Page 143 of Cruel Promise


Font Size:  

“The security detail I put on them is not picking up, either.”

I hear him breathing and tapping on his phone. “Wait. Hold up… I think I got a message from Emma earlier. I didn’t really look at it because I wanted to return your call first.”

“What does it say?” I demand impatiently.

“Uh… ah, here it is. Fuck.” He sucks in a sharp inhale. “She sent me her live location… over an hour ago. I didn’t get it until just now when I left the cellar. According to this, she’s still at the school.” His voice dips a little and I know he’s worried, too. “Or at least, her phone is.”

“I’m heading over there now.”

I’m driving over to Chilton like a madman when my phone starts to ring again. I transfer it to the car’s speaker phone and hit accept.

“Boss.”

“Zakhar, what the fuck? Why didn’t you answer my calls?”

“There’s been an incident, sir.”

“Where are Emma and the kids?”

“I… they… um…”

“Spit it out, Zakhar.”

He clears his throat. “We lost them, boss. The school has cordoned off the area.”

What does he mean, they ‘lost’ them? And why does the school need to ‘cordon off’ anything? Isn’t that just for crime scenes and dead bodies?

Fuck.

“I’m almost there.”

Then I hang up and step on the accelerator. There’s a throng of people at the school gates when I approach. Most of them are wearing uniforms and protective vests.

Cops.

I breeze past the police manning the perimeter when I see my men clustered next to the school building. “What thefuckhappened?” I growl as I storm up. “Where are Emma and the kids?”

Gedeon, Zakhar, and Shura exchange cautious glances. “It appears that they’ve been taken,” Shura admits. He gestures over to the side where I can see a gaping hole in the chainlink fence that marks the outer perimeter of the school grounds.

“Why are the cops involved?”

“Because a teacher stumbled across the body. She called them in.”

“‘Body’?” That’s when it hits me: there are three men in front of me instead of four. “Lazar?”

Gedeon nods. “He was shadowing Caroline when she decided to climb trees during recess. But someone accosted them—”

“Someone was watching them the whole time,” I growl through gritted teeth. “When do we estimate they took Caroline?”

“A few hours before they took Emma and the other two kids, but they were lying in wait for the others,” Zakhar explains. “At least that’s what we suspect. Emma showed up a couple of hours ago with Gedeon and Shura in tow. That’s when we realized that Caroline and Lazar were a no-show.”

Gedeon points to the outer boundaries of the school. “We were doing a search of the grounds. We told Emma and the kids to stay put until we came back.”

Of course she didn’t stay put. She went looking for Caroline.

“We believe she and the other two kids were taken from the same spot where Caroline was taken.”

“Oh, and boss?”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com