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As much as I might have wanted to address why he was speaking to me like that, I realized it would only delay me getting the information I needed about my sister. So, I took the water from him and drank.
Once it was gone, I stared him in the eyes and demanded, “Tell me what happened to Ainsley.”
“She’s missing.”
Something hollow and cold settled in the pit of my stomach. “Missing?”
He nodded slowly and confirmed, “Missing.”
“I don’t understand. How do you know? What happened?” I questioned him, feeling the panic rise inside me.
Before he could respond, Leo stepped forward and shared, “As you know, I’ve been investigating Patrick. In attempting to uncover all that I can that will help build the case against him, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that anything related to you might come across my path. Today, something came across my path.”
“What was it?” I asked him. There was no mistaking the desperation in my voice.
“Your family was in the news again,” he started. “Essentially, your sister has gone missing, but there is no indication of where she went or who she might be with. For now, there is a big question of whether there’s a correlation between both Cross sisters going missing that’s tied to something within your family, or if your sister’s disappearance is completely unrelated to yours. Nobody seems to know.”
“It’s him,” I declared.
“What?” Kane asked.
“It’s Patrick. He has her. He can’t locate me, and he knows that she means the world to me. I have not a single doubt in my mind that he’s behind all of this,” I explained.
Kane nodded his understanding.
“I had a feeling you might say that, but now we have to figure out what the next step is that’ll get your sister back safely,” Leo explained.
There was nothing to figure out. I already knew what had to happen. “I have to go to him.”
“Absolutely not,” Kane replied.
My eyes shot to his, filling with tears as I thought about what Patrick might do to Ainsley if I didn’t respond the way he hoped. “He’ll hurt her. He’ll do that to hurt me. Please, Kane, I have to go.”
“Where do you think he would take her?” Leo asked.
Shaking my head, feeling nothing but sorrow and disbelief, I admitted, “I don’t know. I was a fool. I’m unaware of properties he has outside of the home we shared. I know other places exist, but I don’t know what they are.”
“We’ve got a list of them,” Leo informed me. “But there are a lot of them, so we’d need to try to figure out a way to narrow them down.”
“Then what?” I questioned him. My eyes moved back to Kane. “What happens if and when you’re able to narrow it down?”
Kane shifted his body to the side and turned to look behind him. Pointing at the other two men in the room, he said, “Ellery, this is Damon and Magnus.” Each of the men waved at me before Kane continued, “They work in the kidnap and ransom unit here at Harper Security Ops. Once we know where she is, they’ll go in and get her out. We have more guys we can call in on this, and I’ll be with them, too, so you don’t have to worry about anything. We’re going to get her back. We just need to locate her first.”
This was ludicrous.
I didn’t doubt Kane, Leo, or any of the other guys who worked here. I believed in their ability to get a job done, whatever that job may have been. But I wasn’t sure how they could possibly rescue my sister without knowing where she was.
“I don’t see any way for that to happen unless I go to him and find out where he’s keeping her,” I noted. “You have to let me go back there. Do we even know how long she’s been missing?”
Kane looked behind himself again, but this time, he was looking at Leo for answers. Leo directed his attention to me. “From what they’re reporting, your sister was last seen leaving her house yesterday morning. They can only presume she was heading to work.”
“And she never went back home?” I asked.
“No. It’s still unclear if she ever made it to work at all yesterday,” he revealed.
I closed my eyes and dropped my head down toward my lap. My sister. My beautiful sister was missing, and it was likely she was taken by a murderer, a murderer I was technically still married to.
Several moments of silence passed before I lifted my chin and looked at Kane again. “Let me call him,” I begged. “Please. I don’t care about the case that’s being built against him. And I trust you to keep me safe. I need to make sure Ainsley is okay.”
