“That might be the case,” her dad growled, speaking to Travis, but giving me the death stare. “But it doesn’t change the fact that she did, and now here we are, in this fucked up situation, and we need to work together to find her. The fighting can wait until after. Am I clear?”
Travis nodded and ran his hands over his face. The turmoil that I was feeling was written all over him too.
“How the fuck are we supposed to find her from this dodgy website?”
“That’s where we come in.” Cill lead a flustered-looking Paul back into the room. I offered my seat and he proceeded to click away on my laptop, then grimaced and shook his head.
“I’ll get to the IP address eventually, but it could take hours, days maybe. How long have we got?” He looked up at me, then thought better of it and glanced across at Cill.
“We have no time. We need something now.” I wanted to grab this Paul and pound an answer out of his face, but I knew that wouldn’t help anyone.
My mobile started to buzz on my desk and I saw Luca’s number appear. I wanted to ignore it, but something told me to answer. It was always worth telling him when shit was going down in this city. He had an uncanny way of being able to dive into shit and come up smelling of roses. As far as I could tell anyway.
“Marquez, this isn’t really a good time. Can I call you back?”
Luca and I had been through some of the worst times of our lives together. I trusted him, and in turn he’d always been a loyal friend.
“Just tell me what’s up, Caine. Who needs to disappear? You know time isn’t on our side when we need to track someone down.”
I rubbed my temples in frustration. Dealing with Steve was the least of my problems.
“I need more than one person to disappear, but I can’t find the other one and he’s got my girl.”
“You mean Ryley?” Luca’s voice sounded strange, strained even.
“Yes, Ryley. Who else would I be talking about?”
I heard Luca growl on the end of the phone, and then he started to bark out some orders to the men that must’ve been around him.
“Your Ryley is with my Chloe. I just spoke to Chloe half an hour ago. She said they were going for coffee. Fuck.”
The knot in my stomach twisted as I waited to hear what Luca would say next. Everyone knew Chloe was untouchable, but I hoped and prayed Ed had gotten that message.
“What’s your plan?” I asked him, expecting a string of threats to fly down the phone at me.
“I’m gonna go and get them,” he said, way more calmly than I’d expected.
“That easy, huh?”
“Yeah, it is when you’re fitted with a shit ton of trackers. We both had them put in months ago, so we always know where to find each other. Right now she’s at an address across town and her monitor shows she’s still alive, so I’m heading over there now. Whoever has them both is going to wish he’d never been born.”
Genius. Pure fucking genius.
“I need to come with you. Luca, you have to send me that address. Please. This is my shit to clean up. I need this,” I begged, and thankfully, Luca relented.
Two minutes later, we were heading across town with Cill in the seat beside me. Dennis was fussing about in the back seat, checking his guns and ammo. And Travis and his dad were tailing my ass in their Range Rover behind. We were the fucking cavalry, ready to do battle and go to war at any cost.
“I didn’t realise you’d make me quite so much money on this auction, bitch. I should’ve gone into this trafficking gig a long time ago. Think I’ve been doing the wrong hustles. Don’t you?”
Ed sat smiling at me like he’d just won the fucking lottery. Maybe he thought he had, but not for long. Things were about to take a turn for the worse for him. I wasn’t being sold to anyone. I’d rather die than let him lead me out of here to God knows where.
“You won’t see a penny of that money.”
“Won’t I?” He gave me a fake, confused look, trying to toy with my heightened emotions.
“No. You need the merchandise to sell, and I’m not for sale.”
He laughed and pulled his gun out again, pointing it at my face before dropping it and his arm to the side.