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After he’d gone, my phone beeped with an email notification. It was from Petra, saying she’d received the documents and would be in touch shortly.
Good. Things were moving forward, for better or for worse.
I went back into the bedroom and closed the door. Then I did something that I’d never done before that night: I got on my knees and prayed. I prayed for everything to somehow fall into place. I prayed that I could find a way to get Hannah back.
And I prayed that somehow, I could manage to stay alive.
Chapter 11
Gabe
“Gabe, this is Philip, Ian, and Greg. Guys, you remember my brother. He’s coming with us tonight, riding with me. Don’t let him shoot you or bother you too much,” Ash joked.
“Ha-ha.” I looked at the men. “For the record, I’ve kicked Ash’s ass on a regular basis for his entire life.”
I gave Ash a nasty smile as we slid into his car. “And here I thought you were my favorite brother.”
“You know it’s not Levi,” he said under his breath.
We headed toward Eastridge Mall, where they’d found the stolen car. We’d reviewed the mall security videos, but had been unable to get a clear shot of whoever had left it there. The police were assembling a list of all vehicles stolen from the area in the last week, to try to narrow down a list of possible cars the assailants had taken after they dumped the first one. While we waited for that information, we planned to search the surrounding neighborhoods and office parks for signs of suspicious activities or anything else that caught our eye. We didn’t have much to go on, but at least it was something.
The neighborhoods surrounding the mall were largely commercial, with strip mall after strip mall filled with higher-end chain restaurants and stores. As
h diligently pulled into every parking lot, and although I wasn’t sure that we had a reasonable expectation of finding any clues of Hannah’s whereabouts, it made me feel better that we were looking.
After a couple of hours, we drove out farther, to the closest adjacent residential neighborhoods. Ash was thorough and slow, checking every car and every house. “You can’t drive through every neighborhood in Northern California. You know that, right?” His unscientific approach was starting to bother me as the hours ticked by.
“Listen, Mr. Algorithm, sometimes surveillance work has to start with a gut feeling.”
“Do you have a gut feeling about this neighborhood?”
Ash grimaced. “No. But it’s better than sitting around. Poor Lauren…”
“I know.” I hoped she was sleeping.
We spent the rest of the night driving through different neighborhoods. The sun was coming up as we headed back to the house. “Do you feel like that actually accomplished anything?” I’d seen nothing to give me hope.
“I didn’t see anything interesting—which tells me that where we searched is clear.”
“But you can’t be sure.”
“I can’t be sure, but I feel pretty certain that concentrating strictly on this area would be a waste of our time.”
“You just wasted our time.”
“It wasn’t a waste. We know more than we did last night.”
“What do we do now?”
Ash kept his eyes on the road. “We find Hannah.”
We stopped for breakfast. “So, what did you think? Security’s not as exciting as you’d hoped, right?”
“Of course it wasn’t exciting,” I said. “Most work isn’t exciting.”
Ash stabbed a forkful of pancake. “Do you still feel like you’re missing out on something?”
I stirred my coffee around for no reason—it was black, just like my mood. Did I feel like I was missing out on something by not being in the family business? In some ways, yes. But I would never leave my world behind. “It just makes me wonder what might’ve been. If Dad hadn’t forbidden me…” I let my voice trail off.
