Southern Heart (Southern 5)

I hear the clicking of the keys in the background and wait. "Casey, there is nothing at my end. The last movement I have was at eleven fifty-six, and that is them shutting the front door."

Casey grabs his phone and opens up the alerts. "I’m sending you what I got exactly five minutes ago." My hands open and close. Has it been only five minutes?

"Someone fucked with the feed," I say, looking at him. "He had someone help him from inside."

"I would watch what you say right about now,” Jacob warns me, and I shake my head.

"Watch what I say?" I roar out. "She was supposed to be protected."

"Mayson," Ethan says my name low. "We are all on the same side."

"What time did you get the notice?" I look over at Casey.

"Seven minutes ago," he says to me, and I walk to the front of the hall and lean down to touch the blood.

"Things don’t make sense,” I say. "The blood on the floor is dry. It takes longer than seven minutes for this to dry." I walk back to the outside and look down at the blood. "In seven minutes, it would be dry but not seeped in this much." I look over at Jacob, who comes over and checks it out.

"He’s right," Jacob says. "There is no way this would be this dry in seven minutes."

"So what the fuck are you saying right now?" Beau says, his voice rising. "All I know is that my daughter is somewhere, and we don’t fucking know where."

"He must have triggered the alarm," Ethan says, shaking his head, and I walk back into the house, going to the front door, and I see it now.

"He cut the wires," I say, holding it up in my hand.

"Where the fuck is the truck?" Quinn now says. "She came here in Grandma’s truck."

"He probably took it," I say, and now Jacob gets his phone out.

"I put a GPS tracking system in it last year," he says and then talks into the phone. "I need a location for my mother-in-law’s truck."

I close my eyes and then look back down at my hand that is shaking uncontrollably. "Are you going to be okay?" Quinn looks over at me, and then he asks Ethan.

"It’s the adrenaline in his body," he says. "He’ll be fine."

Even though he says it, I know that this isn’t true. I won’t be fine. I will never ever be the same. I brought this here to her. I made this happen. I put her in all of this danger. I knew I should have walked away. Knew I should have fought her every step of the way, but for once, I felt this happiness I had never known. For once, I felt like a normal person, but I should have known that this shit doesn’t happen to me. It’s not written in the sky for me. No matter how many fucking sunrises I look at, they will all be the same.

"Something isn’t right," I say, looking around. The white curtain moves, and I walk over to it. I spot the fingerprint right away. "He was here." I shake my head. "How long was he here for before we even knew?”

"It’s like he was waiting for her," Ethan says, and I turn to look at them.

"He was waiting for me," I say, looking at the men, "and instead, he got her."

"We are going to find her," Beau says, and I have to wonder if he is convincing me of this or himself.

I look over at Ethan, who is thinking the same thing I’m thinking. Both of us are wondering how much torture he is going to inflict on her. I can’t close my eyes without seeing her blood. "Don’t do it." Ethan comes now to stand beside me. "Don’t let your mind go there."

"If I wasn’t here, he wouldn’t have her," I say what all of the men are thinking. Jacob’s phone rings, and I look over at him.

"They found the truck," he says. “It’s about a mile from here.”

We rush out of the house, everyone getting into the cars that they drove here in. My stomach flips and flops as my heart speeds up so fast it sounds like horses galloping beside me. The burning creeps up in the back of my neck. "I can’t live without her," I finally say, the pain in my chest now coming back again. "She is everything."

"We are going to fucking find her," Ethan says. "Or we are going to die trying."

"When we find her,” I look over at him, "I want you to take her away." He looks at me. "I want you to leave me with him." I make a list in my head now about all the things I’m going to do to him. The torture I am going to inflict on him fills my body. Shooting him will be too easy. No, not for my father. He deserves to be in hell before I finally put him there.