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What the fuck?
Glacial dread stole down to his belly. He swayed, braced himself against the wall, felt his knees buckle. Sinking to the floor, he replayed the message.
Vander. Fucking Vander had Ophelia. It had to be her—who else could he mean?
He clutched his chest, feeling like his heart was missing beats.
Maybe Vander was mistaken. Maybe he’d grabbed some stranger and Ophelia was safe at home waiting for him.
He dialed the house line. Yelled for his cousins, his voice breaking on their names. Tried her cell. His cousins pelted into the room and he babbled an explanation at them. Texted her. Tried her cell again.
“What do I do?” He pushed himself back up, pulled himself together. It wasn’t time to panic. Ophelia needed him.
Fuck. He knew he was no good for her, but he hadn’t foreseen this. She was probably scared shitless. As tough as she was, this wasn’t the kind of thing a girl like Ophelia was prepared for. His sister, Macy, wouldn’t have been surprised, but Ophelia hadn’t been raised knowing shit like this could happen, and now she’d been kidnapped twice. Except with Vander it wasn’t an accident, and he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt her.
If Vander laid a hand on her, he’d kill him. He’d snap his fucking neck.
Luke hit speaker and played the message for his cousins in the silent room. “He says not to call the cops, but I don’t know what else to do.”
“I know they want us out, but this crosses the line, even for them,” Fox growled. “The treaty we made with Lurch after Marcel shot me should still be in effect. We haven’t called an end to that truce. Sure, they like to bust our chops sometimes, but Vander has to know he’s way out of line on this. I doubt Lurch even knows what he’s up to.”
Fox yanked his phone out of his back pocket and scrolled for a minute before hitting a button. He pushed his long blond Mohawk back from his eyes.
Addison, Fox’s fiancée and a fellow car thief, came into the room, looking around quizzically and straightening her clothes. “What’s going on?”
“Lurch? It’s Fox.” Luke’s older cousin started to pace. “What the fuck, man? Vander just left a message on Luke’s phone saying he grabbed his girlfriend, and if we want to see her alive again we need to clear out tonight.”
Addison clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes widening as she looked at Luke. He nodded grim confirmation at her before turning his attention back to his cousin.
“Uh-huh . . . Yeah, that’s what I thought. Fucking idiot.” Fox shook his head, then paused while he listened. After a couple of minutes, he ended the call. “Lurch and the other guys have no fucking clue what Vander is doing,” he told them. “Lurch and Rick are meeting us at an address on Balzar.”
Luke turned and ran downstairs, with the others following close behind, their boots loud on the hardwood stairs. Fox and Addison took one of their SUVs, and Atlas shoved Luke into the passenger seat of his Mustang.
Atlas gunned the engine and floored it down the drive, with Fox close behind.
“For Lurch to offer to help means Vander has really gone off script,” Atlas grumbled as the car sped down the side road toward town.
So Vander had lost it. That wasn’t a comforting thought. Just because he didn’t have his group backing him didn’t mean Ophelia was safe. Far from it. If he was alone with her there was no one to stop him. No one to rein him in.
Luke dug the tips of his fingers into the edges of his seat, wishing he was driving. Atlas was going more than forty over the speed limit, winding through the side roads, but it was too damned slow.
Usually darkness was their friend. In their line of work, they spent a lot of time awake at night, prowling the busy Vegas streets until well past when most people were asleep. Tonight darkness ate their headlights, swallowing the beams whole.
Ophelia was alone and scared. Was he hurting her? Was she even alive?
“Don’t give in to paranoia. She’s going to be okay,” Atlas said reassuringly.
Luke wished he could believe him. Wished it was that simple.
“I appreciate the lie, but there’s no way to know that.”
His cousin shrugged. “True, but I doubt he’ll do her any real harm. Scare her, yes. But I don’t think he’s stupid enough to do something more serious. He has to know that at a certain point even we’d call the cops. He’s lucky we haven’t.”
They’d never been a group for weapons, but driving into this shit storm with only a pocketknife made Luke feel unprepared. They were hackers who had a knack for talking their way out of bad situations. They weren’t murderers. Sure, he knew how to throw a punch, but how would that help against Vander, who was probably packing? Then again, the more guns that showed up at a confrontation, the more likely shit would get out of hand. At least that was the theory his old man had, and why they never carried them.
They met up with Lurch and Rick at an empty lot, then followed them to a run-down house a few lots down. There was no sign of movement inside the house. The walkway was choked with weeds, and the wooden stairs listed crazily to one side. Lurch unlocked the door and went in first. The others followed him in, and they split up, searching the house from basement to attic. There was no indication anyone had been there in weeks.
As they filed out of the house again, Lurch shrugged. “This was my first guess. We don’t use this house very often because it’s a shithole, so he might have thought it would be the last place we’d check.”
