Noah yawned again, but went silent. “I’m not seeing anything. When was the last time you saw her?”
“This morning,” Shepherd said. “She left the restaurant without me.”
“What were you doing in the restaurant?”
Shepherd indicated to switch lanes. “Yeah. Charlie robbed us.”
“What?”
“Held us at gunpoint, tied us up, took the money, stole her car. Left.”
“How? Why? What? How did Deandra get free without the ransom money?”
Shepherd shrugged, pointlessly as this was a phone call. “Ginny’s dad said someone called in a tip. But Ginny wasn’t at the house, and she isn’t answering her phone.”
“How did you get free?”
“Lex and Oscar,” Shepherd answered. “But I don’t have time for this, Noah. I don’t know where Ginny is! She isn’t answering her phone. Something is wrong.”
“OK, OK. Have you checked the restaurant’s security cameras?”
He cursed. Why hadn’t he thought to check the security cameras? The app for the security cameras was on his phone. Shepherd pulled off at the next exit, hurried into the closestparking lot. “Pulling them up now,” he said, Noah on speaker. His pulse buzzed as he waited for the app to recognize his face.
The restaurant was empty now. He pulled up the footage from last night, fast-forwarded through Charlie’s betrayal, through the way Ginny cried all night long while he lay on the ground like a furious, hog-tied idiot. There were Oscar and Lex, strolling in through the front door with a key he didn’t know about. There was Ginny, leaving, her mouth set in a determined line. He let it play at normal speed, watched as she walked out the front door with her chin held high and her shoulders back. High-definition footage of the love of his life determined to help her family, no matter the cost.
An absolute perfect angle of two men wearing matching leather vests with a skull and tire irons on the back grabbing her and tossing her into a windowless van.
FORTY-SEVEN
Shepherd paced the length of his kitchen, back and forth, muttering random expletives before punching his own palm. Noah, Max, and Chris watched from the chairs he and Ginny had been trapped in the night before. Well, Max and Chris sat on the chairs. Noah sat on the counter like an unwanted cat.
It was Noah who’d made it to the restaurant first, and found the note taped to the back door. All it said, in glossy letters cut from a magazine like some sort of nineties spy thriller, was a single word:TRADE.
Their money for Ginny. Great. Excellent.
Except Shepherd didn’t have their money anymore. Charlie. Goddamn Charlie!
“They must’ve had security footage!” Shepherd said to no one and everyone. “Did Charlie disclose the security footage? No, of course not! He never even stepped foot in the goddamn building!”
Noah raised his hand and cleared his throat.
Shepherd glared at him but did not stop pacing.
“Why don’t we take our security footage to the police? I mean, we know who’s got Ginny. Can’t they go and get her? Like, SWAT or the CIA or something?”
“The CIA doesn’t handle bikers, Noah,” Max said.
“Well, whoever then. Somebody does. The NSA or something.”
Shepherd stopped pacing, dialed an imaginary phone, held it up to his ear. “Hello, police? Uh, hi. Yes, my girlfriend got kidnapped by bikers. Why? Oh, well. Funny you should ask! I stole one and a half million dollars from their clubhouse yesterday and they want it back! Yes, I did explode a food truck on county property and cause an untold amount of damage and firefighter labor to create a distraction. Why can’t I giveit back? Because a gangster I teamed up with stole the money from me! My name? Why are you asking? Why are you putting handcuffs on me?”
It was Chris’s turn to raise his hand. “I don’t think the police can get handcuffs through a phone.”
Shepherd muttered a curse in his general direction. This was why Ginny was so determined to rescue her mother herself. If the police asked even one question in the right direction, it was liable to end in arrests for all involved and bodies of mysteriously dead husbands exhumed.
Which meant he was boned. Plain and simple.
“Do I rob someone else for a million and a half dollars? Do I trade myself for Ginny? Do I … damn it! I don’t know what to do!” He grabbed his hair with both hands. “I don’t have a plan for this! I’m dead and she’s dead and we’re all dead!”
