AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Before you see this, I need you to know that we've got it under control. We are not going to let anything happen to her.” His expression hardens. “You just need to... you need to trust me. I have the best guys ready to move in, and you're going to be right behind them to get her.”
"Just open it," I demand, needing to know what we're dealing with.
The seconds tick by excruciatingly slowly as he unfolds the laptop and powers it up, but that's nothing compared to how everything fucking stops the second I lock my eyes on Kenny.
"What the..." My words trail off as I stare at her strapped to a chair with a gun pressed into her temple. "Is this... is this l-live?" I stutter, forcing the words past the lump that's lodged in my throat.
"Yeah, it's a live stream. It's what we've been waiting for to find their location."
Dad’s words don't really register as I stare at my girl with tears streaming down her dirty cheeks, both her eyes swollen and bruised and her lip split in more than one place.
"Kenny," I breathe, wishing I could reach into the screen and pull her free. "Is he... is he really going to..."
"Yes."
That one single word is like a gunshot to my own heart.
"We've got to get her out of there. We have to. You can't let her... Dad, please." I turn to him, and he's blurry through the tears that are filling my eyes. "I trusted you all this time to handle it. Please, don't fuck it up now. Please."
"We're getting her out, I promise you."
I'm aware that in a situation like this, he can hardly make promises like that.
Warren could pull that trigger at any moment and blow... No. No.
I drop my head into my hands, refusing to allow myself to believe that this could be it. That after everything we've been through, our time together is going to end like this.
"Why, Dad? Why has it come to this? What can he know that leads him to do this?"
"Everything, Conner. He knows everything."
"Stop with the cryptic bullshit. What does he know?"
Dad pales slightly, and it's then I realize that what he's hiding might be worse than I've been expecting.
"Our family has a complicated history." He looks between the three of us. "The Jagger name is connected to some powerful people. People whose secrets I keep, whose indiscretions I cover up. He's dug and dug until he's found enough to ruin not only me, but the families we're connected to. And if things were to come to light, well... let's just say that the four of us, those we love, they'd never see light again."
"You work in IT," I say, my brain refusing to take all of this on board.
"I do. I just don't do it for the best kinds of people."
Questions start forming in my head, and I'm sure Ace and Cole, who are sitting silently beside me, have a million of their own, but none get asked as the car pulls onto gravel. When I look out, we're pulling up to an abandoned warehouse.
"Is she in there?" I ask, my eyes locked on the building.
"She is."
I look back to the screen. She's still in the exact same position, her frail body trembling in fear as he continues to hold the gun to her head.
"How do you stop him from pulling that trigger?"
"We do it first," Dad states, as if he's talking about something as mundane as the weather.
I glance up at him once more, again wondering who the hell our father actually is.
He lifts his hand to his ear, and I realize for the first time that he's wearing an earpiece.
"Okay. Yes."
