When I was in that position, I did the same thing. I could see it in her eyes. “She’s given up,” I answer, and my heart sinks. What did they do to her to take her fight away?
The camera slowly pans to Zane and zooms in. Someone is watching them and controlling the cameras, probably from this room.
Zane is roughly jerking at the bindings on his arms, causing the wounds on his chest to pour blood. “FUCK!” he yells, dropping his head back against the pole. He looks rough. His hair is long, and he has a full beard. I couldn’t imagine what he’s had to go through being that close to Les and couldn’t help her.
“I can’t watch anymore,” Holden says and jumps up from the chair, disappearing from the room.
The camera stays focused on Zane, so I fast-forward through the footage until it pans to the bed against the wall. We watch as one ofthe guys shoves her onto it, tying her arms down. You can hear Zane talking to her, and the door opens again.
Another guy walks into view without a mask, but you can only see the back of his head. He walks over and straddles Les on the bed. “Is that fucking Jay?!” Ryder explodes, looking closer at the screen. I let the video keep playing, all of us seething. This motherfucker has been on us about updates pretending to be worried, and he’s had them all along? We never suspected Jay; as far as we knew, Les had one run-in with him. Our only connection was his brother getting killed under Luca’s watch.
“Fuck. I can’t watch this,” Micah says when Jay rips Les’ nightgown, pulling it from her body. I hit fast-forward again because there’s no way we can watch it either, but we need to know if she got out.
“This fucker is dying a thousand deaths,” Ryder growls, and I think the same.
“Wait!” I yell to Micah before he reaches the door.
Les is bucking like a bronco, Jay’s head leans towards her, and she slams her head into his.
“Yes!” Ryder hisses when he sees how hard she’s fighting.
She bucks so much that she finally gets her legs free and shoves him off her. Zane is yelling so much in the background, encouraging her that it’s drowning out everything else being said.
We listen as Zane tells her to pull her arm free, and when she does, I can feel my heart leap in my throat. Another guy walks in; I hear a thud, someone grunts, and Zane skids to a stop beside Les. That must have been the guy with the snapped neck we saw. He unties her other arm before jerking her from the bed. He slides her nightgown back over her and ties the straps together. Zane grabs her hand, and they disappear from view. My heart stops beating entirely before beating triple time.
“They got out!” Micah exclaims. “These bodies are from them!”
“Holden! Get your ass back in here!” Ryder yells. “We need copies of that shit. Fucking Jay?” he seethes. “I’m going to gut him.”
Micah and I are nodding in agreement. We knew something was off with him. He was always coming around, and now we know why.He wanted to know how close we were to catching on that it was him. But where is he now?
Holden slowly opens the door, and we fill him in on what we found. We leave out the worst of it to save him that image. It will be something I see every time I close my eyes.
He runs back to the computers and almost sits on my lap, not giving me half a chance to stand up. He starts clicking through files in a rapid-fire, trying to find any other camera in the house and comes up empty.
“Damnit,” I say, running my hand through my hair, “He only had a camera in that room.”
Ryder jerks his phone to his ear. “We found her,” he tells someone and fills them in on what we found. “It was fucking Jay,” he growls. “I want everyone looking for this motherfucker. Find him, grab him, but he’sours.”
I don’t need to ask what he means. Jay is ours to torture for every finger he laid on my baby girl.
“Damn.It’s good to see you,” I say, jerking Gage in for a hug. At the same time, Ryder pulls Leo in for a hug. After Les went missing, they bonded and realized they were wasting their time fighting each other.
“Aw. You missed me, big fella?” Gage jokes, but he’s hugging me just as tight.
We almost lost Gage that day several times. They lost him on the operating table three times during his open-heart surgery to repair the mess the bullets made. He came out of surgery on a ventilator, where we all stood by and watched as they had to get his heart pumping again for the fourth time. He stayed on the ventilator for a week so it would give his body time to heal. The shoulder and stomach wounds were more superficial but still came with complications from which he managed to recover.
After a week, they weaned him from sedation and removed the tube from his throat. He repeatedly asked for Les, and when Ryder finally broke down, telling him she was missing, he lost it. They had to sedate him again to calm him down, and when he woke up the next time, he was so washed in guilt I didn’t think we would ever see the real Gage again.
“You too,” I tell Leo, pulling him in for a hug after Ryder let him go.
Gage went through weeks of grueling physical therapy to get back on his feet, but he was pushing himself too hard. So, after the twentieth dead lead, Leo, Ryder, and I put him on a plane with Leo to Cabo San Lucas, where Evander is, which just pissed him off. He agreed only because Leo said he would go with him.
“Tell me everything,” Gage says, sliding onto the stool at the island at the house, Leo sitting beside him.
Ryder fills them in on everything they missed while they were on a plane on the way back to the states. After two weeks, Gage and Leo weren’t going to stay away any longer, and it was just dumb luck they were on their way back when we caught this lead.
“Fucking Jay?!” Leo explodes when Ryder drops that bomb. “The detective? Zane’s fucking partner had them?”
