Zy was fucking right.
Trees pounded a fist on the table. “Goddamn it!”
“I know. It sucks. It’s fucking awful. But let’s talk about what we should do. How can I help?”
Trying not to lose his shit while he waited for his computer to finish, he shook his head at Zy. Hell, Trees barely knew how to help locate Laila. What useful task could he tell his friend to handle? Zy was a demolitions guy. There was nothing to blow up.
Trees’s heart was already doing that on its own.
“I don’t know. I don’t…” He tried not to give in to panic. “Something. I don’t fucking know what.”
“Okay.”
Zy’s tone was placating, and it rubbed Trees wrong. Irrationally, he knew that. Zy wasn’t the one he should be pissed off at. “Just do…anything.”
“After I check in with the bosses, I’ll have a conversation with Valeria. She might have some idea where Victor would hole up or take Laila.”
Actually, that was a great idea, and Trees was kicking himself for not thinking of it. “Yeah. Good. Thanks.”
“I’ll be back. Call me if you find anything. In the meantime, keep it together. We’re going to find her.”
Trees sure as hell hoped so. After less than a week with Laila, he had no idea how he’d ever live without her again.
Yeah, he was so in love he was fucked.
In the distance, he heard Zy drive off. Trees clung to hope—that his buddy would get Valeria to cough up something helpful, that one of his scans would turn up a needle in a haystack, that they would uncover anything that led them back to Laila.
Six hours later, he still had nothing because that’s what Valeria knew. That’s what his scans showed. That’s the communications he’d received from Laila’s abductor. That’s how much hope he had left.