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33
Theo
The Mighty Lion
Soph works as hard as she can, scouring the town’s motion-activated cameras set up every twenty feet from one end of Main Street to the other. The law frowns upon that kind of privacy breach, but Alex Turner says nothing as Soph and I sit together in the middle of Checkmate Security and try to find the needle in a haystack.
This town isn’t massive, but it’s still a lot of cameras, and motion activation means exactly that – everyone is in motion all over town. The baker’s delivery van sends an alert up. A cab sends another up. Kids playing in the park, and other folks heading to church. There are a lot of cameras to study, and a lot of footage to watch, and the longer we take, the angrier those around us get.
Spence, Romeo, and Cruz collect weapons and ammo from the bunker beneath this building, and when they deem them not enough, Spence and Romeo drive away and come back half an hour later with bigger, better, more.
Alex Turner doesn’t know what to do. He can’t decide if he should arrest every single Checkmate employee and affiliate, or if he should thank them. He does neither. He simply accepts the weapons Spence tosses to him, and works them into holsters the same way the rest of our comrades do.
Pictures of Evelyn Kincaid are flashed on every wall, every screen, and on every electronic device that moves around the room, but it’s Libby’s eyes that remain in the forefront of my mind. It’s not that she’s considered less important to them, but the fact a minor is missing trumps all else in everyone’s mind but mine.
Aiden and Benny might be the most dangerous men in this room. Even with Soph at her laptop, and the Checkmate crew strapping weapons to their bodies, those two, who appear otherwise unarmed, are the most dangerous. A dad and a friend.
A boyfriend?
They stalk the offices and make sure everyone is working, and because there’s literally nothing else they can do, they glare at anyone that dares to stop moving.
Evie and Lib have been missing for four hours, and for every minute that passes, the darkness presses in around us, and the heavier our worry sits.
Did the girl survive the initial attack? Did Libby? And if so, where are they now?
“Hayes sisters!” Soph’s ballerina body snaps taller when she gets our first hit. “Fuck, I found them.”
Half of the room stops and lifts their heads as Soph zooms in on her screen. The timestamp shows this footage is from only an hour ago.
After Olly took the girls.
Once they were already situated wherever they’re going.
“Let me just…” Soph’s eyes narrow as she clears away every other box popping up on her screen and isolates the one we need. “They went to the store. See the bag the chick on the left is holding? Her hands?”
I lean closer so Soph and I are basically cheek-to-cheek. “Jonah’s?”
“Mm.” She zooms a little closer and takes a screengrab of the bag. Isolates it, zooms in, and begins spinning it so we get a 3D view. “Soda?”
“Just regular groceries.”
My cell begins to vibrate as I study the screen and the bottle-shaped indent in the bag. Annaliese is the only person with permission to call, but though I don’t intend to answer, I still take it from my pocket out of habit.
It’s strange how a lifetime of habits makes a man.
I see Olly’s name on my screen, and I think of my driver. I think of the guy I sent for groceries when Libby had a concussion and needed pain relief, or the guy who was sent to follow her into the city while I searched her apartment. It’s instinctual that I think of these things, rather than what’s real, but once that second passes, my eyes snap wider.
“Guys! It’s him. It’s Olly.”
Soph snatches my cell with lightning-fast reflexes and jams a cord into the bottom. Spence and Romeo stay by their cache of weapons, but the rest of our crowd converge as I stand and force Soph up when I take my phone; she needs to stay within reach because of the cord.
I look to her for direction, then to the girl’s dad. He’s frozen with indecision. Broken beyond comprehension.
“Answer it,” Alex says. “Stay calm, ask questions.”
“Don’t fuck this up,” Ben growls. “I don’t know you, but I’ll remember you for the rest of my life. Don’t fuck this up.”
I nod and look back to my phone. Terrified the call will ring out, I swipe a thumb across the screen before I decide which way I’m going to play this. Am I Griffin, silent and foreboding? Or am I just a guy that wants that little girl back?
