Page 10 of Caught in the Crossfire

My lips pressed together. “Not yet.”

“Fuck,” Obi hissed. He stood straight and rubbed his eyes while muttering to himself in his native language, Igbo. “Wemustget her back.”

Obi rarely ever cursed, and I didn’t think I’d ever heard his voice so desperate.

“We will. We’ll find her and—” I swallowed, trying to keep my voice level. “We’ll find her and bring her home.”

It was the middle of the night now, and we were all running on fumes, but we couldn’t stop. Every second that passed, she felt further and further away.

“I will turn the world over piece by piece,” Obi muttered. I couldn’t quite tell if he was talking to me or himself. “How dare they think they can take her from us? I will burn them all down. She isours.”

I turned back to my computer, trying to hack one of the twelve satellites equipped with camera capability currently rotating in the atmosphere within the grid I thought she’d be in. If I could start scanning the ocean, or if I could get a map of all ships currently traveling,maybeI could find something.

Obi’s phone rang, and he immediately answered. “What?” He paused, then put it on speakerphone. “Ryu.”

“We found the ship.” Ryu’s voice.

Obi and I locked eyes. “Tell us.”

“There were four ships that departed the shipyard during the window in question this morning,” he answered. His voice sounded coiled with tension.

“We finally got a hold of the transit logs,” Cas added. “There’s only one option that makes sense. It’s called theRed Talon.”

TheRed Talon. My fingers flew across the keyboard, and I cringed at the strain, but I couldn’t slow down now.

Cas and Ryu had been searching for hours. They’d immediately latched onto one another as soon as we’d realized she was missing. Neither of them could sit and wait for news; they had to be out, searching.

“Where was it docked at the yard?” Maybe I could find a camera nearby that showed them taking her onto the boat. If I could find one that pointed to anything at all.

Ryu read off a berth number, and I searched through the shipyard records until I found it. Within a minute, I had the feeds up and was cycling back through the earlier hours of the day.

The first two cameras were pointed away from the berth, but the third was at an odd angle and hidden half behind a pole. Whoever had repositioned them must have missed this one.

“I have eyes on the berth,” I said, so Ryu and Cas could hear too. Obi loomed behind me. “Searching through the footage.”

The video rewound, showing the time the ship departed at 9 o’clock in the morning. Leona and Wynn were attacked shortly after 8 o’clock, so if she was brought here, we would see her on the footage between that time frame. I scrolled back through the recording, but didn’t see evidence of Leona being brought on board. Obi and I exchanged a frustrated glance.

Maybe I could keep looking backward to get a clue of who boarded the ship. It might lead us to her.

“Oh, fuck,” I breathed, eyes glued to the monitor.

Behind me, Obi tensed. I could feel his disbelief and glower combine into radiating dark waves. “Ciel, are we seeing what I think we are?”

“What is it?” Cas asked, voice raising.

“Max Volpe,” I breathed. On the video, Max’s arms were bound behind his back, and four men were manhandling himdown a gangway and onto the ship. The timer on the clock read 6:21 a.m.

“He’s behind this?” Cas ground out. A hollow sound echoed in the background, like he kicked or hit something. “Weknewit.”

“I’ll fucking kill him,” Ryu shouted. “I’ll gut him and strangle him?—”

“No, Volpe appears to be a captive as well,” Obi interrupted. “They’re taking him aboard the ship bound and gagged.”

My eyes scanned the transit logs of theRed Talon. If Max didn’t take her, then who the fuck did?

“No,” I whispered. The answer stared back at me.

“What, Ciel?” Cas demanded.