AllFreeNovel
Share Us
In shock, her body had gone into total shutdown.
Kane hadn’t even been able to get her address from her and had to rely on their staff files instead. Even if she had given it, he would have crosschecked it against their database in the unlikely event that she would lie to them to protect her only son.
By the time he’d scribbled down the details, Johnny had brought the car round to the front. They floored it to her house, risking life and limb to tear through the LA traffic.
All he could think about was getting to Lexi.
They screeched up to the simple one-story ranch style home with the neat flowerbed of Dutch tulips.
Johnny wasn’t as trained in combat as Kane was so he made him stay by the car though he was still able to help by parking their own car strategically, blocking the white van — the van from the security footage mud covered plates and all — that sat in the drive.
If Hank made it out of the house, at least he wouldn’t be able to drive away.
Kane ran next door. Bud stayed close to his side, ears pricked on high alert.
Though this house was identically made to Ruth’s home, Hank’s was a much less welcoming affair with more weeds than flowers, and the windows looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned this side of a century. A pile of empty Cheerwine cans sat in a crate on the porch, ready for recycling.
He peered through the windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of Lexi but what he could see through the grime wasn’t very promising. Worn furniture sat around in no particular order as if Hank had no idea what to do with it; a lamp bulb had obviously blown at some point and had been replaced with a new one but the light shade still sat on the dirty carpet beside the sofa gathering dust. Empty chip bags, candy wrappers and more of those Cheerwine cans were dotted all around.
Hank seemed to have the same diet and housekeeping skills as a teenage boy.
He moved to the next window that overlooked a dining room, though it was being used for storage. Opened boxes sat on the scratched mahogany table where packets of Ilford photographic paper spilled out from them. There was a space where one of the dining chairs should have been and marks on the carpet that inferred a chair had been dragged out of there.
Bud bristled by his side, growled a low warning that stopped Kane dead.
Silently padding on his paws, he moved toward the back of the house. Kane followed quietly, hoping to be able to get the jump on Hank.
Through the glass pane in the door, Kane could see a man on the other side. Around five ten, slim, he was slightly hunched over from a deformation of the upper spine that Kane could clearly see from his back view of him. Hank paced the room, clearly agitated.
A small, off-brand TV set — the kind usually given away as part of a promotion — was tuned into the ET channel. Hank kept glancing at it, at the breaking news where Lexi’s smiling face stared out at the world.
Guilt covered his face, turning it twitchy, and Kane had no doubt in his mind: this was the man who had taken her.
He pressed the panic button he had retrieved from Lexi’s purse.
Although he was confident he could handle the jerk, he wasn’t prepared to risk Lexi or even Bud’s life. Regardless of whatever happened next, his men would notify the authorities of his location.
He didn’t bother to knock. He wasn’t the police or FBI, so there was no legal requirement for him to announce himself.
Aiming his shoulder at the frame of the door, he slammed into it, using the full force of his anger and desperation to drive it forward. The weathered door that should have been replaced long ago burst open and almost fell off its hinges from his assault.
Hank spun around to be tackled by two-hundred pounds of one pissed off ex-marine as Bud barked loudly.
He fell to the floor with a thud, screaming. Kane rammed a knee under his neck. Any thought Hank had of fighting back faded with the pressure against his windpipe. His hands clawed at Kane’s knee, gasping for the breath that wouldn’t come while Bud bared his fangs. Lowering his snout so that he was only inches away from Hank’s, he snarled at the man who dared to upset his master.
A whimper slid out of Hank as he tried vainly to move his head away from Bud.
“Where is she?” Kane hissed, about ready to crush the man’s life. The rage inside was a furnace that wanted any excuse to extinguish him.
Hank squirmed beneath him, so pale that he looked nothing like the monster Kane had pictured him to be. He cried out pitifully.
“I didn’t mean … to take her… but she was being… difficult! She wanted to… tell… on me!”
Thatwas his defense?
He sounded like a sniveling child.
“I don’t care about your excuses. I just need to know where she is! Is she still alive?!”
