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But what about Elijah? Elijah, be okay. Please be okay.
“MaryBeth was bait,” Phin said tightly.
“Yeah,” Antoine choked out. “Burke’s hurt. Real bad. Cops are just arriving, but they should have been there already. Kaj, they carried Val out.”
“Who did?” Kaj demanded, fighting back the panic that closed his throat. “The cops?”
“No, the men who broke in. They wore ski masks. Three went in. Two came out carrying Val.”
Terror froze him. They took Val. Val is gone. “Elijah?”
“They didn’t bring him out. Jace either. They’re still inside.”
The safe room, Kaj thought, his mind in a tailspin. Please be all right.
“Had to be Corey, Bobby, and Ed.” Phin was grim.
“Tell the cops that the shot that hit Burke wasn’t from any of the three guys, either. It had to have come from the house directly across the street from Kaj’s, probably a long-range rifle. The men in the van couldn’t have gotten the right angle. Tell them that the rifle was suppressed. There’s no gunshot on the camera audio.”
“Got it.” Phin accelerated. “Stay on the line, Antoine. Keep watching the cameras. Can you track Val’s phone?”
“Cops are there now,” Antoine said. “EMTs too. I called 911 as soon as I saw MaryBeth and Burke go down. Val’s phone is in the house.”
Phin pulled into his driveway and Kaj was out before the vehicle had come to a stop.
“Kaj!” Phin yelled. “Wait!”
But Kaj couldn’t wait. Phone clutched in his hand, he ran to his house, shoving at the uniformed officer who tried to block his path.
“Get out of my way,” Kaj shouted. “Now.”
A familiar face approached. “ADA Cardozo,” Detective Drysdale said gravely. “We need you to wait outside.”
“No!” Kaj shoved the detective hard, twisting out of his grip. “My son is in there.”
“No, he’s not,” Drysdale said. “We swept the house. Your son’s not in there.”
“Did you check his bedroom?”
“There’s an out-of-control dog in there. We opened the door enough to see that there was no one else in the room.”
“Fuck that,” Kaj growled. He shoved through the first responders, stumbling to a stop when he saw EMTs working on both Burke and MaryBeth. “Oh my God,” he whispered.
One of the EMTs working on Burke looked up. “Are you Kaj?”
Kaj could only nod.
“He wants to talk to you,” the EMT said. “Make it fast. We need to load him up.”
Kaj dropped to one knee beside Burke’s stretcher. “I’m here, Burke.”
“Val,” he whispered. “Took her.”
“I know. Antoine told me. We’ll find her. Where are Elijah and Jace?”
“Safe room,” Burke said. “Told them to go. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry, sir. We gotta go.” The EMTs wheeled the stretcher into the ambulance and Kaj turned to the next EMT team, who were putting an IV in MaryBeth’s arm.
