Page 80 of Mutual Obsession (Rivals of Blackthorn #2)

She points to one of the monitors in the corner, where I can just about see the corner of a white Transit van. You can only make out one of the doors on the back, giving away the make of the van, but very little else.

“Yes,” Jake and I say together.

“The van drives off a couple of minutes after I lose the man. It’s most likely that he positioned the van so the driver’s door and the side door would be in a blindspot, and he could climb in and drive off without being seen,” Peri explains.

“Can we track the van’s arrival to find a registration plate?” I ask, crossing my fingers we can find something to work with, as currently we have sweet fuck all.

“I’m just checking the nearby cameras now,” Peri says, pointing to a few different screens containing whizzing footage.

I can’t even begin to keep up with what’s on the screen, but this is why I pay Peri. I make a mental note, when I’m done dealing with this crisis, I’m going to force Marcus to install more cameras so there’s no fucking blindspots.

After a few minutes, Peri turns to face us. Although she’s trying to remain professional, it’s impossible to miss the myriad of emotions written across her face; fear, concern, anger, worry, sadness, and hesitation.

I’m sure she’s worried about her job, and the major incident she missed right under her nose. She probably knows Indie, as she’s the sort of person who speaks to all of her work colleagues, and she’s probably concerned for her safety. But mostly she seems scared of the two men in front of her.

Peri lifts her head and pulls her shoulders back, making herself look more confident as she takes on the professional persona she was trained to have.

“I’ve fully assessed the footage. The van arrived almost an hour before Indie did.

The man came into Caged and sat at the end of the bar for a bit.

He orders a shot that he pays for with cash, and downs the drink straight away.

He then seems to linger for a bit, keeping his head down and away from other people.

“Fifteen minutes before Mr Santoro arrives with Indie, the man makes his way through the crowd, down the staff only corridor. He seems to know the code to get into the back room, and from there, he makes his way straight into the staff changing room.

“A short time later, Indie enters the changing room. They’re both in there together for around ten minutes before he leaves, and I’ve checked all the footage to confirm Indie isn’t captured leaving.

“The man is carrying a large duffle bag, which he didn’t have with him when he entered. He makes his way outside, into the back alleyway, turning into the staff car park.

“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 can remotely 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.

“Do you have a better suggestion, Jacob? We have no idea where the van went, or where Gregg is. Until we do, we’d just be chasing our tails.

It’s much better to gather all the information and make a plan.

Trust me, we’ll have a much higher success rate if we do it this way,” Bree states, sounding much calmer than she has any right to.

“I just don’t know if I can sit here and do nothing,” Jake says, his voice breaking at the end as a tear slides down his cheek.

I reach up and wipe the tear away with my thumb, as Bree says, “I know this is hard. Believe me, I’ve been where you are, so I know waiting around is one of the hardest things in the world, but I promise, we’ll do everything we can to get Indie back to you.”

“Thank you,” I tell her when Jake doesn’t seem able to respond.

“We’ll talk soon,” Marcus says, before ending the call.

Marcus looks between me and Jake, wincing as he sees how devastated we both are. He squeezes my shoulder once more, giving me a tight smile as he stares at me, his eyes blazing with sincerity.

“I’m going to get Indie’s phone, and then I’ll help Peri and call Chloe. Why don’t you two wait in your office? I’ll call you when we have something.”

I smile at my best friend, letting him see how much I appreciate him as I lead Jacob from the room. His head is bowed, tears streaming down his face as he leans on me for support.

Once we’re in my office, with the door closed behind us, I pull him against my chest and wrap my arms around him, just in time for him to fall apart. I can’t stop my own tears from falling as the man I love breaks down in my arms.

All I can do is hold him and let him feel that I’m still here, that I’ll always be here for him. He knows we’ll stop at nothing to get Indie back, so I don’t bother saying the words out loud.

As his sobs die down, turning to silent tears, Jake finally claws back a little of the control he lost as fear and sadness overtook him.

He pulls in ragged breaths, and when he pulls his head off my chest, looking up at me with his glistening chocolate eyes, my heart breaks all over again. He looks so small, so lost, so broken.

I reach over with my thumb and wipe away the tears from under his eyes, and I can’t help but smile when he does the same. He lets out a shuddered breath as he says, “I love her, you know. I love her and I never got the chance to tell her. I want to tell her.”

His voice cracks right alongside my heart, and I know exactly how he feels. I don’t think I ever stopped loving her, even when I hated her, but I should have told her. I don’t know what I was waiting for, but whatever the reason, it feels foolish now.

“I know. You’ll get your chance to tell her… We both will.”

Jake’s smile widens as he lays a hand against my cheek, rubbing his thumb over my face in a soothing gesture.

“I love you too.” He says the words with such conviction and certainty that I know he means them, but I can feel the love he’s giving me, too.

I lean into his touch as my lips lift into a genuine, bright smile, and I let him see just how much he means to me.

“I fell in love with you when we were teenagers, and I don’t think I ever really stopped.

Even when you hurt me and I wanted to hate you, I still loved you.

I’ve always loved you. Same with Indie.”

Jake’s eyes light up, even with tears making them glisten, and he presses his lips to mine. It’s a searing, passionate kiss that says more than words ever could.

I imagined when we finally told each other how we felt, it would be more romantic than this. We’d be able to fall into each other’s arms afterwards, and get lost in our love. I never imagined we’d be missing a part of our heart.

“We are going to get Indie back, and then we can do this all over again with her here, too. I want to see the look on her face when we tell her we love her, and she realises this is what the rest of her life looks like,” I tell Jake, meaning every fucking word.

His face twists into a dangerous scowl, his eyes darkening as he draws on all the power he was raised with. “We will slaughter everyone who dared to put our girl in danger. We will make sure she never knows fear again. Then we will start our lives together, just the three of us.”

We seal our agreement with a kiss, drawing on the anger and danger that we’ve learnt to harness in this line of work. We will burn our enemies to the ground for daring to touch what belongs to us.