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When another twenty minutes ticked and she still hadn't pulled up, I grabbed my keys and I headed over to Willow to check the gym. At first, I spotted her blue Porsche and felt my stomach muscles unclench, my hands relax their death grip on the steering wheel. She was just staying extra late at the gym. Hell, maybe she ran into a girlfriend and got to gabbing. But as I did a quick K-turn, ready to go and wait at her place so I didn't show up and look like some possessive prick, I spotted something that made me put the brake to the floor while pushing my car into park and running out of it. There were keys on the sidewalk.
This is where the gut feeling finally did kick in.
Sure, they could have been anyone's keys.
There were dozens of cars in the lot, any one of the owners could have carelessly dropped their keys on their way into the gym, shuffling to get their shit into their gym bags or whatever.
But that wasn't the feeling I was getting.
The feeling I was getting was that they were Elsie's and that something was wrong.
When I got to them, snatched them up, and saw the dozen or so keys she kept on a chain along with the Porsche key fob and the red Stanford "S" Roman had given her as a key chain, the stomach clenching came back, intensifying to the point of a sharp pain.
I turned and ran toward the gym, barely in the door before I started barking at the girl at the front desk. "I need your camera feed for the parking lot. Now," I growled when all she did was look at me with drawn-together brows. "Fucking now, babe. I don't have time to..."
"Paine, what the fuck?" Shane Mallick's voice called, walking up, shirt wet with sweat like he had overheard the yelling while doing a workout.
"I think Elsie was taken from your parking lot. I need your camera feed. Now."
"Taken?" he repeated, needing clarification.
"Third Street," I said through clenched teeth and his face fell as he turned toward the computers behind the desk, shouldering the girl gently out of the way and clicking through a few screens before finding the feed. I moved behind the desk uninvited and stood to his side, watching as he used a little ball to rewind the footage. People came and went. A couple made out against their car. A guy picked a wedgie. A girl wobbled on her heels, looking around frantically to make sure no one saw her.
Then there it was.
I wasn't sure it was her at first, just a blur of motion as a person disappeared inside a trunk, but as Shane slowed the feed and it kept moving backward, Elsie's limp body came back out of the trunk, came to life, then she wasn't being held in a successful rear naked choke, she was being pulled across the lot, flailing, gagged.
By. Fucking. D.
"Lost her," Shane said when they went out of camera range. "Hold up," he said, switching to a different camera and rewinding. Then there they were again. She hadn't been paying attention and she ran right into him.
Fuck.
"Shit," Shane cursed, standing, reaching for a phone.
"Cops?"
"They can put out a call to look for her. But they won't find her," I said, clenching my hands up. "Call Sawyer."
"Sawyer Anderson?"
"Yeah. He was working a case for her. Call him, tell him what happened. Get him on it," I said as I moved out from behind the desk and went toward the door.
"Where you going?" Shane called.
"Family fucking reunion," I growled, swinging open the door and running across the lot toward my still-open and still-running car. I threw myself inside and put it into drive, simultaneously peeling out of the lot and reaching into the glove for my gun.
Seemed like the only time I ever saw my brother anymore was when I had a gun on him.
Enzo generally occupied the old apartment I used to when I ran things. But he also had an apartment on the very outskirts of the slums, still technically on the streets he ran, but safer and more expensive. It was like a part of Enzo was constantly at conflict between his old life before and the one he chose to live in after, like he couldn't give up the money and power of running the streets, but also didn't really want to be associated with that 'low life' behavior his mother raised him to detest.
As I parked on the street, slipping the gun into my waistband and pulling down my shirt to cover it, I wondered if that was something he struggled with- what Annie would think of the man he'd become.
Knowing Enzo, it fucking haunted him.
I pushed those thoughts and the tug of connection away as I moved in the front doors of the red brick building that had a super that actually cared enough to keep things relatively up-kept though there was no automatic lock on the front door. I went inside and took the elevator up to the top floor and moved toward the far end of the hall near the exit staircase.
