Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 136048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
A hollowness blasts through my chest, and I drop to my knees, helplessness eating at me. “They’re gone,” I cry, my voice cracking with terror. “Someone’s taken them.”
38
KNIGHT
The early-evening breeze whips through the open window of my truck as I sail down the highway, grateful that tonight’s call wasn’t anything too excessive. I love my job just as much as any of the guys on my team, but there’s nothing I hate more than leaving for work while Harper is home. But that’s life, I guess. It comes with the territory, and she understands that just as much as I do with her job. Only difference is, now that she’s in charge, she can kiss her peaceful night shifts goodbye. Not that they were really offering her much peace anymore.
It stopped raining a little over an hour ago, but the downpour has left the roads soaked, and under the soft moonlight, there’s something so damn peaceful about it. It’s got to be my favorite thing about a storm—the aftermath.
An incoming call sounds through my truck’s Bluetooth system, and as I find Harper’s name across my screen, a smile kicks up the corner of my mouth. “Hey, doll,” I say, putting my window up so I don’t have to strain to hear her over the breeze whipping in. “I’m on my way home, I should be—”
“They’re gone,” she howls, the terror in her tone not something I’ve ever heard from her before. “They’re gone. Someone’s taken them.”
“What? Doll. What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The girls,” she cries, her words almost impossible to decipher over the sound of her heaving sobs. “One second they were playing in the guest room, and the next . . . they’re gone, Knight. I . . . I don’t know what happened. I can’t find them. We’ve looked everywhere.”
“Fuck,” I mutter, stepping on the gas and flying down the highway, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. “How long have they been missing?”
“I . . . I don’t know. A few minutes at most.”
“Have you checked the yard? Done a perimeter sweep?” I ask. “Kids like to play hide-and-seek. Are you sure they’re not just hiding somewhere?”
“We have checked everywhere, Knight. There’s no sign of them. It’s as though they just vanished out of thin air.”
“Fuck. FUCK!”
I drag my hand down my face as my stomach ties into knots, and as I push my truck to its limits, I grab my phone, immediately bringing up my home security app. There aren’t any notifications, only alarms from where Hunter, Izzy, and Harper have gone running in and out over the past few minutes.
I double-check the back door camera, but again, I get nothing that tells me what the fuck happened to the twins. “You said they were in the guest room?” I clarify, bringing up the cameras from the side of the property, but the guest room window is in a blind spot. It won’t give me much, but if someone has taken them, I might just see something that could give me even the slightest clue where to start looking.
“It’s okay, doll,” I murmur as I try to concentrate on the road while also scanning through the footage over the past few minutes. “We’re going to find them.”
“What if they get hurt because of me?” she cries. “I gave Jonah my word that I could do this. I told him they’d be safe with me.”
“We’re going to get them back,” I tell her, just as a shadow cuts across the front lawn. My brows furrow, watching even closer, but the angles aren’t right, and it’s almost as though whoever is there knows exactly where my cameras are. I can’t see what I need to see, and as frustration burns through me, I see the slightest flash of pink dart across my screen, and I screech to a halt in the middle of the highway, needing to back up the footage and really concentrate on what I’m seeing.
“I’ve got something on the security feed,” I tell Harper as I back up the footage and hit play in slow motion, feeling sick to my fucking stomach that I am stopped on the side of the road when Harper needs me more now than ever, but I have to do this. I have to figure out what the fuck happened to those little girls. I need to know they’re safe.
Watching the footage through again, I come to the portion of pink flashing across the screen and hit pause, seeing one of the twins attempting to dash across the front lawn, and as I push forward to the next frame, I see the very edge of Mae’s face as she reaches out and grips the little girl’s arm, yanking her right back out of the shot.
“Fuck,” I grunt, throwing my phone down on the passenger seat, my chest heaving with a raging fury. “It was your mom.”