girl in a velvet dress standing next to NightOn and in front of her father. It’s a holiday family picture. Alicia. And behind her, her dad.
NightOn isn’t Alicia’s boyfriend. He’s her brother.