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“I’ll get over it. What can I do for you?”
There is a moment’s pause that makes me frown. Shane Ryan is never lost for words. “Look, I know you said you took care of that problem you had…”
“Yeah?” The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
“Well, my girl is kind of like a dog with a bone when she gets a sniff of something and she says the guy she was looking into is still active.”
“What?” My heart starts to race in my chest. I’d say he was mistaken, but Jessie Ryan is the best at what she does. “How does she know?”
“You might be better speaking to her—I’ll pass you over.”
I wait for a few seconds while he mumbles something to her.
“Hey, Jax,” Jessie says into the phone.
“You think this guy is still active?” I ask, my brow furrowed in confusion and worry, because the guy who was trying to hurt Lucia is most definitely dead as far as I’m aware.
“Shane said you took care of the problem, but the guy you asked me to look into is still very much alive. He seems pretty obsessed with Lucia too. It’s creepy, but it’s definitely him. He’s got some sophisticated firewalls but once I got through them I found everything. Same IP address. Same usernames and passwords. Same speech patterns too. He never shows his face and he uses some tech to disguise his voice, but it’s him, Jax. He’s been quiet for a week or so but he was online about an hour ago.”
“Online?”
“Yeah, he’s a gamer—has a huge following on social media.”
“A gamer?” I rub my temples. This isn’t making any sense. “So, who the fuck did me and Alejandro carve into pieces last week?”
“I don’t know. An accomplice, maybe?” she suggests.
“Or maybe someone was just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Fuck!” The Montoyas have so many fucking enemies, I can’t keep track of them, so maybe the guy that Alejandro caught last week wasn’t specifically looking for Lucia. She was in Alejandro’s car, with Alejandro’s driver. Owen kept on babbling about how he never meant to hurt her. Maybe he was telling the truth and Alejandro was his intended target.
“This gamer, Jessie, what’s his name?”
“Dolos,” she replies and my heart starts beating so fast it almost bursts out of my ribcage. That cunt I looked into a few months ago. The one Lucia said had zero interest in her because he was too busy jacking off to his x-box. She’s gone to meet a college buddy today, too. I squeeze my eyes shut as I remember our conversation earlier this morning. It wasn’t him. It was Jordan, the mom of three. Some kind of play date. She took Matthias with her, too. Fuck!
“Thanks, Jessie,” I say, aware she is still on the other end of the phone. “I appreciate this.”
“No problem, Jax. Shane says to let him know if you need anything.”
“Thank you both. I gotta go.”
I end the call and dial Lucia’s number. It goes straight to voicemail, and blood and adrenaline starts to thunder around my body. I suck in a lungful of air. She never charges her freaking phone. Her battery may be dead. Except that I know it isn’t. She knew she was going out for the day, she charged it up before she left.
But where the hell did she say she was going? The beach? It was definitely the beach.
I grab my laptop from the counter and fire it up. If Dolos has her then her cell will be long gone, so the tracking app on her phone is useless. I hack into the college campus records instead and pull up Jordan’s details. As soon as I find her cell number, I call her.
She answers after a few rings. “Hello?”
“Hi, Jordan. My name is Jax—”
Before I can finish my sentence she speaks. “Oh, Lucia’s guy friend?” she says in that way women do when they know something you don’t.
“Is she with you?” I ask, trying to keep my voice calm and steady so I don’t freak this woman out and have her clam up on me.
“Yeah,” she says and the relief washes over me.
“Can I speak with her?”
“Oh, she’s not with me right now, sorry.” She laughs softly. “We’re at the beach and the kids wanted burgers. She and Dolos just drove to grab some. They should be back any minute. You want me to tell her to call you?”
