“With Megan Shroud being alive and well, your debt hasnotbeen fulfilled. Since you’re an inmate in a maximum-security prison, I have no choice but to transfer that debt back to its original owner.”
I’m all but threatening his sister, and he knows it. “You wouldn’t fucking dare.”
“Try me, Maddox. I’ve got a heap of anger and no one to take it out on.” My words aren’t lies. They’re as gospel as my pledge to bring Fien home.
Spit seethes between Maddox’s clenched teeth. “My debt is with your father.”
I shrug before shaking my head. “Not according to you. I punished your sister, that means her debt falls on me.”
He’s speechless, truly and utterly speechless.
“I’m willing to negotiate—”
“With what? I gave your father everything I have. I have nothing left to give.” The angst in his tone is more telling than the worry on his face. I don’t know what my father is holding over his head, but it’s more than his sister’s life.
I remove my feet from the desk before balancing my elbows on the chipped surface. “Give me information—”
“I don’t know anything.”
I continue talking as if he never interrupted me. “And in good faith, I’ll repay the favor. Special perks, hours outside these walls…” I watch his face to gauge any response to if my offers have already been brought forward. When his expression remains neutral, I continue, “I could even organize some additional conjugal visits.”
He seems conflicted. I understand why when he asks, “Can you get Demi out?”
I’m reasonably sure I know what he’s asking, but I’d rather he spell it out for me, then we both knowexactlywhat he’s asking of me. This isn’t a standard favor. It will cost him more than a couple of years in county jail. “Out of what, exactly?”
He doesn’t speak a word. He doesn’t need to. I can see the fear in his eyes. Smell it on his skin. His debt with my father has nothing to do with his sister and everything to do with his girl.
“If she’s out, she can’t come here anymore, Ox. When you are out, you’re out. You can never get back in. Are you willing to face that?” He takes a moment to deliberate before jerking up his chin. The worry in his eyes should see me granting him a few more minutes to consider his options, but as I said earlier, I don’t have time to waste. “All right. But I’m going to need to knoweverything.”
The panic on his face recedes in an instant. “Have you got a pen and a piece of paper? You’re gonna need it.”
Smith’s eyes lift to mine when I race across the dusty lot like a bat out of hell. He’s working from the hood of a brand-spanking-new Mercedes Benz G class. It looks like a tank, so it suits the terrain. The same can’t be said of the feisty redhead in the front passenger seat. I don’t know what Rocco said to get Roxanne in my car in one piece. It must have been something good because not only is she strapped in, ready to go, she’s only glaring at me with half the intensity of her earlier stare.
“Did you get that?” Just because Smith switched off surveillance doesn’t mean he didn’t have eyes and ears in the room with me. Feds aren’t the only ones familiar with button cameras.
Smith lifts his chin. “I’m hacking into the hospital servers now.”
When Roxanne slips out of the passenger seat of the Mercedes Benz to peer at Smith’s screen with Rocco and me, I don’t request for the feed to be shut down like I usually would. She has said all along that the organizer of Fien’s captivity is a woman, so it’s only fair she watches us hone in on one.
“There.” I point to a female with mousy brown hair and a skittish demeanor. Even with the footage being a couple of months old, she looks similar to the child in the images I’ve pursued of Megan the past few weeks.
“Is that her?” I ask when Smith zooms in.
“Give me a sec…” He takes a screenshot of her profile before he uploads it to his state-of-the-art facial recognition system. It brings up a match in under three seconds. “Bingo. We have a match.”
Aware he’s now tracking the right person, he traces Megan’s movements back several months, dragging the timeline back to the day Maddox said she was admitted to a mental hospital for a ninety-six-hour hold. It was well over a year ago. Maddox doesn’t know why she was admitted. All he knew was that my father wanted her alive no matter the cost—something about her having information he couldn’t get elsewhere.
“There,” Roxanne parrots a few seconds later, pointing to a reflection bouncing off the admission glass mounted to protect the staff from the crazies.
The brightness of the woman’s hair reveals she’s blonde, but we can’t see her face.
“Do you think it’s the woman you were talking to earlier?” Roxanne asks after drifting her eyes to me.
I want to say yes, it would make things a shit ton easier if Theresa were the only villain in this story, but my gut is cautioning me to remain wary, so I shrug instead. “Can you clean up the footage?”
Smith screws up his nose. “I’d have a better chance with wired equipment. The upload speed is as slow as fuck out here.”
“Then head back to the compound.” I take a quick snapshot of Megan’s up-to-date picture before gathering up his equipment and stuffing it into the passenger seat of his van. “Forward anything you find directly to me.”
