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“You never know, a little incentive never hurts anyone,” I say, nearing him again.
Drawing in a labored breath, he clutches his stomach as he speaks with urgent gasps, assuring me, “I’ve got an army of men out in the field and a shit load of geeks on the computers…all of them working around the clock. We’re not giving up…”
“Damn right you’re not giving up,” I interject with ire. “The second I see anyone slacking, they will find themselves six-feet under.” I step into his space and slam him back up against the wall, pinning him against his throat. The veins in my neck are about to explode. I can feel my blood pulsing thick with venomous rage. I’m sure my face is beet red right now, because I can feel the flushing heat in my cheeks. “You hesitated, didn’t you?!” I grind out through clenched teeth, accusing him with a sneer. “You saw the live camera feed before Travis took the video streaming down…and you saw what he did to Chris in the camera room, didn’t you? You didn’t call for back up either, thinking you could take him down yourself, because your ego was too big.”
With the death grip I have on Justin, he can barely shake his head no. His voice is strained from the pressure against his larynx as he croaks out, “I swear, I didn’t see it, Nick. When I was making my rounds that night, he caught me off guard. I swear…I was surprised…to see Travis here at that hour in the morning. It was at the last second I noticed he…” Justin fights for another breath before he continues in a hoarse voice, “I noticed…he had a Taser, and when I saw he was pointing it at me, I barely dodged it when he fired.”
“Case in point, Justin, it was just a fucking Taser!” I roar in his face. “You had a real gun yet you hesitated to use it.”
He closes his eyes for a brief moment, sucking in some much needed air into his restricted lungs. “I didn’t expect Travis to turn against us. I thought maybe there was a security breech in process, like Julianna’s father coming in with a rescue force,” he rasps in a whisper.
I burst out in laughter, right in the boy’s face, and his eyes bolt open wide in confusion. He can’t decide if I’m truly laughing, or if I’ve finally gone mad.
“As if I’m afraid of the old man and his cronies. That’s something we will never have to concern ourselves with.” I take a step back letting him go, and he doubles over, holding onto his knees for stability while he wheezes.
“I want that…that company on the line,” I demand, waving my hand around in the air, trying like hell to remember their name so I can tell Justin what to do next. I’m so pissed I can’t think straight; I’m all turned around, not to mention I haven’t slept worth shit since I found out Julianna was taken. I’m worn down and running on fumes which doesn’t help my mood.
“I’m on it, Nick. I’ll have them on the line in two seconds,” Justin blurts out on a winded breath. Doubled over, he quickly leaves the room with a slight stagger as he goes to make the phone call.
I turn around and walk toward my desk with my fingers threaded through my hair, digging my fingers deep into my scalp as I try to relieve the building pressure of more stress bubbling itself to the surface. I cannot believe how long I waited to have her and all the painstaking planning involved to get this far, only to have her ripped from my grasp within the blink of an eye.
When I reach my desk, I pound my fists down on the wooden surface and expel an angered roar. I would rip the phone out of the wall right now but I need the damn thing. I look around the room, looking for something else to destroy, but it looks as if nothing has survived within thirty-feet of me. A Kansas style tornado had ripped through every inch of my office sideways and nothing has gone unscathed, except of course for my computer and phone.
I close my eyes and try to focus on getting my breathing under control. As I do, I run scenarios through my mind of what I could’ve done differently to prevent this. I should have taken more precautions in my security. Hell, hindsight is twenty-twenty when one has the opportunity to look back. One thing is for sure, I would have listened closer to my gut instincts and watched Travis like a hawk.
I knew it…I just fucking knew there was something going on with him and his feelings for Julianna, but he was too damn good at schooling his features for me to get a good read on him. He sure as Hell had me convinced there was nothing going on between them. When I confronted him the day of her birthday party, he implicitly swore up and down he was merely doing his job, and she meant nothing to him.
