By the time we realized it, it was already too fucking late.
I shove back from the table, the legs of the chair screeching against the floor, loud enough to cut through the tense silence.
“She’s been gone for an hour,” I say, my voice rough and cracking under the weight of the words. Like saying them out loud might somehow make it hurt less. It doesn’t.
No one says anything. They don’t need to. The silence in the room speaks volumes. This is bad. They all know it. Every second we waste feels like another piece of her slipping away.
Sanford breaks the silence, his tone measured but urgent. “The first twenty-four hours are critical.”
I already know that.
I fucking know that.
Because if we don’t find her before then . . .
I don’t let myself finish the thought. I can’t.
Mal is already in motion, snatching the radio from his belt and barking out orders to the security teams scattered around town. “We need traffic cams, toll booth logs—anything that tells us which direction they took her.”
Atlas pulls out his phone, his fingers flying over the screen. “I’ve got a contact who can scrub satellite footage in real-time. We’re already pulling data from the cell towers around here.”
Not sure how he has all that. I don’t ask. Actually, I barely register their voices.
My pulse is hammering in my ears, drowning out everything else. My hands shake as I grab my truck keys from the workbench.
I can’t sit here. I can’t stand still.
I need to do something.
I need to find her.
“Hop,” Mal says, his voice cutting through the haze and stopping me in my tracks.
I whip my head toward him, barely hanging on by a thread. “What?”
“You need to keep your head clear,” he says carefully, like he’s trying not to set me off.
I laugh, dark and humorless. “My head is clear,” I grind out. “Crystal fucking clear. I know exactly what I need to do—find the bastards who took her and make them regret it.”
Atlas steps in, arms crossed, his tone firm. “We’re doing this smart. It’s not some sloppy shit pulled by the Timberbridge assholes, Hop. You storm in without thinking, you’re giving them exactly what they want.”
Fish’s radio crackles to life, and all of us freeze.
“We’re still in the air, but we think we’ve got a location,” a voice says. “An abandoned hunting lodge about an hour out of town. You might want to start working on that while we arrive. We still have another four hours in the air.”
My stomach drops.
An hour.
They’ve had her for an hour and she’s an hour away. Anything could be happening to her right now.
I spin on my heel and make a beeline for my truck.
“Let’s go,” I growl, not bothering to check if anyone’s following me.
Atlas and Mal fall into step behind me, their footsteps matching mine. Sanford, however, stays rooted, his hand coming up to stop us.
“We don’t go in blind,” he says, his voice steady but firm.
