Chapter 21 #2
My father’s eyes are open, but unfocused. They move over the cords, the gun Owen threw across the room, and the broken door before they find me. Confusion lasts less than a second.
“Frederick.” He barks my name, but somehow it’s lost all power. Maybe I only answer to a feisty blonde girl now. “Take this ridiculous thing off me and bring your mother to me.”
I walk past him and pick up his gun. The magazine drops into my palm when I press the release. One round in the chamber. I clear it, put the pieces into the backpack separately, and take the contractor’s pistol from Owen.
“I’m speaking to you.”
“And I don’t care.”
Owen passes me Charles’s phone and a flat black drive he found in the open drawer. Ammunition follows. I leave the cash and passport where they are.
The phone is locked so I pocket it.
“You boys are in deep shit.” Charles twists against the cords again, harder now. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? You humiliated and stolen from men with the means to bury you, and now you’ve broken into my home and assaulted me. You’re kidnapping my property.”
“We need to take the laptop,” I tell Owen, completely ignoring him. “The listing is still live.”
Mason sends a fresh one-use link for the second machine. I approve it and leave both laptops powered and connected.
“I can kill the listing from inside the account,” Mason says through the burner. “Give me a few minutes.”
“Okay, be quick. We need to go.”
“If either machine sleeps, I lose the session. Don’t close either lid.”
I step back into the hall. Charles tries to sit up, and Owen shifts his boot from his hip to the center of his chest. He puts him down again without using the bad shoulder.
“Call him off, Frederick.”
I zip the backpack. “No.”
“Untie me now and I won’t make a big deal about it.”
My fingers tighten around the strap.
He stares at me like he’s seeing me for the first time.
“You sold her.”
“Your mother agreed to correct the damage she caused our family. Whatever story she told you?—”
“You put her naked body on the internet,” Owen cuts in. His boot stays planted, but the rest of him has gone still. “Piece of shit.”
Charles looks up at him. “Coming from you?” The smile comes back slowly. “I hear your last omega is paralyzed.”
Owen’s face barely moves.
“She was never my omega,” Owen says simply. “But you already know that. I don’t care what happens to her, just like I don’t care what happens to you.”
His smile thins.
I crouch beside him, grip his jaw, and hold the screen in front of his face. He tries to turn away. Owen’s boot presses harder into his chest until the lock opens.
I open his messages. There’s a group with Vincent, Alexander, and William.
It opens in the middle of the mess Mason made: attorneys, accounts they can’t reach, cars that need to disappear, warnings not to use old numbers.
Every location they mention is there or the usual place.
I scroll through hours of them blaming one another or one of us and look for what they’re planning next.
A gray thumbnail passes beneath my thumb.
I almost keep going. Then the hat catches me, and I swipe back.
The image is grainy and shot from above, but the stupid tourist hat gives him away. Tristan stands beneath the Wrecker’s Point Pharmacy sign with sunglasses covering half his face.
I turn the screen toward Owen. Charles sees it too.
Owen has the burner at his ear calling home before I lower the phone. It goes to voicemail.
“Move Bianca now. Treat the house as burned and call me.”
He hangs up and calls again. Nothing. Tristan next. Nothing. Weller again.
“Pick up. Pick the fuck up.”
I search the group for Wrecker’s Point. My thumb hits the wrong letters twice before I get it right. No results. Pharmacy. Nothing. Bianca. Old messages. I open the posts around Alexander’s picture and keep scrolling, looking for an address, a time, a reply that tells me who else has seen it.
There is nothing. Only Tristan beneath the sign and two and a half hours of road and water between us and Bianca.
Owen calls Weller again.
Charles follows the phone with his eyes. “Maybe you’re already too late.”
I step toward him. Owen’s free hand closes around my wrist before I get there, the grip light but firm enough to make me look at him.
“Pack the room.”
He shoves the burner into my hand. The call rolls to voicemail again as a thud hits the floor across the hall.
I am moving to check on it, but my mom speaks before I reach the door.
“I’m fine. I dropped the shoe.”
“Stay there. I’ll get it.”
Mason calls before I can redial. “I have the account index. Listing shutdown is processing.”
“Finish it,” Owen says. “Tell us when we can close the lids.”
He heads downstairs for the camera laptop. I put my father’s phone, the two pistols, magazines, radio, and black drive into the backpack, leaving room for the personal computer while Mason works.
My mom appears in the opposite doorway with her shoes on.
“One more minute,” I tell her. “Lock the door until I come back.”
Her gaze flicks to my father and away again. She closes the door.
The burner vibrates in my hand.
Done. You can close them.
I shut the personal laptop and slide it into the backpack. The rug beside the bed is empty.
“Help!” My father’s shout tears through the house. “Somebody help me!”
Owen hits the upper landing with the camera laptop as I reach the balcony door. It stands wide open, the curtains lifting and falling around it.
He made it to the far corner of the balcony and put one leg over the railing. His wrists are still bound in front. Both forearms hook across the top rail while he stretches for the copper downspout.
He looks over his shoulder when we enter, and I start walking toward him.
“Freddie, wait.” Owen catches the back of my hoodie.
His weight is already too far outside the rail. He tries to drag his other leg over, the cord around his wrists catches on the metal, and his shoe slips across the wet stone.
His whole body starts to slide, and out of instinct, my hand closes around his wrist. I hit the railing hard, and Owen grabs onto me before my father’s weight pulls me over with him. Pain rips through my shoulder. His bound hands claw for a better grip while my forearm shakes beneath him.
He looks up. “I knew you wouldn’t let me fall.”
Owen braces one knee against the base of the railing, both fists locked in my clothes. “I’ve got you.”
Charles tightens his fingers around my wrist. “Pull me up, Frederick.”
He twists inside my grip. “Don’t make me ask twice.”
Then I shake him loose.
His face changes into a look of horror. “Fred?—”
His shout cuts off when he hits the flagstone on his side with a blunt crack that carries up the walls.
I thought my father would look bigger dead. He has filled every room I’ve entered for as long as I can remember. From up here, he is only a man on pale stone with one arm bent beneath him.
There’s a loud thump across the hall.
My mom is on her knees beside the bed with one hand pressed to her chest. The blanket has slipped from one shoulder.
“Is he dead?” she asks. Her legs fold when she tries to stand. I catch her beneath the arms.
“He fell from the balcony trying to get away.”
“I need to get out of this house.”
“We’re leaving. Winston will have something for the bond withdrawals.”
Owen wedges the camera laptop beside the personal computer, shifts the weapons and phones, then forces the zipper over the last inch. He shoulders the bag while I keep one arm around my mom.
We take the back stairs so she never sees the courtyard.
The pull-off is a five-minute walk through trees. Mom leans harder into me with every turn, but she keeps moving.
Winston’s SUV is angled toward the road with a dark sedan parked behind it. Matt waits beside the sedan with the keys in his hand.
Winston’s window is down. “The back is unlocked. Help her inside.”
“Winston?” Mom’s hand tightens on my sleeve.
“Hi, Mrs. Miller.”
I make sure she doesn’t bump her head getting in. He asks about the bond, her head, her breathing, whether she was given anything, and whether she can see him clearly. She answers every question herself.
“Clara is waiting down the road at a diner with medical supplies and food,” Winston tells her.
“I don’t need?—”
“She’ll only do what you’re comfortable with.” Winston starts the engine. “Then we’ll take you somewhere safe.”
Mom says okay softly and closes the door.
Winston turns to Owen. “Where’s Bianca?”
“Supposed to be with Weller and Tristan.” Owen takes the keys Matt holds out. “These assholes found the island, and nobody’s answering. She’s close to heat.”
Winston pulls out his phone while Matt gets into the passenger side. “Then get the fuck out of here and go find her!”
But Owen is already dragging me toward the car.
The burner vibrates before the pull-off disappears behind us. Weller. Owen answers before the first buzz finishes and puts him on speaker.
“Where the fuck is Bianca? I’ve called you like fifty times.”
There’s a pause.
“We’re in the woods, no service,” Weller says. “She went for a walk and we can’t find her. What’s wrong?”
Charles’s phone slips out of my hand and hits the floorboard.
“Find her. Now. They have a picture of Tristan at the pharmacy.”
“We’re already?—”
“Don’t stop moving until you find her.”
The call drops.
Owen redials. The call cuts off before the first ring finishes.
A minute later, he tries again and leaves the burner on speaker between us.
I pick up Charles’s phone and refresh the fathers’ thread until the same messages jump and settle again.
Nothing new. No plan. No name. No way to reach her from here.
The call connects, but it’s just wind, footfalls, and Tristan yelling Bianca’s name. We listen for her to answer.
She doesn’t.