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Delia shook her head, her expression immediately concerned. “No. I thought she was with you and you were both just running late.”
“No,” Roman said, forcing himself to take a breath and not use it to scream. “I got stuck at work and she was supposed to meet me here.” He pulled out his phone. “She texted me that she was here twenty-two minutes ago.”
Matteo, who had been standing next to Delia within full earshot of the conversation, snapped to attention. Whipping out his own cell phone, he pulled Camila’s number up from his contacts and hit send.
His stare darkened. “Right to voicemail. This isn’t right.”
“No, it’s not,” Roman said. For a split second, his brain and his body froze in unison. Camila was everything.Everything. He couldn’t lose her. He couldn’t let her die.
No, his inner voice said, and he latched on to it with all of his might. Camila wasnotgoing to die, because he was going to have her back. He was going to find her. He’d need every shred of training and every ounce of calm he’d ever known, but he would do this.
He was going to get his woman back. Right. Fucking. Now.
Instinct roared at Roman to tear a path to the exit, to personally search every street and kick in every door until he found her. But he was only one man, and fuck.Fuck, he needed to think. “I’m going to call Calloway.”
“Getting back to the FBI field office and looping her in will take too long,” Matteo argued. Roman opened his mouth to snap back—they were absolutelynotgoing to have a jurisdictional pissing match about this—but then Matteo added, “We’ll have to do this ourselves. What do you need first?”
Roman didn’t have the luxury of time to feel shocked, so he nodded. “Let’s see if the restaurant manager will give us access to the computers in the office. Is Capelli here? He’s the best person to start an online search.” Knowing the guy, he could probably log into the RPD database remotely, too.
Delia nodded. “I’ll go get him. I’ll get everyone,” she said, then spun on her heel to disappear into the crowd.
“Hurry,” Roman called after her. “Capelli might be able to work some magic remotely to tap into street cams. Someone will need to call Sinclair and Calloway and at least give them a heads up.”
Matteo was already leading the way to the front door, where Isabella, Maxwell, and Capelli, and his girlfriend, Shae, already stood. “Camila is missing,” he said, “and we’re going to find her.”
Roman had to give the Intelligence detectives credit. Not a single one of them blinked. By the time he’d reviewed what little he knew about when Camila had left and when she’d texted him that she’d arrived, all the cops and first responders had amassed in the space.
“Okay,” Capelli said, “I’m going to need access to a computer. Do you know if Camila is wearing the lavalier tracker?”
Roman’s heart vaulted against his sternum. How had he forgotten about the tracker? “I think so. Yes.”
“That’s where we’ll start.”
“Good. Everyone else, start a canvass,” Roman said. “See if you can find her car, her phone…anything at all. We’ll pull street cam footage and see if we can catch sight of her.”
“I’ll get canvass teams together,” Isabella said, and Maxwell nodded.
“I’ll take point on getting Calloway and Sinclair into the loop.”
Roman sent up a silent prayer of gratitude that they were such a well-oiled machine. “Go.” Turning to Capelli, he said, “How fast can you tap into that tracker?”
Five minutes and some highly questionable internet skills later, a grid map of the city appeared on the desktop computer that the bar manager, Kennedy, had given them full access to in the back office of the Crooked Angel. A red dot appeared on the screen, and a fresh bucketful of adrenaline dumped into Roman’s system.
“There,” he said, lasering his stare at the coordinates. “That’s down by North Point Pier.” Damn it, between the water, the industrial parks, the docks, and abandoned buildings, there were no less than three hundred places to stay good and off the radar out there.
“Looks like she’s moving,” Capelli said, his fingers flying over the keyboard.
“That buys us a little time, but not much,” Roman said, already out of his chair.
Matteo was on the move, too. “Capelli, we’re going to need an open line to you in here while we’re in pursuit,” he said.
Roman blinked. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
Matteo didn’t budge. “Backing you up. You go in there alone and get yourself hurt, or worse yet, killed, and my sister will never be the same. No fucking way am I going to let that happen. Plus, Archer is a sadistic son of a bitch. It’s going to take more than one of us to take him down.”
“I’m going, too,” Hale said. “I’ve got my Charger here. I’ll drive.”
Roman almost argued, but Matteo shook his head. “Trust me. You want that. Hale’s got a radio and half a fucking arsenal in her car. Plus, she drives like she has an advanced degree in grand theft auto.”
