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Blake pointed to a spot on his arm. “Does that say trawler?”
“Yeah.”’
He nodded. “The make’s old. Probably isn’t going fast or far. How do they know this is where he is?”
Avery shrugged. “I don’t know. The team’s probably captured everything else or something?” He looked around as someone drove up behind us, slowing, no doubt wondering why the car was pulled to the side of the road. They passed us and sped up. “Where can I take you? To the marina? Do we start there?”
“We should let you go,” I said. “But can you take us to John’s Island? I’ve got a vehicle there we can use.”
TOGETHER, TO GET HER
It must have been very late when we pulled into the grocery store lot. Parking was nearly empty. The line of RVs still remained parked in the back lot for the night.
The one Axel and I borrowed was still there.
“Sure you don’t need anything?” Avery asked.
“No,” I said. I’d gotten out and hovered over his window to say goodbye. “Get back to Ethan. Make sure he’s safe.”
He nodded and started to roll up his window but then stopped. “You know, I can do more than just drive.”
I smirked at him. “Yeah. I know. You’re smart. I think that’s why Ethan saw something good in you and hired you.”
He beamed. “You think so?”
“And I know you’d do your best to protect him. You’re good at your job.”
He bobbed his head a few times. “I like this job.”
I watched as he pulled away and then as he got onto the road and drove off.
Blake stood beside me, putting an arm around my shoulders. “He’s a good guy.”
I felt guilty getting Avery wrapped up in all this, too. It felt like everyone around me was involved, in trouble, hoping for a miracle day when this would all be over.
Behind us, there was a tap of metal slamming up against metal.
We turned, finding the door to the RV Axel had borrowed to be open. A woman came out, blond hair, unfamiliar to me. There was something off in the way she looked, like she was sad. It reminded me a lot of Brandon. She was older, mid-thirties maybe. It was hard to be sure in the dark.
She wasn’t alone. Another man was behind her. His face was shadowed.
Blake and I backed away, ready to head for the grocery store. We weren’t about to get caught again.
“Wait,” she called out. “I’m here for my husband,” she said. “Liam. Where is he?”
I shared a long look with Blake and then turned. “You’re…”
She approached me, her hands open, showing me they were empty. Her green eyes widened. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, but we haven’t heard from him in—”
Blake stepped in front of me, cautiously. “Lillian?” he asked.
She blinked at him. “You know me?”
“Your husband talked about you,” he said. He looked over her shoulder to the other man. “And that you had more than one…”
Her cheeks flushed, but she turned to look at the guy with her. “That’s got to be Blake Coaltar.” She turned back to him. “We can trust you?”
“You might not want to,” he said. “But we’re what’s left. Alice got to us.”
She came closer in a hurry, her face contorted into worry. “Where is she?”
“Tied up,” I said. “Also captured.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand. What happened?”
I motioned to the RV. “It’s a long story, but can you trust us that what we’re doing, it’s to help?”
She pressed her lips together. “Maybe if you’ll tell me about it. We’ll make a decision together.”
??????
We loaded into the RV, with Blake and I sitting in the driver and passenger seat while Lillian and her other husband, Henry, got into the booth behind us. I did my best to explain things while Blake drove the RV and headed on out to Folly Beach.
“If they’re at the Sargent Jasper,” Lillian said after I thought I covered everything, “why are we heading the opposite way?”
“There’s a lot of them,” I said. “And more on the way. And what they want is old Mr. Murdock, who might be on a houseboat somewhere.”
“Last coordinates were off of Folly Beach, river side,” Blake said.
“You’re going to give him to them?” she asked. “So they can get the money out of him?”
“I don’t know what we’ll do with him,” I said. “We should pass him over to the cartel to negotiate. They said they’d let the others go…”
“Maybe after they’ve been let go, we can have that forensics team chase them,” Blake said.
“But first, we have to get our people out safely.” I motioned to Blake’s arm filled with writing. “They had a small team looking for someone who might know, but we don’t have time before the rest of the cartel shows up, people who might harm everyone they’ve got. We got lucky the local people are more hesitant to risk murder for this deal.”
Lillian made fists with her hands, looking at her husband and back at me. “Then we need information. Who all do they have? If you want to negotiate, we need a list.”
I rattled off everyone I knew. “Marc, Corey, Brandon…Axel’s with a team trying to find Murdock but still against his will. There’s my father…Jack. My brother Wil. Cornelius. Alice I think is tied up too, and whoever…”
“Wait,” Lillian said. “Did you say Cornelius? Cornelius Buble?”
She was Academy. So she must be familiar with their team members. “Yeah. He was tied up with me, before I got out.”
Henry huffed through his nose. He was handsome for being older, carried a more dignified look, so the noise was odd coming out of him. “If it wasn’t going to kill him, I’d say leave him.”
Lillian lightly slapped at his arm. “Don’t. Now’s not the time for that.”
I raised a brow. “What’s wrong with him? Who is he?”
“He is one of us,” Lillian said. “Only there’s been a bit of a grudge for a long time between my husbands and him.”
“Long story,” Henry said. He brushed a hand over his jawline. “Probably not worth mentioning, but the Academy didn’t see eye to eye with us on our relationship choice back in the day. It was bad enough they let a girl on a guy team at the time. They only found out because he snitched before we were ready to tell them. The Academy blamed themselves for what they saw was a mess of feelings and thought some of us would get hurt.” He smirked. “Joke’s on them. We’re still together. Wasn’t just a phase after all. Could have gone easier if he’d kept it to himself.”
“But that was years ago,” Lillian said. “We’re not going to let a disagreement get in the way of saving him.” She paused. “I was just surprised. Usually for jobs like this, one volunteers. I wonder why…” She waved a hand dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, if they are captured, we need to be prepared to invade. Just because we’ve got Murdock doesn’t mean they’ll just hand over a bunch of witnesses. And Alice…she’s still a problem. She possibly has people out there ready to do the same thing, go in and save them from this cartel group. Not to mention that forensics group probably wants Alice, too. And we haven’t even touched on the police looking for people.”
“That’s a lot of people looking f
or each other,” Henry said. “We should go back.”
“But we might have a lead on Murdock,” I said. “And overtaking the Sargent Jasper, it’ll take a lot of people. They’re watching. They could hurt everyone inside.”
“You underestimate what we can do,” she said. “And if you’re right about them being amateurs, then it’ll be easy. And like you said, we don’t have much time.” She reached over, touching my elbow. “We can do this. They’ll all be safe. We’ll have Alice and we can take her to the FBI. It’ll be over.”
I hesitated, rubbing my forefinger and thumb together. “Murdock will still be out there. And if we had him, we could possibly get people out without anyone getting hurt.”
“But that forensics team is on to him.” She smiled, nervous but genuine with a small spark lighting up those sad eyes. “And if they’re on to him, then it’s likely you’ll catch up with them before you find Murdock, and they’ll hold you for questioning. I know it’s hard to let go sometimes, but we do our job, and we trust that others will do theirs. We can’t save the whole world, but we do what we can. And the place to start is with family. We help them first.”
Maybe that was what Axel meant. Maybe he didn’t mean to put me on the hunt for the missing Murdock. He didn’t care about that, didn’t care about the money.
Maybe that’s why he took them to an empty house. It was away from the forensics team and where they might be looking…And gave enough time for us to get away, to get help to get them out, just like he said to do. We found where they were being kept. That’s all we needed to know.
I looked to Blake. “Should we try?” I was at a loss, because it was just us. I was asking him to once again trust that this Academy team would help.
Blake looked back at us and then huffed as he turned on a road, only to back the RV up and turn us around. “Rather save our friends than try to find the missing money. What do we care where he is?”
I nodded, sitting back in the passenger seat. I just hoped we were making the right choice, that invading wouldn’t harm anyone further.
