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If I got Cassie out of this shit alive, I was never wasting another fucking moment in my life. Not with her or my business or my passions.
It was two in the morning as we cruised through the streets, Aspen thankfully familiar with where we needed to go, though the eight Harleys rumbling through the streets of town were bound to draw some kind of attention, good or bad, so the sooner we could get there, get her, and finish this fucking shit, the better.
We pulled into a parking lot, and I recognized the house instantly. It was the one Aspen had pointed out.
The buildings were clearly built pre-1800s, and to find a collection of them together like this was rare. They’d obviously been looked after by someone and turned into a place that could be used to educate and entertain people.
We all parked at record speed, my brothers and I duck-walking our bikes in backward in case we needed to make a quick exit.
“Simon, stay here, watch our stuff and the road,” I ordered, the kid offering me a salute.
“I’m gonna call an ambulance,” Aspen said as she fell in step beside me, the chorus of heavy boots following us as we made our way down the side of the house and into the backyard where the garden was. “I just… she was in a bad way, Drake. Who knows…”
I nodded. “Call them. Try not to give them too many details. Last thing I need is the cops here.”
Especially considering I was going to kill Emmett if I were given half a chance.
“Where do you want us to start?” My dad questioned, standing beside me as we looked out over the expansive garden. He kicked one of the plastic solar lights that were pushed into the dirt at the top of the stairs where we were standing. “Someone smashed the bulb in the top.”
“Same with this one,” my brother, Junior, announced, holding up another.
“Someone didn’t want to make this easy on us,” I growled, noticing more broken at the bottom of the stairs. I couldn’t tell how far the garden reached, the streetlights out front doing little to combat the darkness out this side of the two-story houses in the front. “Everyone got a flashlight?”
“Aye,” my brothers all acknowledged together.
“Good. Let’s find her, just try not to draw too much attention.”
With that, they were gone, heavy footsteps disappearing at the bottom of the staircase as they met the grass. I sucked in a deep breath, pulling my flashlight and joining my family. “Cassie,” I said loudly, sweeping my light over the bushes, not knowing where to even fucking start. “Cassie,” I hissed a little louder. “Come on, baby, give me something.”
The gardens weren’t huge, but some were thick with bushes that needed wading through. Plus, there were fences bordering other properties and large trees and manholes under the buildings.
There were a lot of us, but there were a lot more places that needed fucking checking, and time kept ticking by.
“The temperature has dropped,” Aspen noted quietly as we pushed aside branches and bushes, anything we could get our hands on.
It was cold.
Too cold for someone to be out here for a long time without wearing thick clothing and from the last video, Cassie was only in a T-shirt and jeans.
“You think he’s really that sick to just dump her out here and walk away?” my dad asked, folding his arms across his chest.
I can’t wait to see you reunited.
His voice from the video rang in my ears.
“He said he couldn’t wait to see us reunited,” I said, my heartbeat elevating intensely. “He’s watching. Waiting for us to find her. He wants to see us hurt.”
“You think that means then—”
“Sure as hell fucking hope not.”
“Fucker,” Dad cursed, shaking his head. “Take Rip. Hunt him down. We’ll keep searching.”
Rip was at my side in an instant, fists already hanging at his sides.
Dad’s speech earlier in the week about being responsible and not making rash decisions—for the moment, it was pushed to the side simply because this was life or death. This wasn’t about me getting even at Emmett talking shit to Cassie. This was about me losing her if the right motivation wasn’t found to force this bastard to tell me where she fucking was.
Instead of coming back out onto the street through the lot we parked in, Rip and I jumped a fence into someone’s backyard and slipped out and along their driveway further down the street where he wouldn’t be expecting us.
