Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 71949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
“Don’t you have a tracker on her car?” I ask.
He looks at me, dumbfounded. “No. She deserves her privacy, Hawk.” Then he drags his hands through his hair. “Though now… Damn it. I wish I’d done it. I thought about it. Especially after…” He shakes his head.
“Fuck you!” I yell. “You should have done it. You should have—”
“Stop it, Hawk,” Raven says through her tears. “Just stop it. Vinnie and I… We’ve been trying to live a normal life. We were trying to give Daniela and Belinda a normal life. We…” She breaks down into sobs.
Vinnie rises from his desk, walks to her, and takes her into his arms, kissing the top of her head where her hair is now growing in nicely. “Easy, baby. We’ll find her. We’ll find them both.”
I inhale. “I’m sorry, Ray. I’m sorry.”
Vinnie meets my gaze over Raven’s head. “It’s okay. We’re all on edge. But we have to keep our heads if we’re going to get through this.”
I simply nod.
Vinnie kisses Raven again. “You okay?”
She sniffles. “I won’t be okay until Dani and Belinda are safely back at home.”
“I know, baby.” Vinnie releases her and returns to his system. “I’m going to do my damnedest to get them both home where they belong.”
“There must have been something in that pink envelope,” Raven says through sniffles. “She wouldn’t let me see the note. Said it was disgusting. I should have pushed harder. I should have grabbed it out of her hand.”
“Don’t,” Vinnie says. “This isn’t on any one of us. It’s on Gordon Brown and only Gordon Brown.”
Raven sniffles again, blows her nose harshly into a tissue, and then touches my arm. “Let’s sit,” she says.
We take two chairs in front of Vinnie’s desk.
Vinnie’s breath catches. “I’ve got her phone signal. She moved her phone to airplane mode but I got a last-known location about three hours ago. It’s several hours out of town. I’m pulling it up right now.”
“Wherever it is, I’m going.” I grab the arms of my chair. “I’m going after her.”
“No,” Vinnie says. “You listen to me. You do exactly what I tell you.”
Rage surges through me “I don’t take orders from—”
“You do here.” The finality in Vinnie’s voice is absolute. “Because I’ve done the things you haven’t had to do. I’ve killed, Hawk. I’ve paid debts with blood. I know how men like this operate. Sometimes they keep their word because it’s in their interest to. Sometimes they don’t. If we go in hot and wrong, we might lose both. Dani went alone to protect Belinda. That’s the best-case scenario we can imagine. If we rush in guns blazing, if we show force, we might push this man to do something horrible. We might get both of them killed.” He breathes out. “So you stay. You wait. You let me move.”
I laugh, a sound that scares me. “No. You don’t get to tell me to wait while she—” The sentence breaks.
I’m not a kid crying. I’m not that twelve-year-old boy in my father’s office watching a friend get executed.
I’m a man with a gun and a brain. I don’t wait. I fix. I move. That’s what I do.
“You don’t get it.” Vinnie’s voice goes soft. “You’re not the only one who loves her, Hawk. We do too. We won’t—” He swallows. “We won’t throw her life away. I know what I’m doing. I’m on the lead. I can try to preserve both of them without doing something stupid. I need you right here. I need you to be stable. I need you to be useful.”
“You’re asking me to hand you my heart on a string,” I say.
“Yeah,” he answers. “But I’m not cutting it off. I’m holding it for you.”
I think about Dani’s note again.
Don’t worry about me. I will be fine. I meant it when I said I love you.
Of course she loved me. Of course she would risk everything for that little girl. She is that woman. She’s brave. Broken but brave. Everyone knows the strongest are the ones who’ve been the most broken. Broken bones knit back together and become stronger.
That’s my Daniela.
I want to smash something until it’s dust. I want to drive until my tires melt. I want to set the world on fire.
Vinnie continues. “The last ping is out by Old Mill Road, past the river, in the old county. There’s an access road. It’s two hours if you drive like the devil’s chasing you. But Hawk, there’s a catch. The chef knows we can track her, so it might be a red herring.”
My jaw tightens. “So we wait for him to make a call? For him to reveal his hand?”
“We listen,” Vinnie says. “He wants Daniela, not Belinda. This isn’t a ransom situation. We have to watch. If you go, you’ll do something you’ll regret.”