Page 50

But soon, heart pounding in his chest, Ash led the others to the back entrance, the one reserved for staff.

Jinx rattled off the code from Iverson’s cloned phone, then Ash carefully put the smart key into the lock and…

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, just like the front gate, the lock turned from red to green and clicked open.

“Okay, you’re in,” Jinx said. “Let’s save Grace Iverson.”

They quickly made their way inside. The security kiosk had given them access to the interior cameras as well as the exterior cameras, but Ash still led the way with a small tracking device designed to spot any security systems they hadn’t been expecting.

As they walked down the hallway, they cleared room by room in the enormous mansion. It was exactly what he would have expected from an oil and real estate businessman—dark woods, big technology, leather and hard lines. There were no personal touches, no art that didn’t clearly have resale value, and a staggering number of horns propped up on display in nearly every room they passed.

“What if she’s not here?” Hanna whispered at his side. Ash knew they had about a thousand things they needed to talk about, but his chest still squeezed when she voiced her most intimate concerns for only him to hear.

“Then we’ll figure out where she is and rescue her from there,” he replied. “We’re going to get her back, Hanna. I promise.”

But as they wound through the first floor of the house and up to the second, his optimism began to wane. There were no signs that Grace had been in the house recently—though it would have been difficult to know for sure, since it had been her house—but there were no obvious calls of distress, signs of blood, nothing to indicate a person was being held hostage in Bryce Iverson’s mansion.

“She’s not here,” Niccolo said finally, once they had cleared the final room on the second floor. “I’m sorry, Hanna.”

Hanna gave a tight nod. “I knew it was a long shot. Iverson’s smarter than that.”

Ash reached out and squeezed her hand. “It’s always good to hope.”

“I want you out of there,” Jinx said over the comms. “But let’s see if we can’t make Iverson’s life a little harder. Two doors down is his home office.”

They used the clone-and-key trick to get inside the office, and Jinx quickly guided them through the process of gaining backdoor access to Iverson’s computer without him knowing.

Then they were done, walking back down the stairs and out of the door as quietly as they had come, leaving no trace of their visit as they stepped back out through the garden and followed the path to the street.

Once Jinx had the van back on the road, he broke the silence. “Hanna, you got like ten calls from your friend while you were inside. Seems urgent.”

Hanna grabbed her phone from the cupholder and her face went pale, her fingers trembling, as she returned the call. “Tori. Tori, what’s going on?”

Chapter Twenty

Hanna watched the firefighters hosing down the last cinders of her burning front lawn.

The house on Marigold Lane was gone.

In its place was a charred husk of the home she had known from the day she was born. It had been little more than a classic craftsman house, simple. But it had been the house with memories of her sister and her dad. It had been the house where she had first met Ash, where she had decided she wanted to be a police officer, where she had tried on mascara for the very first time and where she had hung her high school and police academy diplomas. It had been the house where she held service after her father passed, when she had only been on the force a few years.

Ash and Nicco stood at her back. Neither of them said a word, because what on earth could be said? Whoever had set a line of incendiary devices around her home had known they weren’t inside. This had been a warning. There was no silver lining to be found in the gaping hole in the ground.

“Hey, baby.” Tori pulled up in the ambulance and quickly parked, crossing over to where Hanna stood. “Come here.”

Hanna let herself be pulled in, let herself be lost to the feeling of uncomplicated, unconditional love. Tori had no idea the kind of shit they were dealing with, but she wouldn’t care. She was Hanna’s rock when nothing else felt real.

“You’ll stay with me tonight,” Tori said. “I’ve got frozen pizzas we could throw in.”

Hanna shook her head. “Someone is trying to send me a message, Tor. I can’t… I can’t put you in danger.”

Tori tilted her head. “They’ll keep you safe?”

Hanna glanced back at the two men behind her, not moving an inch, hard statues of strength and resolve. She nodded. “They’ll keep me safe.”

“You have to promise to call me,” Tori pressed. “When I heard the call come through dispatch and I couldn’t get through to you…”

Because the house held memories for Tori, too. Held memories for Ash. Hanna wasn’t alone in the mourning that was sure to come.