“So why did you come now?” Quincy asked.
She bit her lower lip, and heavy tears dripped from her lashes. “Because he made me help take her, and I didn’t want to. And you love her.” Her eyes when she looked at him were accusing. “Don’t you?”
“More than anything.”
A sob broke from her throat. “And I love you. So I can’t do that to you. I can’t. So I came here instead of leaving. I was supposed to go away. To hide until it was over. But I came here because I had to tell you.”
He felt the weight fall from him, like water draining from a tub. “Thank you,” he said. “You’ll help me find her?”
She nodded. “Except I don’t know where he took her.”
“Maybe we can track him,” Ryan said. “How did he get her?”
“I rear-ended her at a stoplight. He made me. And then when she pulled over, he took her.”
“And then you drove her car to her office?”
Sofia nodded.
“What intersection?” Damien asked, and when she told him, he pointed to Quincy. “Traffic cameras,” he said. “Maybe we can figure out his route.”
“Working on it.”
“Sofia, I’m not mad at you,” Damien said. “Not anymore.” He knelt in front of her, his hands on her knees. “I need you to think. Do you know where he’d take her?”
Her lips pressed together as she thought. After a moment, she nodded. “He has a house in the canyons. I don’t think it’s really his. I think it belongs to a friend. Someone rich who’s never around.”
“So no property records,” Ryan said.
“And you don’t know where it is?”
“Just that it’s off Franklin Canyon. I’ve been with him, but he drove. I didn’t pay attention. It’s confusing in the hills. But I know the codes. For the security gate and the front door, I mean. I can get inside.” She smiled, as if she’d just solved the problem, then her face crumpled. “Except I don’t know where.”
“Fuck.” Damien paced, pounding his fist into his palm as he tried to think. He’d already tried tracking Nikki’s phone, but he tried again, even knowing it would be futile. It was, of course. And tracking her car didn’t help. If only he’d—
He turned to Ryan. “Abby,” he said. And as Ryan stared in confusion, Damien called Nikki’s partner, kicking himself for not remembering sooner.
“I need Nikki’s log in for the Mommy’s Helper analytics app,” he said. “I need to locate her tracker, right now.”
“Damien? What’s going on?”
“Abby, just do it.”
“Right. Sure. I have to get in through the back end. I’ll text it to you.”
He had the information in under a minute. He signed out of his own account then signed into hers. He held his breath, praying she hadn’t left the damn tracker on their bedside table.
For a second, there was nothing. Then he saw the little red dot representing Nikki—and it was right there in Franklin Canyon.
“Come on,” he said to Sofia. “You’re going with me.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
“Bloody fucking hell.” Quincy sat behind the wheel of the black Range Rover, then glanced at Damien in the passenger seat. “This can’t be right.”
“No,” Damien said grimly as he stared at the empty lot with the For Sale By Owner sign. “No, it can’t be.” He opened the passenger door and got out, Quincy and Ryan stepping out, too, along with Sofia.
The rest of the team—essentially a private SWAT team that Quincy and Ryan had pulled together—stayed in the Range Rover, with a second unit following behind. Only ninety minutes had passed since they’d tracked Nikki’s signal, and that included travel time from Malibu. Damien knew they’d moved fast—knew that pulling this team together that quickly was a minor miracle, even though Ryan assured him that they’d been at the ready since Anne was taken. A new sub-group of the security division that he’d assembled.
All well and good, but ninety minutes was ninety minutes too long. And now they’d hit another goddamn snag.
“Is it here? In this lot?” Ryan looked around at the lot that sloped downward at such a steep angle it would take an engineering feat and a lot of money to build on it. “Did he find it and toss it?”
“No,” Damien said, because even though Ryan could be right, that wasn’t a possibility he was willing to consider. Because that possibility meant that they’d hit a wall. “No,” he repeated, remembering Abby’s words. “She said the trackers were having addressing problems, remember? Nikki’s nearby. We just haven’t pinpointed it.”
“So we draw a circumference and go door to door,” Ryan suggested. “Do that, though, and we tip him off.”
“And that’s still a lot of properties,” Quincy said. “Everything adjacent to this lot. And then at least one more layer out beyond that. Even if we send the team out, it’ll take time. And it’s not as if we can storm every house. We’ll have to assess, narrow the possibilities, and then hope to hell that when we do go in, we’re right.”
Damien turned to Sofia, who had crouched down to urge a caterpillar onto her finger. Now she stood, watching it inch along the back of her hand. “Would you recognize it if you saw it. The drive? The gate?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. The gate was black, and there was a box for the code. But I couldn’t see the house, and most gates look the same.”
Damien bit back a curse. They were running out of time and ideas. If only her cell sent a GPS signal even if it wasn’t turned on, then—
Not her phone. Sofia’s.
“Call Jeff,” he ordered Ryan. “Get him on the phone now.”
“Damien?” Sofia came up behind him. “Did you find her?”
“No,” he said. “You did.”
She frowned, her gaze shifting to Ryan, whose face had just cleared. He obviously understood now, too.
“You’ve been there,” Quincy said to her. “To the house?”
Sofia nodded.
“In that case, the location is probably—not definitely,” he added with a warning look toward Damien, “—stored in the phone.”
“It will be there,” Damien said. “She hardly ever turns off her phone.”
“Jeff’s on the line,” Ryan said. “He’s in the phone and—yeah, that’s right. Franklin Canyon.” A pause, then Ryan looked at Sofia. “You visited a location near here about a week ago. Is that it?”
Sofia nodded, her eyes wide. “I had no idea you could do that.”
“Most people don’t,” Damien said, as Ryan studied the map link that Jeff texted.
“There,” he said, pointing to a property that was two lots over with no visible structure. Presumably, the house was set far back, behind the gate.
“I’m going in alone with Sofia.”
“The hell you are.”
Damien stood his ground. “Don’t push me, Ryan. I have Sofia with me. She knows the house. Knows where he probably has Nikki. I get in, get Nikki out, then your team busts in and does your thing. Try to capture Breckenridge, but if you have to kill the fucker, then you do that.”
“And if you’re caught? Jesus, Damien…”
“Then I make him a deal. Release Nikki, and he can have me.”
“No.”
“This is the plan, like it or not. I’m doing what it takes to get her free. And you know damn well that you’d do the same.”
Ryan ran his fingers through his hair, but didn’t argue. Beside him, Quincy focused on Damien. “Take us through it.”
“I go in with Sofia. Once we’ve confirmed the gate code, we relay it to the team, and you follow. You hold your position until I get Nikki clear. Other than that, use your judgment.”
Quincy and Ryan exchanged glances.
“It’s not up for negotiation,” Damien said, then turned to Sofia. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Quincy said. “You know how to handle a gun?”
Damien nodded, then took the Glock that Quincy handed him. “Don’t hesitate,”
Quincy said. “If you need to, you fire.”