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We sat in silence for a few minutes, the night deepening outside the window. Outside, night in the Everglades was pitch black. But inside the hospital, it was a different story. The harsh fluorescents pierced through the darkness and made everything seem bright and sterile. The contrast was jarring, unsettling. It was impossible to forget where we were, impossible to pretend things were anything but dire.
“Have you spoken to Sam yet?” Jace asked me.
“I tried. He won’t say a word,” I told him. “I think he thinks it’s his fault.”
“It’s kind of his fault,” Jace said.
“Yeah, but don’t tell him that. We need him to give us information, not shut us out.”
Jace nodded, his head falling back against the cool glass of the window. His eyes were red rimmed and tired. But then again, we all looked like Hell incarnate. We were just a bunch of broken men clinging onto shreds of hope and desperation.
"We aren't going to find her with GPS coordinates," Jace said suddenly, breaking the silence between us. His eyes were distant, staring at some unseen point in the darkness outside. His voice had an edge to it, a hint of defeat that sent chills running down my spine.
"Don’t say that," I said, the words coming out sharper than I intended. I could feel my pulse quickening, thudding loudly in my ears. The thought was unbearable, unthinkable.
“They’re not going to have their phones. What can I trace if they don’t have any devices?”
I clenched my jaw, the bitter taste of reality leaving a chill down my spine. "Then what do we do?" I asked, my voice hoarse.
“You don’t have any ideas?”
I sighed. “One idea.”
He looked at me.
“Not my idea,” I said. “Teo’s idea. The feds.”
Jace's eyebrows shot up, his tired eyes suddenly wide. "The feds?" he questioned, his surprise clear.
“I mean, what else can we do?” I asked him tiredly. “Sofia and Victor are kidnapped, Teo is out of commission, Sam is a liability, and you and me…”
I didn't finish my sentence, just shook my head. We were all damaged goods in our own right, but we were also the only hope Sofia and Victor had. It felt like a cruel joke. The feds? We might as well be hanging up a neon sign inviting them to dig into our lives.
“I would rather we didn’t.”
"Find me another option, then," I retorted, my frustration boiling over. "What else can we do, Jace?"
He was silent for a long moment, his gaze focused outside the window as if seeking answers in the vast darkness. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely audible over the hum of the hospital's air conditioning. "I don't know."
His admission fell heavily in the room, cementing our current predicament. We were running out of options, and every second we wasted could potentially push Sofia further into harm’s way.
“Let’s just think,” Jace said. “We keep being one step behind this guy because Teo is so gung ho about Sofia. I get it, but he’s usually smarter than this. You’re usually smarter than this.”
"Are you saying I'm not thinking clearly?" I shot back, his words hitting a sore spot. Of course, I wasn't thinking clearly. How could I with Sofia missing? Every thought was consumed by her.
"No, what I'm saying is we need to be smarter," he retorted. "We can't just rush in guns blazing. Look what happened when we did."
I sighed heavily, slumping back in my chair and rubbing my temples. Jace was right. We needed a plan...a good one. But how do you outsmart a man who's always one step ahead? One as crazy as this one?
"I know we need something solid," I muttered. "But time isn't exactly on our side."
Jace leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he stared at the floor. "I know that, man. But we're not helping them if we end up dead."
"You think I don't know that?" I countered, my voice sharper than I intended. The truth was, I did know. But knowing and accepting are two different beasts. To know is to acknowledge a fact, to accept is to internalize it. And the thought of failing Sofia...of losing her to that psychopath who had her now...I wasn't ready to accept that. His words stung, but they were true. I was at a loss. I tried to come up with a plan, but everything I thought of ended in disaster. My mind was clouded with worry for Sofia and Victor and guilt for letting them down.
“They might reach out to us again,” Jace said. “It's probably in his best interest to keep us scared, right? But why? He already has Sofia, he almost killed Sam…we thought he only wanted his children, but clearly he’s playing with us too. He has been since the beginning, since he had the Strangler tried to set us up by leaving bodies behind Neon. So what is the Viper’s connection to the Blades? I can’t believe that whole thing was Archer’s doing.”
I shook my head, raking a hand through my hair as I tried to piece together the jigsaw of information we had.
