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“I always move at a good clip, even with a supposedly weak heart,” he said, laughing.

“What’s with you?” he jeered. “You should be in much better shape than this.” It was a side of her brother that she didn’t know, having not had any experience or contact with him outside of the hospital.

But it was also a part of him that she wasn’t sure she liked either.

Maybe only now, after the first wave of joy that she had brothers had passed, was she realizing just how protective and sheltered her upbringing had been. As they got up to the apartment, the same one where she had first found Don, she asked, “I thought we were going to your brother’s apartment?”

He looked at her, surprised, then nodded. “We are.”

At that she slowly closed her mouth, not sure what was happening as they walked up to the very same apartment where Don had been found.

She thought it had been his apartment, but maybe it had been rented under his brother’s name.

Sighing at that, she walked in, expecting to see Darren here.

As she searched the area, she turned back and looked at him. “He’s not here.”

Don looked around, frowned, picked up his phone, and started calling. “He should be,” he snapped. “He should be right here.”

She just nodded and waited. Not exactly sure what had gone wrong, all she knew was that, from the perspective of her brother Don, something was very, very wrong.

*

Morrison slowly picked himself up off the floor.

The blast had come out of nowhere, and he’d been hard-pressed to even protect himself, as if shot off his feet and onto the floor.

Gage had caught a similar blow, but now they were both sitting up and looking around at the room and at each other.

“And yet he hadn’t pulled this at the jewelry stores, correct? ”

“I don’t know,” Gage admitted. “We don’t have any camera footage.”

“Right.”

“I’m wondering if that’s really how he managed to stop everything from working electronically.”

“It’s possible,” Morrison noted.

They both got up, and Gage was checking himself out. “I’m not seriously hurt, so I’ll take that as a good thing.”

“Me too, but she’s gone, and that sucks,” Morrison muttered, as he looked around. “Where the hell is he taking her?”

Gage nodded. “To his brother’s apartment.”

“We already set a team there, right?” At that, he grabbed his phone and put it on Speaker, as Terkel answered.

“Terkel, Don came and took her away,” Morrison stated, not in any way minimizing the damage they had been through.

“We couldn’t stop him. He had a gun and got her cooperation by threatening to shoot us, then used an energy blast as they left, that knocked us off our feet for a bit,” he shared.

“We’re both fine, but I don’t know what the hell that was. ”

“No, I don’t know either,” Terkel replied. “We have more dark news for you.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re not sure exactly what’s going on here, but the team went to the brother’s apartment.”

“Right, any chance you guys picked up Darren?” he asked hopefully.

“Not only did we not pick him up but… he’s dead.”

“What do you mean, he’s dead?”

“He’s dead and had been for at least six hours, if not longer.”

Morrison turned and looked at Gage in shock. “How is that even possible? How long ago did Don escape custody?” Morrison asked Terk.

“About six or so hours ago,” Terkel replied. “So, whatever is going on,… it involves Don, but I don’t know who else.”

“Is there any chance it doesn’t involve anybody else?” Morrison asked, still working on that theory he had from that last visit to the hospital.

“I mean, it’s possible, but everything we’ve heard so far indicated four involved in the heists, three inside, and a driver, we presumed.”

“What if it was just the two of them? Just Don and Darren? Did the cops find the jewels?”

“No, not yet,” Terk said. “They’re tearing apart Darren’s place. They’ve just moved the body out,” he added.

“But she’s supposed to be on her way there. Or… Don’s gone back to his place.”

“Why would he do that? I mean, he almost died there.”

“And yet we don’t know how he got the drugs, or even if they were self-administered,” Morrison reminded Terk. “What are the chances that Don killed his brother as soon as he escaped, then came to get Sadie, all before we ever found Darren, as a way to stop him?”

It made sense, and what was starting to make sense also scared the scrap out of Morrison.

He and Gage raced toward the one address that they knew, and that was the apartment where they had found Don in medical distress.

Whatever happened to Don all happened in this one area, and they needed to get there before something else terrible happened.

Morrison didn’t know whether Don had a suicide pact going on or maybe wanted to wipe out his family, then disappear. Yet Morrison knew that Sadie might think she was safe because she and Don were family, twins even, but Morrison thought that na?veté might put her in even more jeopardy.