Fracture (Unbreakable Bonds 6)

“What’s the plan?” Royce asked as soon as Cole shut the door behind him.

Yes! Jude was ready to get down to business.

Cole stepped through the crowd and turned on the TV hanging on Rowe’s wall. He tapped a couple of times on the small tablet in his hands before the image on the screen changed to reveal a darkly tinted SUV. The same one that had run Jude and Snow off the road.

“We tapped into the local traffic cams for Northern Kentucky,” Cole explained. “Jude and Snow were fortunately run off the road right in front of one. We caught the rear license plate as well as images of the three men that hopped out of the SUV.”

He paused and tapped on the tablet again. The static image of the SUV turned into a grainy video. At the bottom of the screen, he could see two tires and part of the undercarriage for his Jeep. At the top of the screen was the SUV. Snow stumbled around the Jeep, unsteady on his feet as he tried to move from the passenger side to the driver’s side in hopes of pulling out Jude. But he never reached Jude.

Three men swarmed out of the SUV and descended on Snow. His lover tried to fight them off, but he was still dazed and sore from the accident. Snow hadn’t stood a chance against three men. Jude’s heart cried out to see Snow hit several times by the men before one finally hit Snow on the back of the head with the butt of his gun. Snow went down in a heap, unconscious. They quickly grabbed him and shoved him into the SUV before surging onto the expressway in a spray of gravel and smoke.

The video stopped, but Jude could see it all replaying in his brain. It was like a part of his soul had been ripped in half. His general had been hurt trying to protect him, trying to save him.

“I’m sorry, Jude,” Cole said softly.

Jude sucked in a harsh breath and shook his head. “It’s okay. We at least know he was taken alive. If they wanted us dead, it would have been easier to shoot us both after the accident and then leave.”

“He’s alive,” Rowe said.

“Do we know where he was taken or by whom?” Lucas prodded.

“It took a bit to piece it all together, but he was taken north to a newer office building development near Blue Ash.”

“Blue Ash?” Dom said. He shifted on the couch, moving to sit perched on the edge. “That’s all financial companies. Who the hell stages a kidnapping out of freaking Blue Ash?”

Cole tapped his tablet again, and the screen shifted to the picture of a man in a navy blazer, white shirt, and plain blue tie. He had thinning brown hair and pale blue eyes. He looked like some middle-class, middle-management drone in a bad suit to Jude.

“By our research, the man behind the kidnapping, break-in…and Jordan’s assault is Gene Schaefer. He’s a customer service representative for a large financial advisory company that’s based in Blue Ash. He actually has a house in Forest Park. He’s married and has two kids. A five-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son.”

Jude stepped closer to the TV screen, eyes narrowing on the face of the man. After a second, he shook his head and stepped away. “You’ve got to be wrong. That can’t be the person behind it all.”

“I don’t believe I’m wrong, Jude,” Cole said.

“No,” he said sharply. He turned and faced Cole. “That man”—he stopped and pointed to the TV—“has a family and a good job. He has kids! How could he run that hideous porn site? How could he be behind the attack and violation of my brother?” His voice rose and cracked at the end. The man in the picture didn’t match what he’d imagined.

“Just before you arrived with Rowe and Noah, he was spotted arriving at the office building with one of the men from the SUV,” Cole added.

“But…” Jude turned back to look at the picture of Gene Schaefer.

“It’s just a mask,” Royce murmured. “I’ve known some truly evil people in my life, and if you passed them on the street, you would have thought them to be the souls of kindness. But it’s just an act. And this fucker is going to pay for hurting people. Doesn’t matter if he’s crafted this lie for his wife and kids.”

“It took some digging, but Gidget also managed to trace the LLC that owns the website back to Schaefer.” Cole paused and frowned. “If we had another month, I think we could get all the missing pieces of proof, but I feel confident that this is the man we’re looking for.”

Jude nodded woodenly. He believed Cole, but after facing Dwight Gratton with Snow, he had expected to be once again tracking down someone of the same kind of evil. “How do we do this?”