Chapter Forty-Six
FORTY-SIX
Shepherd hurried around the block to get to where he last parked his car.
That felt so long ago now. He’d been so busy riding motorcycles and stealing clown paintings and being tied to chairs.
If you had told him a week ago—well, a week ago, he would’ve been hung up on the idea of sleeping with Ginny and probably would have agreed to go along with whatever other hell came along with it.
Because one-week-ago Shepherd was just as helplessly in love with Ginny as today Shepherd.
He got in his car, still wearing yesterday’s biker-adjacent jeans.
The inside of his messy vehicle was at least ten degrees hotter than the scorching heat outside.
The A/C blew what felt like straight fire for several, agonizing seconds before finally running cold.
Shepherd pulled up the Kent address under “Recent” on his GPS, and took off.
He wasn’t brazen about it. He followed the rules of the road.
At least the ones that made sense. Some of them were more suggestions than laws, and he stayed on the right side of Felony vs Misdemeanor as he hurried to Ginny’s crazy family’s home.
He couldn’t let the woman he loved—wow, did that make his heart clench even when the word was only real inside his head—face that den of vipers alone.
He wouldn’t let Oscar face that den of vipers alone! Those people were nutso butso.
There was a marked police car in the Kent driveway, and an unmarked sedan across the street. Shepherd parked behind the sedan and was out of his seat the millisecond he’d pulled the keys.
Shepherd knocked on the door, waited half a heartbeat, and then let himself in. Rich people needed to get better at locking their doors.
“Hello?” he called out. “Ginny?”
There was movement in what he would’ve called the living room, but what the Kent’s called the receiving room. Bradley Kent stuck his head out. “Oh, Preston, good. Come here.”
Shepherd’s subconscious held on to the “good” in the sentence and forcibly shoved down the “Preston.” “Hey,” he said, and jogged over. “What’s going on?”
The entire family was in the room, gathered around the TV as on the morning of Vincent’s press conference. Everyone except Deandra. And Ginny.
He glanced around the room twice, and then a third time to be safe.
The wives were there. Vincent and a woman Shepherd hadn’t met, with two children on her lap.
Elwin holding a cup of coffee like a king might hold a scepter, the rich scent of the beverage combining most unpleasantly with whatever pine-scented cleaning agent the housekeeping staff used.
The step-siblings bundled on a love seat.
Which was too weird for this early in the morning. Probably too weird for any time, ever.
“Where’s Ginny?” His heart beat hard and slow. Every pump hurt. “She left before me.”
Bradley shrugged. “I haven’t seen her yet. But look.” He pointed at the TV. What Shepherd thought was basic cable turned out to be something else; there were police in the room, too, and they were watching the screen with their arms crossed.
It was bodycam footage. A cop wearing a camera, videoing from his chest the live view of uniformed cops and suited FBI agents who were silently moving in on what looked like a school.
There were hand motions, made difficult by the fact that all of them were holding guns.
The sound was tinny and hidden in static, but the increased rate of breathing by the officer wearing the camera was easily heard.
Shepherd swallowed, licked his lips, mouth suddenly dry. “What’s going on?”
“Police got a tip a few hours ago about where Deandra might be,” Bradley whispered. “They’re moving in on it now. Some private school in Biscayne.”
“Private school?”
“It’s closed for the summer,” Bradley said. “Completely shut down these last two weeks, not even staff on the property. Not a bad place to stash someone when what you want is a ransom. Look! There she is!”
The body cam focused on an older woman bound by ropes that looked remarkably like the ones Shepherd had been bound with, a bandana around her mouth, and ice in her blue eyes.
Bradley’s current wife, whose name Shepherd could not recall for the life of him, glared so fiercely at her husband that it was a wonder he didn’t catch fire. Clearly, Ginny’s father had a type, which was not something Shepherd wanted to dwell on.
“Where is Ginny?” he asked again, pulling out his phone. “She should be here by now.”
But Bradley had a hand over his mouth and tears in his eyes, watching as his twice-ex-wife was freed, no sign of her captors in sight.
Shepherd froze. So, maybe Ginny was right, and her parents would be getting remarried. Again. Re-remarried. Which was a thing that didn’t happen anywhere except in this crazy-ass family. Nutso butso, the lot of them—Ginny included.
But she was the only one he cared about.
He called her, and it rang and rang before going to her voicemail.
He hung up and texted: Where are you? I’m with your dad. Your mom is safe.
It came up delivered, but unread.
The family was on their feet, thanking the officers. Vincent and his wife hugged. The kids hugged Bradley and then allowed Elwin to lightly pat them on the heads. The wives and stepchildren were smiling unhappily.
But Ginny was nowhere to be found.
He ran up the stairs to her bedroom, but it was empty, save Scully and Mulder.
He walked through the entire house, ignoring the elegant celebration of the prodigal mother returning, calling out Ginny’s name.
Redialing her number. Texting her name over and over again.
Every door he opened led nowhere; every room he checked was empty.
Maybe she went back to the restaurant? Maybe she went to his apartment? Maybe she was waiting for him, in love with him too?
He hurried out the front door and ran to his car.
Something was wrong. Ginny wouldn’t have chosen him over her family.
The knowledge sat in his gut like an indigestible lump, but it was real.
It was true. She would’ve been here. The only reason she wasn’t there was because something was wrong. A car accident?
On the highway, Shepherd called Noah.
“Hey, man,” Noah yawned. “What’s up?”
“The police found Deandra.”
“That’s great!”
“But I can’t find Ginny.”
“What?”
“Can you pull up the sheriffs website, see if there were any car accidents?”
Noah yawned again, but went silent. “I’m not seeing anything. When was the last time you saw her?”
“This morning,” Shepherd said. “She left the restaurant without me.”
“What were you doing in the restaurant?”
Shepherd indicated to switch lanes. “Yeah. Charlie robbed us.”
“What?”
“Held us at gunpoint, tied us up, took the money, stole her car. Left.”
“How? Why? What? How did Deandra get free without the ransom money?”
Shepherd shrugged, pointlessly as this was a phone call. “Ginny’s dad said someone called in a tip. But Ginny wasn’t at the house, and she isn’t answering her phone.”
“How did you get free?”
“Lex and Oscar,” Shepherd answered. “But I don’t have time for this, Noah. I don’t know where Ginny is! She isn’t answering her phone. Something is wrong.”
“OK, OK. Have you checked the restaurant’s security cameras?”
He cursed. Why hadn’t he thought to check the security cameras?
The app for the security cameras was on his phone.
Shepherd pulled off at the next exit, hurried into the closest parking lot.
“Pulling them up now,” he said, Noah on speaker.
His pulse buzzed as he waited for the app to recognize his face.
The restaurant was empty now. He pulled up the footage from last night, fast-forwarded through Charlie’s betrayal, through the way Ginny cried all night long while he lay on the ground like a furious, hog-tied idiot.
There were Oscar and Lex, strolling in through the front door with a key he didn’t know about.
There was Ginny, leaving, her mouth set in a determined line.
He let it play at normal speed, watched as she walked out the front door with her chin held high and her shoulders back.
High-definition footage of the love of his life determined to help her family, no matter the cost.
An absolute perfect angle of two men wearing matching leather vests with a skull and tire irons on the back grabbing her and tossing her into a windowless van.