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“Thanks, man.” I end the call and immediately dial Ivy’s burner.
It rings endlessly, so I assume she’s already disassembled it and thrown it away. She’s been so smart with every minuscule detail; it’s impossible not to be in awe even though it’s to our detriment. Since I can’t reach her, I vet the ladies while Ty and Gage do the same, and Liam hunts for Ivy’s accommodations. We’re still an hour out from Oklahoma. I doubt Ivy is in immediate danger there. She must’ve found something we missed or seen something on the security footage from the jeweler. Otherwise, the message would’ve been more urgent.
“Tom,” Ty rasps in the seat beside me, his voice thick with a film of panic. Slack-jawed, he turns his laptop toward me. Flashing on the screen is an announcement of Tom’s passing. “Do you think?” He’s asking if I think it’s real or if I believe it’s a ploy to propel Ivy to show herself.
“I don’t know.” I lift my phone and jerk my head toward Liam and Gage. “Fill them in while I call Natasha.”
The never-ending ring resounds like a death march against my eardrum. Natasha always answers, and with Ivy missing, not even grief would keep her from picking up. My mind leaps to the worst, which is also the most likely. This is a tool to coax Ivy out, and Tom and Natasha will be the pawns to drive it home.
Liam’s eyes snap to mine, bloodshot and anxious. “What do we do? We can continue to Brass City. She might not see this until tomorrow. I’m fairly certain she’s staying in a small inn near your childhood home, but I’m not a hundred percent. The drive from the hangar is fifty minutes, so it could take us until sunup to get her.”
My mind bounds through all the options. As disconnected as I’ve felt from my Little Storm, I can feel her now. The connection between her and Tom has always been a palpable force—a bondtransforming the molecules of the air with its sticky energy into a rope of unified thought, one that tethers them together. It all unfurls before me, like that twining somehow extends itself to draw me into their web.
“Ryker said she’d be watching surveillance footage. She has to have seen the news article. She’d have called her mom first and jumped to the same conclusion we have.” I weave my fingers into my hair, apprehension rushing through me. “There’s no way she’d just sit tight.”
“Agreed,” Liam says. “This is exactly the kind of thing I taught her. It’s what I’d use—her piece of cheese. She has to know that, but she’d be too enticed by it.”
“Maybe,” Ty groans, his voice strained and raw. The composure he so often leans into is slipping through his fingers. “But wouldn’t that give her a reason to wait? She’d fucking contact us if she was moving on, right? If she’s seen the jeweler’s footage, she’s gotta know we’re close. She went through all the trouble to string us along and even sent the tip. Tell me she wouldn’t fucking sprint headfirst into this goddamn trap without us!” He shoves his laptop to the ground, his head dropping into his hands as the clatter slices the stale air.
“She’s still unsure about us,” I mutter to no one in particular. “Yes, she knows it could be a trap, but she’ll go anyway, unwilling to bank on us. Without hesitation, she’ll risk her life for both Tom and Natasha.”
Gage paces with a growl, undoubtedly envisioning the nightmare unfolding before us. His eyes are heavy-lidded and shaded with dark purplish circles. None of us have slept in days—or really a month and a half. And the peace that seemed to be in our grasp moments ago was just shattered. “We gotta make a call, Chief. Oklahoma or Ohio?”
Fuck.I’m so desperate to reach her, to clutch those wispy strands of hope floating between us, that in my cloudy haze, I nearly make the wrong decision in the hopes of holding her tonight.Nearly.I know my girl. She doesn’t sit quietly and wait. She shakes the pond.
“Ohio,” I direct. “She’ll go to Tom’s treatment center first—Shady Pines. Gage, inform the pilot. Liam, monitor every security camera in Brass City and see if we can get a handle on what she’s driving or which route she’s taking. Ty, check flights from airports on the way. It’s a fourteen-hour drive. She probably won’t find one that makes sense, but let’s rule it out. I’ll call O’Reilly.”
I’m coming, Little Storm. Hang on, baby.
I swallow a breath of dread. We’re no longer racing against Ivy or the clock.
We’re neck and neck with her killers.
IVY
All I see is red.
Somewhere in my mind, I know this is fruitless. Barreling toward my executioners is an ass-backward strategy. But my father risked his life for me every day. And my mother doesn’t belong anywhere near this world.
So, I steer toward the treatment center, Shady Pines. It’s fuzzy and fast, and my gut is devising resolutions without my brain’s consent. The margins of said resolutions are frayed and tattered and stained in various shades of crimson.
Grave and threatening calamities color everything darker.
My mother is missing. I contacted our housekeeper, Gertie, at the crack of dawn. She’s quiet and kindhearted, fancying herself a silent fairy who flies in the background, magically granting our wishes from the shadows. Gertie is the one who inspired my baking hobby. Years of pastries and pies miraculously appearing on our countertop to either celebrate momentous occasions or lament disquieting ones revealed the enchantment sugary warmth could provide. I’ve never heard her speak much above a whisper.
Until this morning.
She wailed hysterically, claiming my mother had vanished into thin air.
It required some finagling, butarmed with Gertie’s timeline, I hacked into the city’s traffic cameras a couple of hours ago and found the assholes who had taken my mother.
They’re holding her in a dilapidated warehouse on the outskirts of town. The clarity on the video was questionable as I watched the second vehicle glide into the parking lot, but I suspect my dad may be there too.
I texted the information to Ryker—address, license plates, grainy captor descriptions, and my tentative plans. He promised me he’d relay it to Wells and then proceeded to text me a slew of expletives and commands, which could’ve been summed up in a simplestay the fuck out of there.When I eventually blew him off after assuring him I had it all under control, I acquired a deeper empathy for Rena because he called me incessantly until I dismantled another burner. My father had twenty in my bag. He’s a genius. I’ve peeled through about half of them—all so I could circumvent the domineering men in my life.
I tried to hack into the Shady Pines’ security cameras to assure myself my father wasn’t there, but the whole system is down. And when I called, they adamantly declared they’d been advised by legal counsel not to divulge any information regarding Dr. Kingston.
My father.
