“It’s genius, really,” Dylan said as I flew across the town in that direction. “Shame we’ll have to kill the bastard.”
Not a shame at all. I was going to fucking enjoy every second of it.
“I just need Riley to be okay,” I said, my brother about the only person I’d ever admit my fear to. The only person I could show weakness around. “I can’t fucking live without her.”
“I know,” he said, his eyes forward, expression grim. “All of us love her, Beck, and I have faith that she won’t let them take her down easily. She’s a fighter, our girl.”
For once I didn’t want to fucking pummel his face into the front dash for calling herourgirl. Because she was ours. A Delta Heir. Our family.
My phone rang, but I ignored it. We’d put out a ton of feelers into our network and no doubt they were checking in, but I had a good feeling about the safe house. This was where we’d find them.
Dylan’s phone started just after that, and he actually checked his screen. “It’s Captain Decker,” he said, and I took my eyes off the road for a split second to stare at him.
“Answer it,” I said.
“Decker,” Dylan said, his phone on speaker.
The Captain wasted no time on pleasantries. “Heard you were looking for your girl. We just got a call from a female, said her father was shot and Catherine Deboise was in the apartment somewhere. We’re heading there now.”
“Address?” I barked out.
He gave us the same street and number as the lawyer. “We’re almost there,” I said shortly.
Decker cleared his throat. “Don’t do anything stup—”
Dylan cut him off before he could finish, the phone back in his pocket as I pressed my foot even harder to the floor. Ignoring stop signs and red lights, I flew toward the apartments, the sound of sirens in my ears.
I had a single-minded determination to get to Riley.
Tires screeching, I was out the door before the car even stopped. My body screamed, still fucked up from the last fight, but the pain was easy to ignore. Physical pain I was a fucking expert at handling. It was the emotional vise around my heart that was new. The thought that Riley might have been hurt … possibly killed, in the time it had taken me to find her.
I was on the edge of losing my mind.
Dylan was at my back, always there when I needed him, as we stormed into the lower levels of the building. This bottom floor was not even fifty percent finished; the elevator was clearly not ready to take anyone up.
“How do we find their place in here?” Dylan bit out, gun in hand as he cased the area.
“We think like those fucking assholes,” I snarled. “We figure out how we would make this safehouse work, and we’ll know where they are.”
At the end of the day, rich, arrogant bastards were all the same. We thought the same. Planned the same. And took the same risks.
Some of us were just better at it than others. Graeme was not one of those, so we should be able to figure him out.
“Service elevator,” I said quickly, noticing it off to the side. This was how the construction crew got their stuff up to the higher levels.
Dodging around piles of wood, tiles, sheet board, and a fuckton of other building materials, I led Dylan to the cage which was attached to the side of the building. We had to step out through a makeshift door, but then we were inside, and I hit the button to take us almost to the top. Top floor was too obvious. Graeme would be just under that.
Police stormed in the building just as we started to move, and I shouted for them.
“Floor twelve,” I bit out, as they raced toward us, but we were already shooting up the side. When we reached the floor, the metal cage door opened. My gun was in my hand, and I didn’t move cautiously. There was no time for that.
It was dark up here. Tarps on the side blocked the last of the sunlight. At first, I thought I fucked up. Everything looked like a construction site—same as downstairs—but then Dylan spotted a single scuff mark in the dust. It was like God himself was on our side because somehow, a sliver of light hit that very spot creeping in through a gap in the drywall.
Staying silent, we followed that scuff, right to the back of the building. In the distance, I heard the elevator ding, and in front of us, the faint noise of screaming.
I was sprinting, and it took every ounce of my fucking skill to not land in a pile of power tools. Finally finished walls, a hallway, and nondescript door came into view.
Catherine was the one screaming as I hit the door with my shoulder, smashing it down. The entry led right it to the formal living room, giving Dylan and me a front row seat to Catherine shooting Riley in the chest.
