Page 82

AVERY

“ W hat does all that mean?” Stormy asked, pointing at Zayde’s computer screen.

“It’s their movements,” he said. “Porter had more of the little tracking devices. I had him give one to everybody on the team. It’s them moving around North Crest.”

Trent and Farrah appeared sporadically but mostly stayed outside, patrolling the property to make sure no one tried to sneak in.

Stormy seemed calm and collected, and she was trying to stay focused for me, but it didn’t help.

Every time I looked at the screen and saw one of those little dots sitting still too long, I imagined it was Cole lying in a ditch with a bullet in his brain.

“Avery, do you want to lie down?” Stormy asked, glancing back at me. “Rest on the couch for a bit? You’re getting yourself wound up.”

I stopped pacing. “No. It’s like a live wire’s been shoved in my mouth. I can’t stop moving. I’ll explode if I do.”

“That’s fair,” she said, giving me a sympathetic smile.

Zayde pointed at his screen. “Looks like things are coming to a head. Most of Porter’s group has stopped moving, and I got Langston and Cole together near the bank.”

Walking across the room, I put my hands on the back of his chair and leaned over to look at the screen. It looked like everyone had gathered in certain places—Porter and the pack members on the outskirts of town, and Cole with Langston near one of the larger buildings in town.

Just as I opened my mouth to ask what was supposed to happen next, my phone rang. Thinking it might be Cole calling, I snatched it from my pocket with shaking fingers and answered without even checking the caller ID.

“Cole?”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Kyle said, his voice oozing into my ear like slime.

“Kyle?” I whispered.

Stormy slapped her hand to her mouth, and Zayde jerked in his seat, lunging to grab the cable. He quickly plugged one end into the bottom of my phone and then went to work on his laptop.

“You sound surprised to hear from me,” Kyle said. “Shouldn’t be. I’ve given you plenty of time to think about my offer.”

Realizing I needed to make this last to give Zayde a chance to track him, I tried to get my bearings and act my ass off.

“Uh, yeah, you did,” I said. “Honestly, I thought I’d have a few more days to think about it.”

“And what is there to think about?” Kyle’s voice sounded like snakes slithering over dry leaves.

“Well, it’s a lot to figure out, and I?—”

“You need to figure out whether your precious little boy gets a bullet in the back of the head? Seems like a strange thing for a mother to think about.”

Closing my eyes, I did my best to not imagine that very thing happening. “Of course I want Ashton home alive.”

Stormy put a hand to her mouth, eyes watery, and slipped her hand into mine, offering me her support.

“Well, if that’s it, then it must be because of your cunt of a mate. Is that what’s holding you back from answering my proposition?”

“It wasn’t a proposition, it was an ultimatum,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Semantics,” Kyle scoffed. “Now, what have you decided?”

Zayde looked up at me and made a winding motion with his finger. I needed to keep him on the line longer.

“Uh, before… before I answer, how do I know you’ll actually let Ashton go?” I said, trying to stay calm and not stammer too much.

“So, you have been considering this,” Kyle said, making his voice into what I could only assume was his version of silky flirtation. “That’s good. I like that. I can tell you, God’s honest truth, that I don’t want to hurt the boy, but I’m a man who knows what he wants.”

Zayde gave me an urgent look. I needed to keep going.

“And what—” I swallowed the nausea that threatened to bubble up my throat “—do you want?”

He chuckled into the phone. “Oh? Do you want a little preview? Something fun to play through your dreams tonight? I’ll show you a better time than Cole ever could.

I’m about to be rich beyond belief. We can fly out to Greece.

I’d love to get you out on a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean, bend you over, and fuck your pretty little brains out.

Once you feel what my cock can do, you’ll forget how to spell Cole’s name. ”

I grimaced in disgust as an unwanted mental image of that scene played across my mind.

I could see Kyle behind me, sweaty and grunting as he thrust into me.

And there was me, gazing out at the ocean, tears of shame and agony streaming down my cheeks.

I had to physically shake my head to clear the images, tasting bile at the back of my throat as I did.

Just the thought of it made me feel like I would never get clean.

Kyle seemed ready to give me more details, but before he could elaborate, there was a muffled voice grunting in the background, and I wondered if that was Ashton struggling against his bonds.

When Kyle spoke again, the flirtation was gone. He was all business again. “Where is Cole right now, Avery?”

“I don’t know,” I lied. “Out with friends, I guess.”

“Friends?” Kyle said, and I could actually hear him grinning.

“Maybe? I’m not sure,” I huffed. “He’s a grown man, he can go where he wants.”

“You haven’t met all my people, have you, Avery?”

“What?”

“All my people. I’ve put together a decent team that’s helping me build something special.

Special people for a special mission. One of those special people is a young lady named Sydney.

You see, she sent me a message saying that she’d intercepted an attempt to track my phone.

She’s a fucking animal when it comes to computers. ”

Zayde turned away from his computer, eyes widening in shock. When he looked at me, I could see the fear in his eyes. Stormy clutched my hand even tighter.

“I’m… I don’t…” I grasped for words. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The thing is,” Kyle went on, “Sydney is very good at what she does. She keeps track of things. She watches my back, so to speak. I realized I needed someone with her talents. My other men are… well, let’s just say they’re not the most competent in technical matters.

And, I know you and your little pack of wolves thought you were slick and assumed I wouldn’t know you were coming to town.

You know what they say about people who assume, right?

It makes an ass out of you and me. I know exactly where Cole is right now. ”

“Oh, holy fuck,” Zayde whispered as he dug out his phone, fingers flying furiously over the screen.

My blood froze in my veins. If he knew where Cole was and what he was doing, that meant Kyle would be able to get the jump on him and Langston, Porter, the rest of the pack members. For all I knew, Cole was being held at gunpoint as we spoke.

“Your mate is gonna pay, Avery,” Kyle said, a menacing note to his voice. “For that, you can be certain. No one tries to fuck me over and gets away with it. I’ll be in touch.”

He hung up, and the phone slid from my fingers, clattering onto the carpet.

“What’s going on? You guys look like you saw a ghost.”

I whirled around to face Trent and Farrah.

“Fucker is smarter than we thought,” Zayde said, still typing on his phone.

“What do you mean?” Trent asked, his eyes narrowing.

“Kyle knew they were in town,” I said, my voice pitching higher with each syllable. “He had some chick named Sydney stop us from tracking his phone. Cole’s in trouble. This all backfired.”

Trent crossed the room in three quick steps and clasped my shoulders. “Calm down.”

“I need to warn Cole,” I said, the few tenuous threads of sanity I had left threatening to snap beneath the pressure of it all.

“Already on it,” Farrah said from behind him, her phone to her ear. A moment later, she winced in disgust. “Fuck! No answer.”

Trent pulled his own phone out and dialed. A second later, someone answered, and he started speaking.

“Porter? Is Cole near you?” He listened for a few moments and then closed his eyes in disappointment.

“Well, get to him. This has all gone sideways. Kyle fucking knew we were in town. He may have reserved men on the way. You guys are all sitting fucking ducks. Find Cole and keep him safe. He’s the one Kyle is gonna target above all else. Move !”

“Oh my God,” I whispered, my knees going weak.

“Avery,” Stormy said, taking both my hands in hers, “it’s gonna be okay. Don’t think the worst. Not yet. Do you understand me?”

I understood, but believing was impossible. Kyle was one step ahead of us. I didn’t know why we’d thought this would be any different. I wouldn’t be okay until Cole was back here where I knew he would be safe.

Collapsing into the chair beside Zayde, I did the only thing I could do—I watched his laptop screen. The tiny dots that had been still and structured a few minutes ago looked like cockroaches when the lights went on—groups of them moving in mad dashes across the screen.

“There’s our boys,” Zayde said, pointing at two dots farthest away from the others. “Cole and Langston.” Zayde tossed his phone on the table. “Langston isn’t answering my texts.”

As I watched, the two dots fled from the bank building, rushing west toward North Crest’s Main Street, rounding a corner toward the elementary school.

“Oh, good,” Zayde said with a sigh.

On screen, the other dots converged on Cole and Langston.

“That’s Porter and the others,” Zayde explained.

“They’ve met back up with Cole?” Trent asked, leaning over to get a better look. “Can you pull up some of the camera feeds around town? This shit tells me nothing. We need to know if they have Dallas with them.”

“I’ll try,” Zayde said, tapping away on his keyboard. The screen went black, and then the face of a pretty, young, red-headed woman appeared, her freckle-strewn face looking down into a smartphone camera. From the way the scenery behind her bobbed and moved, she was walking.

“Oh, hey there,” she said with a little giggle.

“Name’s Sydney.” She winked. “You can say hi if you want, I hacked your webcam.” She leaned forward and licked her lips.

“Oh, you’re hot, Mr. Computer Man,” she said, eyeing Zayde.

“Too bad you aren’t as good as me. I locked you out of North Crest’s CCTV system.

Don’t want you all watching the fun. Anyway, bye-bye now.

” She made a kissing sound and puckered her lips before the screen went blank again.

“What a cunt,” Zayde said.

The young woman did have an incredibly irritating quality to her, even in that short interaction. But something about her tickled at the back of my mind. She was almost too irritating. Too over the top. Almost like it was some sort of act to get a rise out of us.

“Are we really locked out?” Trent asked. For the first time, I could hear panic in his voice.

“She’s good,” Zayde said with a growl, “but I’m better.” He pulled a touchscreen tablet from his bag and booted it up. The operating system looked nothing like what I’d seen before, almost like it was home-designed. Knowing Zayde, it probably was.

“The bitch locked down my laptop access to the CCTV site,” Zayde snarled. “She must have skimmed my IP address when I was accessing stuff before. She won’t have the IP for this tablet. Give me a minute.”

The seconds while he worked dragged on, each one feeling like an entire hour. Farrah paced. Stormy continued to hold my hands tightly while we watched him work.

“Okay, I’m back in. Watch,” Zayde said, tilting his tablet so we could watch.

He showed us the black-and-white security cameras North Crest used in certain locations.

What I saw made it a little better, and a tiny sigh of relief escaped my lips.

The street looked totally deserted. No one was on the screen.

I’d have thought it was a still image if not for a bird swooping past the camera.

“Wait.” Zayde frowned and clicked his mouse on his laptop. The screen reverted to the tracking software he’d had up earlier. On the screen, a bunch of little dots moved across the street.

Zayde’s brows knitted in confusion as he looked from the tablet and back to the laptop.

“What’s wrong?” Trent asked.

“It’s… well, that’s the school. It’s where the others are supposed to be,” Zayde said. “So they should be right there.” He jabbed his finger on the tablet screen. “I don’t…” He shook his head, then let out a bitter laugh.

“What?” I asked.

He cursed under his breath and tossed the tablet on the table. “That bitch.”

“What?” I shouted. “For fuck’s sake, Zayde, what’s going on?”

“That hacker chick,” he said. “She spliced out the live footage with a pre-recording. This happened hours or even days ago,” he said, pointing at the tablet. “If she did that, then there’s no way to watch the live feed. We’re blind.” He chuckled bitterly to himself. “Well fucking played.”

“Can’t you, like, hack into it?” Farrah asked.

“I could. Maybe,” Zayde admitted. “If the cameras are even still hooked up. Even then, it’ll take hours. By then, it’ll be too late.”

“What do we do?” I asked. “We can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

“That’s exactly what we do,” Trent said.

“Trent, you cannot be fucking serious,” I screeched. “You guys should shift and head straight there. Cole and Langston need backup, they need?—”

Trent put a hand on my shoulder. I looked at him, hoping he’d say something that would walk me back from the edge.

“You trust Langston, right?” he asked.

“I do.”

“Then you have to trust that he’ll get Cole home.

Trust him to get all of them out of there.

Other than Cole, I can’t think of a single man on earth I’d rather have at my side than Langston.

I promised Cole I’d keep you safe. For all we know, this might be some ploy to get you alone so Kyle can come for you. We wait. And we hope.”

Sinking back to my seat, I sucked in a trembling breath, worried that I might faint. Trent kept his hand on my shoulder, and Stormy stayed right next to me. All I could do was look out the window and recall that awful feeling I’d had before Cole left. That fear that something bad would happen.

Now it felt more like a premonition.