I still wasn’t able to process it. My wife, the love of my life, sounded like she was being flayed alive.
My baby girl was gone.
Gracie snatched the phone out of my hand. “Hey, what’s going on? Bash looks like he’s turned into a statue.” I met her gaze, silently begging her to tell me I heard it wrong. But as the seconds ticked by and she listened to the man on the other end, her face turned stony, and I knew it wasn’t a mistake.
The woman was the sweetest person I’d ever met. If she looked like she was about to murder someone, then I knew it was real.
Finally snapping out of it, I jumped to my feet and grabbed my phone back. “Pull the camera footage from security. Get everyone moving. We have to find her.”
“Security is here now. The place is going on lockdown, but I think the bastard is long gone by now. The cops will be here any minute, brother. Bates—”
“Bates is goddamn dead,” I roared.
“I didn’t hear that,” Gracie said from behind me. “Nope. I’m pretending I didn’t hear that so I can defend you later if I have to.” She pushed on my back, and I turned to glare at her. “If I have to,” she repeated, lowering her voice. “Don’t make me have to, okay? Hide that fucking body really, really good.”
“Raven!” Jet’s yell pulled me back to the man on the other end of my phone. “Where the fuck are you going?”
I strained to listen, heard my brother-in-law curse and then his heavy breathing, as if he were running.
“Jet?”
“Bash, man, Raven just took off. She’s already at the car!”
My stomach bottomed out. That damn woman. I had a million things to worry about right then, and she was taking off.
But I already knew where she was going.
Bates.
“Trigger, let’s go,” I called over my shoulder, but the retired army vet was already behind me. “Get your rifles,” I told him once we were on the street. It was better to be prepared for anything and everything than not. “We might need a sniper.”
My motorcycle was parked right out front of the law office, the street fairly deserted since it was Saturday morning. Trigger threw his leg over his own, going back to his house, while I headed for the first place I could think to look for Bates. His house.
Bates lived outside of town but within the county lines. It was a good twenty-minute drive to his place, but I was there in half that. Still, Raven had beaten me there, and I found her climbing through one of the windows, not seeming to care that his neighbors could see her if any of them so much as looked out their window.
A crash from inside had me barreling up the driveway from my motorcycle, and I quickly kicked open the front door just as I found Raven with a gun pointed in Bates’s face. “Where is he?” she seethed, a mother bear desperate for her cub.
“Wh-What are you talking about?” he stuttered, eyeballing first the gun aimed right at his nose, then me.
“Answer her!” I roared. “Where the fuck is Fontana?”
“Wh-Who?”
Raven grabbed his shirt, pulling him in closer and pressing the gun flush against his forehead. She was slender, and the sheriff outweighed her by a good hundred and twenty pounds, but she was so enraged, she seemed to be even stronger than me all of a sudden. “Enzo Fontana took my baby. I know you work for him, you sick sonofabitch. You have five seconds to tell me where he is, or your brains are going to be all over your motherfucking couch!”
“I-I don’t know anything about—”
“Raven!” I yelled when her finger started to squeeze the trigger, and I eased toward her. “He does know. Don’t fucking kill him yet.” When I could reach her, I wrapped an arm around her waist, not pulling her away, but letting her know I was there with her. We would figure this out.
We would find our daughter.
Her hand stayed steady, but I felt the rest of her body tremble. “She’s probably so scared,” Raven whispered. “And this bastard knows where she is. He has to.”
“I-If you kill me, you’ll never see her again,” Bates warned. “They’ll give you the needle for killing a cop.”
She leaned in closer. “I don’t see a cop around here. Just a spineless little pussy who is about to piss his pants. Tell me where Fontana is.”
“I really don’t know!” he screamed, sounding terrified, his bulldog-like face deathly pale.