AllFreeNovel
Share Us
56
After Zeke lefther alone in the conference room, Liv had sought out Mitch and told him about the possible motives that might incite the O’Fallon clan and Sam Rogers to strike out against her through her family.
The small action felt good. Since leaving the water park, she’d been utterly useless. Nothing but a mute ghost occupying a place at the table.
The only sensible decision she’d made in all that time was allowing Brodie to return to the Friary with Lynette and Alejandro. She hated letting him go, but he would be safer and happier with the Blackwells and Sadie.
Inhaling the sweet, earthy scent of the chamomile tea she’d made for herself on the way back to the conference room did little to dispel her roiling stomach. She was sick of herself, sick of doing nothing but waiting on other people to find her sister.
To hell with that.
She tapped a key to wake up Cameron’s laptop and saw that the park’s surveillance recordings had finally arrived. Following the link provided by the park’s director, she opened the file for the entrance door and fast forwarded to a few minutes before the kidnapper called her.
She might have been useless over the past hour, but that didn’t mean her mind had stopped analyzing every minute of her conversation with the caller. His voice wasn’t one she recognized, though that didn’t mean much.
He could have disguised it with a phone app or voice modifier or maybe he simply modulated his accent—all were good possibilities. But none of those things would alter the inherent arrogance in his tone.
If Jackson had still been a suspect, she would’ve ruled him out on that fact alone. The guy outside Ivy’s house had turned into a mouse when challenged by an authority figure. Whereas the caller broke into her house, attacked her in the park, and kidnapped her sister. Not the actions of a mouse.
Hitting play, her attention shifted between the time stamp and the people flowing into the water park’s building. The black-and-white image was grainy, but clear enough to make out a lone white male wearing swim trunks, T-shirt, flip-flops, and a bulky beach towel slung over his right shoulder at the time of the kidnapper’s call. The guy was even talking on the phone.
But Liv didn’t recognize him. She watched the playback for several more minutes, but didn’t see any other lone males enter the building. Frustrated, she tapped the fast forward button through the next hour and a half, until she saw her and Zeke’s figures exiting.
Not one lone male had left prior to her and Zeke.
Had he left through another exit? No, she recalled the park’s director telling them the other exit doors were hooked up to an alarm.
She hit rewind.
Maybe they were wrong. Maybe the kidnapper had still been in the building when they left. Liv shook her head even before she completed the thought. The picture he’d sent of Callie had been taken in a vehicle, a cargo van of some sort. It’s true he could have taken the picture before going into the building, but Liv’s gut rebelled at the suggestion.
She allowed the video to play, fast forwarding through inactivity and zooming in on all the men. Her earlier bout of crying combined with the unblinking, hard stares she was throwing at the screen made focusing for long periods of time difficult. She rubbed her eyes, trying to force clarity and moisture into her abused orbs.
Blinking in rapid succession, she squinted at the screen again. Her heart took a polar dive into her stomach. She leaned closer, zoomed in.
There, at the edge of what appeared to be a large family calling it a day, a man trailed after them. Not too close, to creep them out, but close enough for the casual observer to mistake him as one of the group’s members.
When he peered over his shoulder, giving her a clear view of his face, Liv sat in stunned disbelief.
Then slowly her disbelief turned to terror.
