40. Chapter 40
Chapter forty
— DAYLIGHT BY DAVID KUSHNER
A noise has my head jerking up from where it lays against my desk.
“What was that?” I say over comms, and when nobody responds, I head for my front door. As I swing it open, my guys guarding the house meet my gaze. “Anything to report?”
“No, sir,” Chris tells me, and I take a breath.
“I’ll be upstairs with Bree. We’ll talk in the morning,” I say as I look at my watch. “Well, when the sun’s up and the shift changes.”
“Got it. Have a good night, boss.”
“You too. Call me if anything changes,” I say as I close the door, and I all but drag myself up to Bree’s room. I’ve got to stop falling asleep at my desk. I’m working myself dry, but we still have nothing on Ralph. We’ve been checking paparazzi photos for similar faces and Nico’s running facial recognition on the crowds, but all we have is a load of nothing so far. Some crowd members have DUIs, but Ralph hasn't been spotted in any photos.
Yet again, we’ve reached a dead end, and I have no idea how the motherfucker keeps hiding from us. It’s pissing me off.
I open the door to Bree’s room, the glow of her night light making it easy for me to get to her closet so I can change into comfier clothes.
But when I get in and see its contents all over the floor, my guard flies up. Bree is organized as fuck. She never would’ve gone to sleep with this mess.
My pulse picks up, and when I rush to her bed, she’s not there.
A note sits on her pillow, along with a picture of her sleeping—or passed out, I’m not sure which.
Fuck! He fucking has her. He was under this roof, and since I wasn't up sleeping with her, he grabbed her.
I grab the note, and the urge to kill him gets stronger.
Checkmate.
– R.
My heart is beating out of my chest as I pull my phone out, dialing the first person on my speed dial.
“It’s too fucking early—”
I cut him off. “Bree’s gone.”
“I’ll be over in ten,” Nico says as he curses and hangs up the phone.
I race down the stairs and throw open the door. “Get the day shift up, now! Bree’s missing and Ralph has her. Search the entire fucking property. Nico’s on his way.”
“On it, boss,” Chris says.
“Get Emerson and a few others to search the back. Chris, you take the front.” I take a deep breath and wish for my sanity to return, but it doesn't. “Find her!” I scream before I head back inside to my office to check the security cameras.
I should’ve been notified if something happened. I should’ve been up with her. God, this is all my fucking fault. Bree is somewhere with that sick fuck, and I could’ve stopped it, but I wasn't there.
I wasn't there. It was the only promise I made her, that I would always be by her side, and I fucking broke it. I failed .
“What the fuck happened?” Nico shouts as he storms into my office.
Ten minutes, my ass. But I don't care how many laws he broke to get over here. I’m just glad he’s here. “I have no idea. I’m pulling up the cameras now.”
“Why didn't any of us get an alert that the property was breached?” Nico asks, and before I tell him I don't fucking know, Emerson calls me.
“Did you find her?”
“No, but we did find an abandoned plate in the bushes behind her house.” He rattles off the letters and numbers, and Nico plugs it into the system as I pull up the cameras from her backyard.
“Thanks, Emerson.”
“We’ll keep looking,” is all he says before I drop the call.
“The plate belongs to a stolen car. It was reported missing a few days ago from a house across town. A white Ford Fusion.”
I search the cameras for any sign of it. It takes a few minutes, but then I spot it doing laps around Bree’s gated neighborhood a few days ago. I zoom in on the plate, and it matches the one we found, but there’s no way to tell what Ralph could have switched it to.
Nico paces around my room. “How the fuck did he manage to kill our system again? It’s pissing me off. I reinforced our fucking firewalls and made sure they were stable!”
“That’s not what I’m worried about right now,” I bite out, my jaw tense as I think about what he could be doing to Bree. “I don't think he would leave the state. Ralph is a psychological motherfucker. He likes to play with Bree’s mind, and crossing state lines with her would mean too many eyes on him.”
“So where would he take her then?”
“I don't fucking know!” I say as I swipe everything off my desk. That felt good, but my pulse is still thrashing, and I can’t fucking breathe.
He got to her. He took her. He might fucking kill her .
Bree is the love of my life, and if I lose her, I’m losing a piece of my soul. There would be no coming back from that. I’d rather die a thousand times over than let something happen to her, something that I could’ve saved her from—that I could’ve stopped.
I need to fucking focus, but my mind can’t stop thinking that Bree could be hurt. He could be touching her again.
Again. There’s that fucking word I hate.
“Nico, I don't know what to do,” I say, fear overtaking my mind. For the first time in my life, I don't have a plan. I don't have next steps. All I can think about is what he’s probably doing to her, images flooding my mind.
“We need to think. Where would he take her where nobody else would interrupt? That’s what he wants, right?”
“Wait, the bracelet I got her should have tracking,” I say as I tap my bracelet a few times. I hope that wherever Bree is, she can tap back or at least know I’m coming. “Can you track it using mine?”
“Yeah, I can. As long as she isn't very far, I should be able to.”
I yank it off of my wrist and throw it at Nico. He tinkers with it for a few seconds, plugging a bunch of shit into his phone as I lean against my desk, needing support to keep standing.
“I can’t get an exact location, but she’s still around here. Vince, she’s not far. Think—where would this sick fucker take her?”
“Knowing Ralph, he’s been planning this for a while. He’s been taunting her for months. He had a few opportunities to grab her, but he didn't.”
Nico runs a hand through his hair. “With his last girlfriend, the last place she was seen was the spot where they had their first date.”
My mind flashes through tons of different places before it lands on where this all started: her old house. The first time he got his disgusting hands on her was in her old room, and he left me that note on her pillow, knowing that I would be there to see it.
“I know where they are.”