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The Jackals are filing in as I make my way back downstairs. I find Atticus immediately and point. “I want the fucking feed from the last few hours. Now. I want to know who fucking took her, and why I found Millie unconscious in the laundry room.”
“What the fuck is going on?” my brother’s face sinks. “Took who?”
“Everleigh,” I shout, feeling my sanity slip a little.
Fuck.
Saying the words doesn’t make it any easier. It makes it worse. I shouldn’t have left her alone today. I shouldn’t have left her unprotected.
The air around us fills with tension, not only from me. But from the Jackals.
Do they blame me?
They should.
This is on me.
This is my fault.
I drag in a deep breath, feeling my lung burn from lack of oxygen. I’ve got to keep it together until we know more. “I gave you an order, Code. Let’s go.”
He moves finally, and I switch tactics. Instead of searching the kitchen again, I follow behind my brother, shouting orders to the others from over my shoulder. “I want the perimeter secured. Everyone brought in to shelter and the compound locked down. Get Shakespeare and Duchess on premises. Until we know if this was an attack on the club, or a single target, we aren’t taking any fucking chances. And someone get eyes on Fran. I want to know if she’s involved.”
“Don’t matter, Prez. Snow’s one of ours, and no one fucks with one of ours,” Coyote declares, and the group of men standing around grunts in agreement.
“Y’all heard Prez. Move out Jackals,” Hardcore speaks this time and the Jackals disperse, moving in perfect harmony to carry out my orders.
* * *
“How is this fucking possible?”Atticus curses, rewinding the feed for the hundredth time.
“Can you back up any further?” I ask, knowing the answer already, but I’m desperate for a new one—a better one. He’s gone back to the moment I walked out of the clubhouse this morning, the Jackals hot on my heels.
We watched the girls leave soon after, heading to the bar or the strip club for work. No one else went into the clubhouse and no one else left the clubhouse. Every camera, every angle—all reported the same thing.
“Take it frame by frame if you must, but there’s no way she turned invisible and walked out of here.” I rake my hands through my hair and down my face, pulling at my beard. “What about the warehouse? Can you check the feed and see if we’ve got anything there?”
“Brother, I can only move so fast,” Atticus expresses. “I’m only a one man show.”
“Fine, get me the footage and I’ll—”
“There,” he shouts, pausing the screen and then flicking back. He moves back and forth between them, but I don’t see what he’s talking about.
“What?”
“You don’t see it?” He flips between the two frames again, but I shake my head. “Look at Maria’s mustang.” He points and zooms in on the vehicle, flipping back and forth once again between the frames. It’s only the tail end, not noticeable if you don’t know what you’re looking at. He flips back and forth, this time adding a frame both before and one after. “It’s there and then it isn’t.”
“A delay in the feed?”
“No, the feed is continuous,” he explains, flipping between various angles. “We see her leave the club and walk to her car. But in the next frame, her car is gone. We should have seen brake lights, her backing out of the spot.”
“Someone fucked with the security feed,” I surmise, shaking my head. The news just keeps getting worse and worse. I fear we won’t get to her in time. I won’t get to tell her how I feel—I was a fucking fool to hold me all this time. To keep her at arm’s distance.
“But who? The system is a closed circuit, so you’d have to access the feed from inside.”
“There wasn’t anyone…” I trail off, trying to wrap my head around the idea, but it makes my stomach churn even more than it already was. As much as I don’t want to believe it, I have to consider it a possibility.
Someone inside the Jackals is a dirty fucking rat.
