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"Help me get him up. He isn't responding." I tie the sheet around his waist while grabbing the top half of his body to lift him. Barrett grabs the bottom, and somehow, we rush down the stairs without dropping him and slide him into the car. Barrett climbs up front and floors it down the driveway. Ky’s going to be pissed when he finds the blood in his car.
This is such a mess. I was supposed to keep them all safe, but I failed, and now Kyler’s fighting for his life, and Callie’s gone. As much as I hate to admit it, she grew on me in the time that she was here. She found her place here with us, and while I may not feel as deeply for her as Barrett and Kyler do, she still belongs with us. We don’t respond well to people who take what's ours. Today,our girl was taken from us, and we will get her back. I just need to figure out how this happened.
"How the hell did they get past the gate!" I yell to Barrett in the front seat. He pulls up his phone and starts scrolling through things while driving.
"I don't know, Seb. Everything looks fine. I didn't see any alarms go off, and everything was showing that it was all still engaged. It's like they cloned the system and made it think nothing was happening. The hacking it would take to do something like this is serious."
"So you think it was Rogue?"
"Who else would it have been? Rogue is the only one with the motivation to attack us like this and take Callie. They obviously have the means to have someone with this skill set on their books."
Fuck! Fuck! We lock eyes in the rearview mirror, and he mutters the words I've been thinking but am not able to voice out loud.
"We need to get her back," Barrett states plainly.
I nod and bring my focus back down to Kyler, making sure to keep as much pressure on the wound as possible. The bleeding seems to have slowed down, but I'm not sure if that's because what I’m doing is working or if he’s just lost so much blood that there isn't as much pumping through his veins anymore. The drive is short and quick. We reach Dr. X's house, and the next few hours all blur together as he gets to work trying to save my brother's life.
Chapter 38
Barrett
Seb and I are both on edge. It was supposed to be my responsibility to make sure that the house was protected, but I dropped the ball. Kyler’s lying in a hospital bed, fighting for his life, and the girl we love is missing! Moreover, there’s nothing I can do to help Kyler right now. It's up to him to fight and come back to us. The only thing I can do is try to find Callie.
We’re fairly certain it was her father who sent someone to collect her, but what we don't know is if he took her back to the compound or if he is holding her somewhere else. It would be better for us if he was holding her somewhere else, considering there are three of us, well, two currently, and who knows how many members of their guard. If he had taken her to the compound, I'm sure he would have called in all bodies to protect them from our retaliation. He's smart.
I run through every possibility of how they could’ve bypassed my security system. They shouldn't have been able to. Everything’s fully functional, there were no outages, and none of us misplaced our phones. If a phone was lost, that would have been a huge in for their hacker. It’s easy to clone a phone. It only takes a matter of minutes ifyou have the right tools and know what you're doing.
Realization sets in, and the pieces all connect together. They‘ve most likely been trailing us since we called Gabriel and told him that we had Callie. If they have a hacker on their team, it wouldn't be hard to run our faces through recognition software and receive an alert as soon as we were out and about. That was the first job we took her on, and they must have been waiting for confirmation that we had her. They wanted a way to track her back to our house. I have our phones blocked, so our location can't be tracked from them, but if the guy is as good as me, then maybe he could turn the block off with the right access.
The day we worked that hit on Ronnie Masters, someone got the best of me and knocked me out for a few minutes. We assumed it was one of Ronnie's bodyguards that we didn't account for, but what if it was a member of Rogue's guard or even their hacker? I slam my fist into the table, and Seb looks over at me curiously.
"I know how they got into the house," I tell him.
He listens as I go over my theory of a Rogue member being the one who knocked me out at the festival and then took my phone, which gave them access to clone the security software. It was a massive oversight on my part. I should’ve set up an additional security measure. It was stupid to assume nobody could get their hands on my phone. Fucking rookie mistake. I tell him that none of the alarms went off because they overrode them on thecloned phone to think that they weren't being activated. I would have to go home and run a quick system check to confirm if my suspicions are correct, but this is the only possible explanation that makes sense.
"We need to get that fixed, Barrett. If what you're saying is true, as of now, they can still get into the house."
"I’ll update everything as soon as we’re back. I fucked up, Seb. I'm so sorry."
"This isn't on you, Barrett. I never should have let her come on that job with us."
Both of us feel some sort of guilt around the entire situation, but in reality, there’s only one person who is to blame, and I cannot wait until the day I get to peel that bastard's skin off. He will die a painful, miserable death. I’ll make sure of it.
Chapter 39
Callie
As I regain consciousness, I try to blink my eyes, but they’re still heavy, and everything is hazy. Where am I, and why the fuck do I keep finding myself in situations like this?
The last thing I remember was sitting at the restaurant with Julian. I was about to talk to him about leaving and how he found me. I blink a few more times, trying to shake off the fuzzy film surrounding my vision. Things start to become clearer, and everything looks familiar.
To my left, there’s a small dresser with framed photos. One of my mom and I from when I was seven. We had just gotten done dancing at one of Rogue's Balls, and she pulled me in for a picture. The smile on her face is pure joy. I fucking miss her so much. There’s another of her and I next to it, but this one is a few years later. I think I was 14. The third frame I look at almost rips my heart out of my chest. It’s a picture of me and Maxton when we were 17. It was just before all the madness when we were simply lovestruck teenagers. To my right, I see Mr. Fluffogas, the ratty old stuffed elephant I used to sleep with every night as a kid.
Realization sets in, and I know exactly where I am. I shoot upright in the bed and try to jump out of it, but I’m instantly pulled backward. There’s a sharp sting in my wrist that’s cuffed to the corner of the bed. I never thought I’d be here again. No, no, no, no, this isn’t happening! I feel the panic start to rise in my chest, my breathing becoming more rapid, and my eyes widen with fear as I frantically look around the room. Everything is the same. It's exactly how I left it over six years ago when I ran away from this fucking place!
My mind is racing. How did I get here? Where is Julian? Did they hurt him too? My father probably killed him just like he killed Maxton and my mother. I didn't want to be with him, but he didn't deserve to die.
The door creaks open, and I see the rotten bastard standing there with the same smug smile on his face that he had when I was a kid.
