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“I lose him from that point, but the only car that leaves within the next few minutes is the white van. I have footage of it leaving our car park and going left, but there’s not a clear enough shot to capture the registration plate.”
As soon as Peri has finished her evaluation, silence fills the air, sitting heavy as the tension around us grows. I can hear my heart pounding in my ears as my brain frantically tries to pick apart everything Peri just said.
After a couple of minutes, Jacob’s voice breaks through the silence, and although it’s barely above a whisper, it sounds like he’s shouting the words I never wanted to hear. “Indie has been taken.”
Before I can say anything, the door behind us opens, much more slowly and calmly than before, as Marcus makes his way into the room. He’s dressed casually in dark jeans and a grey T-shirt, his hair sticking up at odd angles, but the look on his face is as professional as always.
He takes in the scene before him, lingering on the way me and Jacob are clinging to each other, both pale and terrified,before his gaze lands on the white van that’s frozen on the screen. His eyes narrow as his expression turns angry.
“What the fuck is going on?” he snaps.
“We think Indie has been kidnapped,” I tell him, before explaining everything we’ve learnt so far.
Marcus takes a step closer to me, placing his hand on my shoulder in a reassuring gesture, as he fixes me with his firm gaze, before looking at Jake, too. “We will get her back, I promise you. I’m going to call Bree,” he says, as he pulls out his phone.
Seconds later, his phone stops ringing and the call connects, the fiery redhead answering much quicker than I’d expect at this time of night.
“Marcus, hi. To what do I owe the pleasure of your call at this time of night,” Bree says as soon as she picks up.
“Indie has been taken,” Marcus snaps, getting straight to the point.
“Fuck,”Bree mutters. We hear her shouting in the background, no doubt calling for her family.“When? What happened?”
Marcus fills Bree in on what we’ve just told him before asking, “Is there any chance Gregg or The Count know we’re looking into them? Could they have found Indie?”
Bree lets out a long sigh, and that’s when Liam responds.“There’s a chance. Kellan started running The Count’s image through his facial recognition software the other day, and we’ve had people monitoring Gregg for a few days now. There’s always a chance they could have found out, but we were very careful.”
“Well, they found her somehow,” Jake snaps from beside me, his face twisting with anger.
I let go of his hand, so I can wrap my arm around his waist, pulling him into my side. We both need each other’s support right now, and getting angry won’t help anything.
There’s shuffling on the other end of the line, and then Kellan’s voice rings out over the loudspeaker. “Give me all the details you have on this white van. I’ll check the surrounding traffic footage to try and get a registration plate we can use to track it.”
Before any of us can reply, Peri gives him the information he requests, both of them talking in a technical language I can’t even begin to understand.
Only a couple of minutes later, Kellan lets out a whoop that even sounds loud on our end of the phone. “I’m a fucking genius. I have the van, and I’m tracking it as we speak,” Kellan boasts, my heart stuttering at our first real lead.
As soon as he says the word tracking, it’s like a light bulb moment goes off in my head, and a distant conversation I had with Indie comes flooding back.
“Indie used to track Gregg,” I tell them. “She had an app on her phone that she used to monitor whenever he was close. It’s how she knew to run. When she told us about him, and we said we’d keep her safe, we made her promise not to use the app anymore. We were worried she’d see him getting too close and run. But if she’d have been using the app, maybe none of this would have happened.” My voice cracks at the end as tears fill my eyes.
“Do you still have her phone?” Kellan asks, drawing me out of the spiralling darkness and guilt I can feel myself falling into.
“It’s in her locker still.” Jake replies for me when it’s clear I can’t find the words.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch the name of the woman I was talking to a second ago,” Kellan says apologetically.
“It’s Peri, sir,” she replies, sitting up straighter, even though he can’t see her.
“Nice to meet you, Peri. Don’t call me sir, it’s Kellan. If they give you the phone, can you follow my instructions, so I canremotely access it? I want to try and access the app Indie was using.”
Peri lifts her head, giving off a proud posture. “Of course. I want to help.”
There’s more shuffling on the other end of the phone, before Bree can be heard again.“Right, so Kellan and Peri are going to work on tracking both the van and Gregg. Hopefully, they’re both the same, but we can’t rule out it being someone else who kidnapped her just yet. Once we know more, we’ll chat again. Until then, just stay where you are and wait for us to formulate a plan.”
Jake growls beside me, “You want us to just stay here and fucking do nothing, while the minutes tick by and she gets further away from us.”
“Jake,” Marcus starts, but Bree cuts him off.