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“We’ll be there in a second,” Hale says calmly from behind the wheel, but I can see his jaw twitch. “She might not have heard it, or she was doing something.”
Two possibilities that have crossed my mind, but we’re slightly late on picking her up today.
For the past three days, she’s spent a good part of her time at the safehouse with the women, getting to know them and taking care of them. Then when we’re done with business at the Onyx Club, we’d pick her up and bring her back home. We all felt better having her travel with us than drive over on her own—not because we’re worried about her fleeing, but because we all want to look out for her.
That’s usually at seven. It’s fifteen minutes till eight right now. Grace should’ve been waiting and anticipating the routine call that would tell her we were on our way.
When we pull into the long driveway of the safe house, that feeling in my stomach grows.
Goddammit. I’m fucking sure of it. Something is off here.
“Fuck.”
Ciro’s harsh curse makes my head snap up, my gaze following his. The blood in my veins feels like it turns to ice as I take in the sight of the two men slumped on either side of the safe house door. Blood pools around them, and I’m suddenly certain that every guard Hale had stationed around the property has been brought down too.
I wrench the car door open, leaping out almost before Hale has come to a complete stop. He, Ciro, and Zaid are right behind me, all four of us charging toward the house, drawing our weapons as we go.
The front door isn’t locked, and when I shove it open, only silence greets us.
Using hand signals and quiet gestures, we fan out to cover the entire house, doing a silent sweep of the building. But we come up with nothing.
Nothing.
The house is absolutely fucking empty.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Hale rasps, and I can hear everything I’m feeling in his voice.
She’s gone. They’re all gone.
This was a quick in and out job, no struggle. Did they drug them? Use brute force? Grace wouldn’t have let herself be taken without a fight, so why the fuck aren’t there signs of a struggle? Did they hurt her?
Fury rises up in me so fast it makes my vision literally turn red for a second. I blink it back, fighting to keep my head on straight. Grace needs us right now, and she needs us clearheaded.
We need to fucking find her.
Storming down into the basement, I tear open the door to the security room. It’s fitted up with a monitor that shows the cameras’ security feeds, and it’s our only hope of seeing anything that happened here today.
“There are dishes in the sink. Water’s still warm,” Zaid says, stepping into the room behind me. Hale and Ciro are with him. I quickly punch in the passcode, pulling up screens of data and camera feeds. “They haven’t been gone long. Maybe thirty, forty minutes?”
Pulling up past footage from inside the house, I hardly breathe as I watch the scene play out on the monitor. At exactly seven, when we should have been arriving, two men in masks slide open the front door of the house.
Two of the girls barely resist, fear seizing their bodies. One of them puts up a small fight, but they’re stronger than her, gagging and binding her quickly.
“But where the fuck is Grace?” I grit my teeth, rewinding the footage even more. When I see her honey-blonde hair appear in the frame, it feels like a fist is gripping my heart.
“Turn it up,” Ciro says quietly. “They’re talking.”
Grace and one of the other girls—Lucy—stand in the kitchen. Their conversation is casual at first, but then it moves into deeper territory as the girl starts talking about her past. Grace’s posture shifts. She leans forward, tension gathering in her shoulders even though her voice stays soft and open.
“The men who saved you and the others are in trouble,” Grace says, and my heart pounds in my throat.
I reach for the volume, turning it up even more.
Maybe it was Grace’s plea, or maybe it was just because she couldn’t keep that shit locked up inside anymore, but all of a sudden, Lucy starts to talk. And she knows more than we hoped she or any of the others might. She fucking knows the location where she was being hidden—something I’m positive Camilla wasn’t aware of, or Lucy would’ve probably been killed instead of being sold.
When Lucy finally stops talking, Grace tells her she’ll be right back. She walks out of the front door, closing it behind her.
Then she disappears.
