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Kieran’s head listed, and Maverick quickly looked around before focusing on me again. “Currently?”
“In the house—that’s how they did it. I could smell it. I can still smell traces of it. And even if the smell was gone, they knew I would know because it’s fucking obvious.” I gestured to what was left of the house’s structure.
Explosives didn’t do that kind of damage.
“What does that have to do with your messages?” Kieran asked as Maverick grabbed for his ringing phone.
I just shook my head because all I knew was the gas was my starting point. I could feel it in my bones.
But there wasn’t a trail of it.
“Babe,” Maverick answered the call, his voice soft and careful, but then his attention was snapping back to me and Kieran, then over to Dare as he asked Einstein, “What do you mean?”
The question had me going still as I strained to hear their conversation.
In the same breath, Kieran’s wrath started saturating the already heavy air.
“Shit. Shit,” Maverick hissed as he ran for Dare.
Normally, I would’ve been at my brother’s side, ready for the next piece of information. The next set of orders. Kieran would’ve been ahead of us.
But his steps were sluggish as if he were afraid to know what was being said. And my earlier guilt felt like it’d sunk its hooks into me and was pulling me down as I waited to hear who else we’d lost. Who else I’d failed.
And then Dare dropped to his knees.
Kieran fucking stumbled at the sight.
Before my already ruined heart could register this level of Hell we’d been thrown into, a sound wrenched from Dare that changed everything because it was rage and vengeance and pain...
It was relief.
I stood there. Swaying. My mind a jumbled mess as Maverick raced back to me.
Just before he made it to my side, Dare looked at me. Teeth clenched tightly together as he seethed, “Find her.”
I numbly accepted my brother’s phone when he shoved it at me and held it to my ear, listening since Einstein was already rambling about vans and cameras. “What?”
“They’re trying to lose me; keep up,” she shouted, voice frenzied and thick with emotion.
“I don’t—E, I don’t know what’s happening.”
A sound of irritation burst from her. “How far back do I have to go?” Before I could respond, she impatiently explained, “I lost camera feed at the main house because of the explosion, obviously. But it shows them putting Lily in a van two minutes before it happened. I’m trying to track the van through CCTV, but they were under an overpass too long, and then three identical vans left it. I’m trying to follow all of them, but I’m only me. Which, you know, is better than the rest of you.”
I stared blankly ahead as she continued explaining where each van was going. All the while, those messages and the type of explosion repeatedly played out in my mind.
The gas was my clue.
With each passing second, I was more sure of it than before.
“You’re sure she’s still in the van?” I asked suddenly, bringing Einstein to a startled stop.
“What?”
“Lily,” I said as dangerous anticipation coursed through me, making it hard to stay in place. “Could they have dumped her somewhere between the house and wherever you first picked them up on traffic cams?”
An offended breath left Einstein but was followed by a heavy silence. “I mean,” she began, clearly trying to figure any way it might make sense, “if they did, it would’ve been somewhere in the neighborhood. They wouldn’t have—”
I didn’t wait to hear the rest of her doubting words. I tossed Maverick’s phone at him as I took off. Racing across the driveway and past the person my soul was screaming for, ignoring the need to go to her, for even just a second. And as I sprinted down the wet street, back in the direction we’d come, I fucking prayed I wasn’t wrong about this.
