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I truly believed everything I told him the night he confided in me about his nightmares. He would find me. He would get me out of this.
Because he was a protector.Myprotector.
And as I forced myself to my feet, picking up the mop and dunking it in the bucket of water, I repeated those words over and over.
Laeth
After I gotoff the phone with Shane, I’d packed Cash in the car and rushed to the library, making it there in record time. I hadn’t been able to take a full breath since she’d called, and I was slowly going out of my mind.
I wanted to rage that my woman was missing. I wanted to lose my mind and burn the world to the ground, but it wouldn’t have done me or Deva any good. If something had happened to her, I needed to do everything I could to stay calm and rational. She was counting on me, and letting her down wasn’t an option. My boy knew something was wrong. He’d clutched at me the whole time, asking over and over where his Day-Day was. Itripped me the fuck apart, but I made a silent promise to him that I would bring her back safe and sound.
“What’s the plan?” Gage asked. “We calling in law enforcement?”
I scanned the faces gathered around in the middle of the library. The worry, the panic, the fear. Everyone standing there cared for Deva. I had to find her, for all of them. And for myself.
There was no other choice. There was no me without her. I couldn’t lose her, not when I’d just found her. She’d chased the shadows away and showed me what it was like to live again instead of simply existing, and I’d done the same for her. I couldn’t believe that fate would be cruel enough to give us both something so wonderful after years of pain, just to take it away.
I refused to believe that.
“No,” I answered. “We’re doing this our way. We don’t have time to waste doing shit by the book.
They were with me. They understood how important it was to work as fast as possible, and they’d follow my lead.
I passed Cash to Shane so she and the rest of the women could keep an eye on him until we got Deva back. I sent them off to Shane and Jensen’s house to wait for word, and as they shuffled toward the door, Myra stopped right in front of me, her eyes swimming with unshed tears. “You find my girl,” she whispered. “Bring her back to me.”
“You have my word.”
She gave me a single resolute nod, then left. And as soon as they were gone, the three of us headed out.
We started by walking the route Deva was known to take to and from the library, looking for anything that might help us. When we located her discarded purse in an alley only a block away, it felt as if all the wind had been knocked out of me.
“Hey, look at me,” Jensen clipped, his hand coming to the back of my neck and gripping tightly so he could bring my faceto his. He sensed me starting to spiral and didn’t hesitate to pull me back. “You need to keep your shit together, man. You’re not going to be any help to your girl if you lose it. Just calm down. We’re gonna find her.”
I did my best to clear my mind, to push all the worst thoughts out of my head and focused on my breathing.
“Good. That’s good. Now, think. We have her purse. That means she was more than likely taken from this spot. What do we do next?”
With him guiding me back to sanity, I was able to concentrate on the job. I stepped back and scanned the area, looking for cameras.
“There,” I said, pointing to a strip mall just across the alley. “That camera’s pointing in this direction. If something went down here, it probably caught it.”
We flew into action then. I moved on auto pilot, racing to our office so I could get to my computers where I did my best work. It didn’t take long to hack into the shop’s security feed, and in a matter of minutes, I’d hit pay dirt.
Grainy security footage popped up across my monitors. It was of a beat-up pickup truck. The plates were out of focus, making them impossible to run, but the camera’s quality was just good enough that I was able to make out the face of the man climbing out before he headed down the alley around the time Deva should have been coming through.
“That’s him,” I gritted my jaw locking tight.
Gage’s hard eyes came to me. “Who?”
“Mathias Oakes. That’s who took her.”
Chapter
Thirty-Three
DEVA
“Well look at that.You can follow orders.”
