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Luce nods, the unlit joint crushing in his fingers as his stubbled jaw clenches.
I shake my head, “It was Maxine, Luce. Alan has your sister, and he’s had Lexi since the accident.”
I expect him to explode, to jump from the bed and beat the shit out of me with hate and venom spewing from his lips. I was fully prepared for him to tell me I’m dead to him, tell me to fuck off and never show my face again, but he doesn’t and God, how I wish he would. Anything is better than the unshed tears and silent stare he’s giving me.
I stand from the chair and step closer to him, “I’m so fucking sorry, Luce.”
He grabs me with his good arm and yanks me down to him before wrapping it around me. He doesn’t say anything as I wrap both of my arms around him, but I feel his body shaking as he finally releases his tears into my shoulder. We sit like that for a few minutes, my shirt wet from his tears, my own dripping down my face as my best friend breaks. I spy Drake leaving the room to give us a minute alone.
Finally, he pulls back, wiping his tears with his hand before laying back on the pillow, his bloodshot eyes looking between my eyes.
“I should have been paying more attention, but Lexi…” he blows out a breath before shaking his head and rubbing the scruff on his jaw.
“Lexi what?” I ask him with my brows furrowed.
“Nothing, we were just talking about some things, and I got distracted. If I hadn’t started the conversation in the first place, I wouldn’t have been blindsided by that motherfucker.”
I can tell that wasn’t exactly what he was going to say, that there’s a lot more on his mind, but I’m not going to push him on it. Especially when he’s already overwhelmed with his sister being taken too.
“I knew something was up with Maxine. I didn’t have facts or even a reason to think something was wrong, but Iknewsomething happened to my sister. We’re not twins, but we have the same instinctive feeling right here,” he rubs his chest, “I don’t know for sure, but I think she’s alive. Wemustget them both back.”
“She is alive.” Drake says, walking back into the room, “They both are. Your sister was most likely taken to keep Lexi in line. It’s a tactic I’ve used before.” He shrugs indifferently, but I see the anger in his eyes.
He’s not wrong; I’ve done it too. Incentives are the best tools, and unfortunately in my line of work, it’s one of our main tools especially when dealing with a woman. Drake is right, we don’t harm women, not physically anyway. One thing I’ve learned about the heart of a good woman is that she will gladly lay her life down for whoever she loves, and this is exactly what Alan is using against Lexi.
While I’m still in a pit of fear and worry, this insight gives me hope that both Lexi and Maxine are still alive.
“What have you done to track them so far?” Luce asks, his chest rising and falling heavily. His tears have stopped, but the man now facing me is the killer I’ve known for a long time now.
I run through every step I’ve taken before telling him about the Marionette hotel and my mother’s name on the booking.
“Listen, it’s clear that Alan has been planning something for a long time, but he got impatient and rushed it,” Luce states, sitting up and hissing as he pulls an IV from his arm, “he left evidence and a crime scene. Now, I’m no CSI, but I do remember him driving a 2021 Chevy Tahoe because of those grills I hate so much, but guess what they have inside them.”
Luce looks between me and Drake with his brow cocked expectantly.
“OnStar.” We say at the same time.
“Exactly. It tracks a car periodically, but when Alan wrecked the truck, it’ll go into a sort of failsafe and keep the tracking system on continuously in case paramedics need the location. If you can hack into the mainframe of the vehicle, you’ll be able to see where the truck went after the crash.”
I nod my head, but my mind is already running through the different variables I’d have to go through before achieving what Luce has suggested, “GPS systems in vehicles run like computer IP addresses, and this is New York. There will be plenty of Chevy Tahoe trucks to sift through before we find the correct one. I’ll need the VIN number as well.”
Drake steps forward and lights his own joint, none. “If you search for registered vehicles under Alan’s name or his company, you’ll narrow down the search.”
I nod but see another route I could take that I hadn’t thought of until now. “What if we can hack into the city’s security network? We’ll be able to follow Alan’s truck through the traffic cams. It’ll be one of the toughest hacks ever done, since it is difficult to find a weakness in the government’s secure mainframe, but I can try.”
Luce stands on wobbling legs, blinking against his dizziness as I reach out to steady him. “You’d have to find the management IP address then the identity of the manufacturer for the CCTV cameras which, despite the fiction of movies, takesseveralweeks of planning. That’s not including the time it would take to find a weakness in said mainframe that can be exploited. We don’t have that kind of time.”
I smile at my friend, before looking over at Drake who is already calling his brother. “It’s a good thing we have two hackers in the crew, huh? Now let’s get your rumpled ass out of here and go find the girls.”
He nods weakly as Drake steps out of the room, but as I move to the dresser beneath the window to grab his clothes, Luce stops me with a firm grip on my arm.
“Don’t ever lie to me again, brother. Especially when it comes to family, inteso?”
Unlike I’d do with anyone else, I don’t shrug off his hand or punch his teeth in, instead I grip his wrist and nod.
“I understand, fratello.”
