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Hours move past at a glacial pace. The police are still tracking cars and street cameras, trying to process links and information relating to vehicles and locations. My team continues to scour the dark web, using systems and people that only Jake knows about and that he will never share or repeat. He doesn’t play well with others at the best of times, which is what makes him so goddamn good at his job.
Scarlett hasn’t left my side. She goes wherever I go, which is mainly to the brink of anger and frustration and back. Occasionally, I pace the office and a well-worn track is now indented on the carpet.
Marco has met and overcome a barrage of media and reporters in relation to the closure of the club and our involvement in the current activity that has somehow leaked to the press. My name being associated with it makes it even bigger news than it would ordinarily be, and that pisses me off.
Scarlett also checks in with Margaret and Shirley, both of whom have formed a tight bond and are currently at my place, with Romeo in charge of them, waiting for news and worried sick like the rest of us.
I continue to seethe, looking at each and every one of the people in my office with contempt. I am trying to work out who in my team would be sharing the intel we had on John and Byron which has resulted in this whole situation. Jake's team is solid, as is my family circle, so who else knows here at Nitro? The thought drills in my mind, over and over as I try to think who works for me that would even consider such a betrayal.
Shaun, the patriarch of our team, continues to liaise with the Police Commissioner in between begging Scarlett to go home and rest for the baby. She of course gives him a scowl and evil eyes since she is not planning to go anywhere, and no matter how much we all beg her, she is defiant and wins the argument every time.
It is during one of these latest suggestions to Scarlett that my world spins on its axis. Jake comes back into my office with the news that they may have found Molly. Her potential location was identified through the tracking of an IP address that was so deeply buried it has taken them all night to locate it.
Together, Jake and I scramble, running out of the office, leaving everyone behind. We didn’t brief Jai, but we know it is only a matter of minutes before the team informs him of the new development and he is right behind us.
I am hopeful and push my legs to run faster, willing my body to get to her as quickly as possible. We have already assembled a team for such an event, and they have been on standby at the fleet of escalades in the carpark basement of Nitro. My heart beats fast and I clench and unclench my hands as I follow Jake into a waiting car.
Shaun, Scarlett, and Marco stay behind to monitor the situation from my office, hopeful that she will be there, but not wanting to get too excited because the possibility of her having already been moved is high.
Driving in the car, Jake is talking to me in the back seat, giving me a bulletproof vest, going through the situation and what will happen once we get there.
“We need to get through the bees…” Jake says.
“...to get to the honey,” I say, cutting him off from his words of wisdom he gives me to let me know that we are still not through the worst of it.
However, if Molly is there, I am fucking getting her no matter the cost. I would walk through a wall of bullets for her, so I tighten the vest and cement my steely resolve, anger welling through my veins because if I see John or Byron today, I will end them. Of that, I have no doubt.
It seems Jake knows me too well because as we pull up to an old, dilapidated apartment block, he already has a team making their way inside. He knows that he is saving me from a murder charge because if I went in first and saw Byron, then that would be my outcome.
We waste no time in jumping from the car, which barely has time to stop before both Jake and I run, following the initial team, while others follow and cover us from any outside threats. Inside the building, the elevators are shut down and open on the ground floor and our team is moving through the floors via the stairs, evicting other residents and checking all apartments along the way. Stephen and I follow a small team who are making no stops and purposefully walking their way directly to the apartment we are here to search. Apartment 20. Without a second thought, the team opens the door, and they make their way inside, guns high and covering each other and us.
Walking into the apartment behind them, I know that this is it and that we are in the right place. I see the camera tripod still set up and a white sheet hanging in the living room that they used as their backdrop. It all looks identical to the photo Jake found of Jasmine, so I know we are in the right place.
I hear a scream as Jake and I turn, and my heart jumps. But instead of seeing Molly, I find Melanie, my Barmaid. I look at her quizzically.
“Melanie, what are you doing…” My voice stops dead in my throat as I come to the realization that she is my leak.
“You fucking work for them?!” I scream at her. I never thought I would ever hit a woman, but I am seething and very fucking close to losing my shit with her. Jake grips my arm, holding me steady as the rest of the team continue to thoroughly check the apartment, looking everywhere, under beds, in wardrobes and cupboards. As they check each room, I can hear them saying “nothing here” “all clear here” and my heart is dropping each time they speak.
“What the actual fuck, Melanie!” I scream again, and she starts crying.
“I did it for the money. They paid me to spy on you after the night you caught John with the young girl at the club. They wanted me to tell them everything that went on in your private room, they wanted to know everything you knew about them. They offered me a lot of money - more than I make in a week! So, I listened to your conversations with Jake while I was working and told them what I knew.”
Beside me, Jake bows his head in disappointment.
She says it all so conversationally that I wonder how I even hired her. Her intelligence was clearly not assessed at the interview stage, her contract confidentiality clauses not adhered to at all. “You betrayed me for money!” I am livid. I can’t believe this woman standing before me would do something like this.
“My boyfriend wants me to get a breast enlargement otherwise he will leave me, so I need the money for that. I came here to collect it, but I fell asleep on the sofa, waiting for them to get back from the bank.”
I can’t believe my ears right now. One of my best employees, needs money for fake tits that her scumbag of a boyfriend is making her get, and to fund it, she sells me out to a human trafficking ringleader who kidnaps my girl.
Jake and I stand there, in anger and disbelief.
The Federal agents have now arrived, and Jake talks with Jai. They begin to round up Melanie and she is being questioned. They are asking her about timings, how she arrived here and what bank the men were going to and when they left. It appears they left hours ago by car, and Melanie seems to have slept through the entire afternoon. Which means they are probably long gone by now, and I am still no closer to finding Molly.
“The place is empty, there is no one else here,” one of the team members tells Jake, and together he and I walk out of the apartment, defeated, just as the local police arrive to clean up the mess.
As I get outside, I blow out a long breath, and look up to the sky to get the warm sun on my face. Sunshine. Molly is my sunshine, and I need to find her. With Jake, I start walking slowly back to the car. We both know that the longer she is missing, the harder it is going to be to find her, and I don’t even want to start thinking about what will happen if I can’t find her. The thought scares me more than anything, and I really don’t want my mind to start wandering in that direction.
