It’s less than ten minutes later that the car gets back on the road. In broad daylight, they have a person in the back of their car, and they stop to get gas? No one notices? That means Brek wasn’t conscious. There’s no way he’d be sitting in the back quietly while being kidnapped, right?
Once the car is driving again, I move back to my task. My apps say that this driver is active right now on the app.
I leave Jessica for a minute and grab another phone so I don’t have to interrupt Jessica watching Brek’s progress. I’m dialing before I retake my seat and glance at the clock. We’re nearing midnight.
“Hello?” Avory answers.
“I need a retrieval.”
“Now?”
“Ten hours ago.”
There’s a pause. “Okay. Send me the information. We’re on our way.”
“Don’t be gentle,” I tell him, and hang up before texting his phone a photo, car details, Shuttled details, and ping his phone to track the car.
“Who did you call?” Jessica asks.
“How much do you know about what we do here?” I counter.
“I mean, you do a little bit of everything, don’t you?”
Instead of beating around the bush, I call Myro. “You’re back? Everything okay?” he answers.
I look at Jessica, wondering why she didn’t tell him what was going on. “How much does she know?”
“Let’s call it three percent.”
“Can she handle the full load?”
“Why? What’s going on, Voss?”
“I don’t have time for small talk. Brek has been abducted. Jessica was with me when I realized something was wrong. I have his phone, but he’s still missing.”
“Fuck. Go to fifty percent. Leave the blood out for now, but I think she’ll be okay with it when she realizes how many people we’ve killed to protect several of her friends and Briar’s son. Where are you?”
“Office.” I hang up and turn to look at Jessica. “I called the triplets. Actually, two/thirds of them. They’re going to bring the driver who picked up Brek… to a location for questioning.”
She stares at me. I can’t tell what she’s thinking, and honestly, I don’t have time to figure it out.
“Listen. If you can’t handle a little bit of darkness and some bloody truths revealed about us, I suggest that you stop asking questions and… maybe go home. I’ll find Brek. Promise.”
“Tell me,” she says.
“I don’t have anything to tell right now. Once we have the driver in our hands, we’ll find some more information. Right now, I’m going to hack into any surveillance cameras that the truck stop has while you go back to watching the dot move.”
Jessica swallows. She gives me a curt nod and turns her attention back to the screen. Minutes tick by in silence before she says, “I didn’t tell them. Levis has been asking if anyone has heard from Brek for the past several hours.”
I close my eyes. There’s no time to deal with freakouts and emotions. I look down at my hands lying flat on my desk. I can’t ignore her friends. Brek’s friends. But I don’t have the patience to deal with them right now.
My office door opens, and we turn to look at it. Dad and Myro step inside, shutting the door behind them.
“Good. You deal with your friends,” I say and turn back to my computer.
Myro offers his hand to Jessica. She gets up from her seat to take it, but she digs her heels in when he tries to pull her from the office. “No. I want to know what’s going on. I want to help. I don’t care what you do as long as you bring Brek home.”
Alive. That’s the word she leaves off. It’s been eleven hours now.
