Chapter 5 Dex
Dex
Nothing.
We found nothing. We searched everywhere until it got too dark for us to see. We followed the blood trail that led off the back porch and into the woods; it just…stopped.
I know she was here. I know it deep down in my bones. When that vanilla scent hit me in that room, it was like she walked right by me.
What the fuck happened here, though? There are three dead bodies, two with snapped necks and one with a knife right through the heart. Did she and Zane get away? I’m praying to anyone that will listen that’s what happened.
We trudge back into the house, where Holden is looking through footage on those monitors.
“What the fuck are we missing?” Micah asks, walking in behind us.
Ryder shakes his head. “I don’t know. We need to come back first thing tomorrow and look again.” He looks at Holden, who’s rapidly tapping at the keyboard. “Anything, Bello?”
“I can see the live feeds. I’m trying to get into the saved footage, but it’s password protected,” Holden answers without looking up, still tapping away. “I got it!” he says, stabbing one last key, and dozens of files fill the screen. He starts scrolling, and I realize they’re labeled with dates.
“That’s my boy,” Ryder says, squeezing his shoulder.
“That one,” I say, pointing to the last file on the screen labeled with today’s date.
Holden clicks the folder, and hundreds of little thumbnails pop up. He sees the one that shows Les’ face at the same time we all do, and he looks up with wide eyes. “She was here,” he whispers and takes a breath, opening the file.
The video fills the screen, and it’s focused on her. Her arms are strung over her head, her head bowed, nothing covering her but a thin nightgown. I didn’t think I could hurt anymore, but seeing her like this is wreaking havoc on my heart.
“Hey, Beautiful,” Zane’s voice filters through the speakers, and her head slowly lifts.
“Fuck,” Micah breathes. Her eyes look…lost. She has dark circles under her eyes, thin lines that look like scars on her chest, and too many bruises to count.
The camera pans away from Les and focuses on Zane. He’s sitting on the floor, arms tied to the pole behind him. He’s shirtless, with nasty cuts all over his chest and ribs. Sometimes, I still thought that Zane took her and made it look otherwise; this washed all those doubts away instantly.
Ryder looks over at me, and I can see he knows for sure now the same thing I do. Zane didn’t have anything to do with this; he was a victim.
Zane keeps talking, begging her to talk to him before you can hear him sigh. The camera pans back to her when he says something about them almost getting caught by his dad.
You can see her take a big breath, and her shoulders relax as much as they can from the way they have her arms.
I feel like I’m going to throw up. They had my baby girl.
“I wish you would talk to me,” Zane says. “I miss your sweet voice.”
“What does he mean by that?” Holden asks quietly.
“I don’t know,” I answer. Was she not talking? What did they do to her?
The video cuts off, and we all look at each other. Holden looks back to the computer and returns to the folders, clicking the next one.
It focuses on Les again then you hear the door bang open. A guy with a mask on steps into view and spins a lever, letting the slack out of Les’ bindings. Her knees smack the floor, and I can hear her whimper in pain.
“Goddamnit,” I growl. These assholes are going to pay for ever laying a finger on her.
“MOTHERFUCKER!” Zane bellows in the background. “Take it out on me! Goddamnit! Take it out on me!”
The guy with the mask says something and jerks Les to her feet by her hair, shoving her out of view.
“This guy better be one of the dead motherfuckers,” Micah growls.
“FIGHT, ALESSA! FUCKING FIGHT!” Zane yells.
“Why isn’t she fighting?” Ryder asks, gesturing toward the screen.
When I was in that position, I did the same thing. I could see it in her eyes. “She’s given up,” I answer, and my heart sinks. What did they do to her to take her fight away?
The camera slowly pans to Zane and zooms in. Someone is watching them and controlling the cameras, probably from this room.
Zane is roughly jerking at the bindings on his arms, causing the wounds on his chest to pour blood.
“FUCK!” he yells, dropping his head back against the pole.
He looks rough. His hair is long, and he has a full beard.
I couldn’t imagine what he’s had to go through being that close to Les and couldn’t help her.
“I can’t watch anymore,” Holden says and jumps up from the chair, disappearing from the room.
The camera stays focused on Zane, so I fast-forward through the footage until it pans to the bed against the wall. We watch as one of the guys shoves her onto it, tying her arms down. You can hear Zane talking to her, and the door opens again.
Another guy walks into view without a mask, but you can only see the back of his head.
He walks over and straddles Les on the bed.
“Is that fucking Jay?!” Ryder explodes, looking closer at the screen.
I let the video keep playing, all of us seething.
This motherfucker has been on us about updates pretending to be worried, and he’s had them all along?
We never suspected Jay; as far as we knew, Les had one run-in with him.
Our only connection was his brother getting killed under Luca’s watch.
“Fuck. I can’t watch this,” Micah says when Jay rips Les’ nightgown, pulling it from her body. I hit fast-forward again because there’s no way we can watch it either, but we need to know if she got out.
“This fucker is dying a thousand deaths,” Ryder growls, and I think the same.
“Wait!” I yell to Micah before he reaches the door.
Les is bucking like a bronco, Jay’s head leans towards her, and she slams her head into his.
“Yes!” Ryder hisses when he sees how hard she’s fighting.
She bucks so much that she finally gets her legs free and shoves him off her. Zane is yelling so much in the background, encouraging her that it’s drowning out everything else being said.
We listen as Zane tells her to pull her arm free, and when she does, I can feel my heart leap in my throat.
Another guy walks in; I hear a thud, someone grunts, and Zane skids to a stop beside Les.
That must have been the guy with the snapped neck we saw.
He unties her other arm before jerking her from the bed.
He slides her nightgown back over her and ties the straps together.
Zane grabs her hand, and they disappear from view.
My heart stops beating entirely before beating triple time.
“They got out!” Micah exclaims. “These bodies are from them!”
“Holden! Get your ass back in here!” Ryder yells. “We need copies of that shit. Fucking Jay?” he seethes. “I’m going to gut him.”
Micah and I are nodding in agreement. We knew something was off with him. He was always coming around, and now we know why. He wanted to know how close we were to catching on that it was him. But where is he now?
Holden slowly opens the door, and we fill him in on what we found. We leave out the worst of it to save him that image. It will be something I see every time I close my eyes.
He runs back to the computers and almost sits on my lap, not giving me half a chance to stand up. He starts clicking through files in a rapid-fire, trying to find any other camera in the house and comes up empty.
“Damnit,” I say, running my hand through my hair, “He only had a camera in that room.”
Ryder jerks his phone to his ear. “We found her,” he tells someone and fills them in on what we found. “It was fucking Jay,” he growls. “I want everyone looking for this motherfucker. Find him, grab him, but he’s ours.”
I don’t need to ask what he means. Jay is ours to torture for every finger he laid on my baby girl.
“Damn. It’s good to see you,” I say, jerking Gage in for a hug. At the same time, Ryder pulls Leo in for a hug. After Les went missing, they bonded and realized they were wasting their time fighting each other.
“Aw. You missed me, big fella?” Gage jokes, but he’s hugging me just as tight.
We almost lost Gage that day several times.
They lost him on the operating table three times during his open-heart surgery to repair the mess the bullets made.
He came out of surgery on a ventilator, where we all stood by and watched as they had to get his heart pumping again for the fourth time.
He stayed on the ventilator for a week so it would give his body time to heal.
The shoulder and stomach wounds were more superficial but still came with complications from which he managed to recover.
After a week, they weaned him from sedation and removed the tube from his throat.
He repeatedly asked for Les, and when Ryder finally broke down, telling him she was missing, he lost it.
They had to sedate him again to calm him down, and when he woke up the next time, he was so washed in guilt I didn’t think we would ever see the real Gage again.
“You too,” I tell Leo, pulling him in for a hug after Ryder let him go.
Gage went through weeks of grueling physical therapy to get back on his feet, but he was pushing himself too hard.
So, after the twentieth dead lead, Leo, Ryder, and I put him on a plane with Leo to Cabo San Lucas, where Evander is, which just pissed him off.
He agreed only because Leo said he would go with him.
“Tell me everything,” Gage says, sliding onto the stool at the island at the house, Leo sitting beside him.
Ryder fills them in on everything they missed while they were on a plane on the way back to the states. After two weeks, Gage and Leo weren’t going to stay away any longer, and it was just dumb luck they were on their way back when we caught this lead.
“Fucking Jay?!” Leo explodes when Ryder drops that bomb. “The detective? Zane’s fucking partner had them?”
“One and the same. I have Ghost and Squid scouring everywhere for him.”
“She got out?” Gage asks softly. Deep down, he still feels like it’s his fault she got taken. We’ve told him several times that it could have happened to any of us.
“Yeah, man. She fought like hell. Gerald and Boone are out looking for them with the twins and Playboy. Alexey and Dmitri are on their way, and we’re hitting the streets too. We only came back here to wait for you guys,” I answer.
When Gage finally told us he was the reason Zane was even with them, I was pissed.
Then when he told us he had talked Les into talking to Zane to settle her feelings, I wanted to kill him.
I remembered what I said to Ryder in the car that day.
If Les wanted Zane with her, I would give her whatever she wanted.
I understood why Gage did what he did. He knew it was tearing Les up inside to pretend all the time how much she hated Zane.
He was the only one brave enough to push her to do it, just like he pushed us to accept this crazy relationship.
“Where’s Holden?” Gage asks, looking around.
Ryder sighs. “In his office, finding any camera, he can around that area.”
“In Abandoned Hills? There’s nothing fucking out there,” Gage says, running his hand through his wavy hair. “Where could they go?”
Our only hope right now is she did get away. There was no sign of Jay anywhere near that house. Plus, Abandoned Hills is nothing but woods, miles of empty land, and abandoned buildings. It would take forever to search, so we pulled in all the help we could.
Alexey and Dmitri finally show up, so we get Holden and Micah before piling into a Yukon Denali to head back to where we found the house.
It’s after midnight, so we come equipped this time with flashlights and extra gear.
From the time stamp on the camera, Les and Zane have a twelve-hour head start on us.
We stationed guards at that house, so if anyone showed back up, we would know.
We already have guards check all the secret spots we know about and came up empty, but something told me they wouldn’t go anywhere Jay may know about.
“Quit fucking babying me,” Gage grouches, talking to Leo. “I’m fine.”
“You just had open heart surgery six weeks ago, Gage,” Leo says slowly, like he’s had this conversation a hundred times. And with Gage, he probably has. “All I said was don’t push too hard. I’m not babying you.”
“Yes. You are,” Gage says and turns to face Leo in the middle seat. “I’m well aware of what happened to me. I don’t need you reminding me a thousand times every goddamn day.”
Ryder gives me a look and pulls over into a wide spot. The SUV is barely in park before Leo is practically shoving Holden out of the way so he can get out.
“What the hell was that?” Ryder asks Gage while turning to face him.
“He won’t let me fucking breathe,” Gage answers.
“He almost lost you,” Ryder snarls. “We all did. Give him a fucking break.” Ryder shoves his door open, steps out, and slams it behind him.
Gage looks at me, and I shrug. “I’m on their side,” I say and get out, following behind Leo and Ryder.
The rest step out and gather around the hood of the Yukon. “We have a lot to cover. She has twelve hours on us,” Ryder says while checking his Glocks and shoving them back in the holster.
“Any sightings of Jay?” Micah asks, doing the same.
“Nah. I have guys on it, though,” Ryder replies.
“We can have a helicopter come in,” Alexey speaks up.
I look at him with a raised brow. “You have a helicopter?”
Alexey shrugs. “Yeah.”
Ryder shakes his head. “Not yet. It might bring too much attention if they’re hiding somewhere. But keep it on standby.”
Ever since everything went down with Viktor, the twins moved out.
Viktor is still on a war path trying to find Nina, and he makes their lives hell at every opportunity.
They were smart, though, because they knew Viktor would freeze their assets, so they had everything they could transferred into their name.
“Let’s go,” Ryder says, jerking his head for us to follow.
Come hell or high water, we are finding her.