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Kat wrapped an arm around Holly. “Of course.”
Freya shot her a grateful look and kissed the top of Holly’s head. “I’ll be right back with you, honey. I just have to throw on my jeans and go to this meeting.”
I ran back to my bedroom to put on some clothes. A few minutes later, Freya, me, and all the Unredeemables currently in residence were gathered in the war room.
We watched the video, then watched it again, multiple times. Someone made some coffee, and we drank it as we watched it all again, just letting it sink in. Memorizing every frame. It was horrific to see him that way, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off those images of my brother, starved and tortured and chained…but alive.Alive.
“I can’t believe they sent that filth to Holly,” Mick kept repeating, his voice low and furious. “Fucking sadists. They could have sent it to you, or Freya, but no. Holly, for fuck’s sake.”
“That’s Nicole’s style,” Freya said. “She’s saying, gotcha! Made you jump!”
“They’ve stripped the identifying metadata,” I said. “The video is untraceable.”
“He has enough guts left to flip them off,” Amos reflected. “Good sign.”
“Depending on how old the video is,” Darius said grimly.
“The place looks familiar,” Mick said. “Let’s look at the video again. At the place. We can mine it for clues.”
I turned to him quickly. “What clues?”
“Look at that scaffolding on the wall in the big room. Those rolls look like razor wire. Some sort of business, but the place looks defunct.”
I zoomed in, enlarging the shelves. Mick was right. Razor wire, and lots of it. Maybe this was a place that had made it, or distributed it.
“Go back to the beginning, back when the camera lens is still pointed up,” Mick said. “Before we see Shane. And listen.”
We all waited…and heard the slow build to the roar of a plane taking off. “It’s near an airport.” I said slowly. “But that’s not much help. There are airports everywhere.”
“Yeah, but look up at that window,” Mick said. “It’s a ten-meter ceiling. With those distinctive arched windows, a pattern of panes missing, the clue of the razor wire, and the flight path of an airport. Those are enough data points to start a search.”
“Too easy.” It was Kat’s voice, from the door, flat and matter-of-fact. “It’s a trap. Nicole would never give you so many clues unless she wanted you to find the place. She’s playing us. Throwing dirt in our eyes.”
“Could be, but it’s still the only lead we’ve had in months, so I’ll take the dirt,” Freya said. She glanced at her husband. “And I’ve done crazier things than that to scare up more leads. Shane was chained up in that place. We have to track it down and take a look at it.”
“Don’t let her lead you around,” Kat warned. “You’ll be like kittens following a laser pointer around. Herded and controlled.”
“How’s Holly doing?” I asked her.
“She’s hanging in there,” Kat said. “I heated up some of Angela’s frozen waffles for breakfast, and she ate almost a whole one. She’s parked in front of the TV now, watching Harry Potter. It’s her comfort watch.”
Darius typed furiously on his computer. “Here’s a list of all industrial properties within a five-mile radius of the flight paths of SeaTac. I’ve filtered out buildings that appear to be currently in use. Using that criteria, I’ve got fourteen properties on the list.”
We eliminated several of them right away, but on the eighth one, we stopped, and the room grew quiet.
“It’s high enough,” Mick said. “And old enough looking.”
“Helmsworth Fencing,” Darius said, throwing the image up on the big screen. “That fits, with the razor wire.”
I stared at the dingy old buildings, trying to calm down the frantic buzz of excitement in my chest. My heart seemed to be thinking I was going to find my brother. As if those assholes would send us an embossed invitation to rescue him. It could never be so easy. Never. This was a baited trap. One they knew we could not resist.
Mange your fucking expectations, Masters.That was my brain talking.
I glanced at Kat. She didn’t like this. Them, dangling bait, and us jumping for it, because that was what brokenhearted people were wired up to do.
“Don’t fall for it,” she said to me softly. “You’re smarter than this.”
That stung, and I lashed back. “You’re saying if someone sent you a video like that, with one of your sisters in it, still alive, that you’d be too damn careful and smart to check it out?”
