Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 46223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
“On it,” Rae says.
Lalo swings the SUV around. I slide into the back. Lina scrubs her face and moves to come with me. I catch her shoulder. “No,” I say, not unkind. “You stay with the team and keep them from doing something stupid. You’ll see her again. That’s an order.”
She nods and I see her straighten because orders are a relief when the room tilts.
We roll. Austin splits open. Lalo threads the lanes like a letter opener. I keep my eyes on the edges, the places where men like Kellan think they can be small. We take the frontage road. We hit the ramp seam, and the SUV bumps twice.
“Riggs,” Rae says, voice low. “I’ve got a white van on a warehouse strip near a tire place called DOLLAR TIRE and a Latino grocery with a mural of a longhorn. Van pulls into a yard with a turquoise door. Camera loses it after that, but the grid’s tight. Sending you a pin.”
“Copy.” I point. Lalo turns. The warehouse strip turns the air from music to tin. Gravel crunches under us. I can smell old oil and summer heat.
“Turner’s two minutes out,” Dean says in my ear. “No lights. He’ll let you play point until he says otherwise. Keep it off the radio. Stevens wants sirens.”
Brice texts me a paragraph of him trying to be useful. I silence him. Jaxson slides in a shot of a rosary air freshener from a bodega two miles from here—security cam with time stamp. “He bought the rosary five days ago,” Jax says. “Cash. Clerk remembers him because he asked her if ‘she believed in signs.’”
“Men like this always do,” I say.
We idle a block from the pin. The turquoise door is two down, paint sunburned to chalk. A chain-link fence sags like a tired sigh. The yard holds three cars in various states of regret and a boat that will never see water again. The van isn’t visible, but a tire track fresh in dust points to the far corner where a roll-up is half-shut like a lazy eyelid.
“Rae,” I say, “go deaf for thirty seconds.”
“Copy. You’re a rumor,” she says.
“Dean,” I add, “when Turner gets here, send him in hot.”
“Heard,” he says.
I take a breath. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. Vanessa learned this from me. I’m learning this again because of her. “You’re here,” I tell the empty air, and step out into the heat.
I move along the fence line, boots silent where they can be, loud where I want the noise to go first. Lalo peels to the right for angle. I pause at the corner and listen. Inside—the faint rattle of an AC vent turned high. A man’s voice, too close to be talking to someone far away. A second, lighter voice, the driver maybe, radio turned down. And a sound I can’t mistake: fabric against concrete, measured breaths forced to be steady.
“She’s here,” I say, too low for anyone but the two men who’ve done this with me in worse places to hear.
Turner pulls up quiet. He’s in a shirt that wants to be a suit and a face that says he likes paperwork and hates men like Kellan. “You got us a ribbon to cut?” he asks.
“I got you a door,” I say, and nod at the roll-up. “Two inside. One with a god complex. One who drives. She’s bound, possibly gagged, no active weapon chatter on my end, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a knife. We go soft and plain. No press. We take him alive if you can stand it.”
“I can stand it,” Turner says. “You want first hands.”
“I want her first,” I say.
We stack. Lalo on door, me on breach, Turner at my shoulder with a voice like a ticket book. The roll-up gives two inches, then four, then enough for a man to slide through. The smell of pine cleaner hits, sharp as a memory. My hands stop shaking that I refuse to admit were shaking.
“Vanessa,” I say, pitching my voice to the exact calm I saved for her. “I’m here.”
There’s a silence that goes shaped, and then a sound like a body remembering how to exhale.
“Mr. Stevens,” Turner calls, stage voice, even and bored. “APD’s with me. Let’s talk before we write up the part where you run your life into a wall.”
Footsteps. A scrape. The driver curses under his breath. The god complex clears his throat like he’s about to deliver a monologue.
“Rae,” I murmur, back online, “keep it dark. No leaks. If a blog so much as breathes our block, drown it in kittens.”
“Copy,” she says. “And Riggs?”
“Yeah.”
“Bring her home.”
“That’s the plan,” I say, and step into the dim.
I don’t pray. I keep promises. And right now the only one that matters is the one I made in a hotel room full of soup and laughter when I told her to sleep and she did because she felt safe with me.