“Are you sure,Bello?” I ask, not doubting his abilities. We just need to make sure this isn’t just another random attack.
“I’m sure,” he replies, shrugging my hand off and turning in the chair to face me. “Do you not trust me now?”
That is the root of the biggest problem with Holden right now. He’ll track down a lead, and we follow without hesitation, always coming up empty-handed. He thinks we doubted his abilities no matter how often we tell him otherwise. It isn’thim; Les disappeared without a trace.
I lean down and hook my hand on the nape of his neck, bringing his forehead to mine. “I’ll never doubt you, Holden, and I’ll always trust you.”
He shoves me back and stands up. “You shouldn’t!” he yells, kicking the computer chair out of his way. “You shouldn’t fuckingtrust me! How many times have I sent you on a wild goose chase, and we still can’t fucking find HER!”
This is the bomb that’s been primed and ready to explode. If he needs to use me as his punching bag, I’ll let him so I can hopefully make him feel a little better.
“You’ve spent weeks searching everything you could,” I say, stepping into his face. His chest is heaving, and his hands are balled into fists. I know he can swing on me at any time by his stance, but that doesn’t stop me. “You want to hit me? Do it. You want to yell? Do it. But then you’re going to sit your ass down and tell us exactly what the fucking plan is.”
He steps up like he’s going to swing, and I brace myself. I won’t swing back because he needs this. His arm comes up, and I tense, waiting for the blow, but he pulls me into his body, wrapping both arms around my neck. His whole body shakes from emotions, so I lock both arms around him and hold him tight. “We have to find her,” he whispers brokenly, and I can feel my heart break again.
“I know,” I whisper back. “And we will.” I pull back from the hug and place both hands on his cheeks so he has to look me in the eye. “You can find her; you just have to believe in yourself, Holden.” I place a gentle kiss on his lips and wait for him to decide.
He finally jerks a nod and steps back. He pulls his chair back over and starts typing again. I breathe a sigh of relief that I could bring him back from that. So many times, I’ve looked in Holden’s eyes and seen that lost boy we brought here to live with us. Les helped him break out of his shell, and I’ll be damned if I let her efforts go to waste, but I’m only one person.
“It’s there, Ryder. Ifeelit,” Holden says adamantly. “She’s there.”
He echoes my thoughts from earlier, and it isn’t something you can explain. It’s a gut feeling yelling at you to get off your ass and go. I look around at the others and see their resolve hardening again. “Let’s go then.” Dex and Micah nod, leaving the room to get their stuff together and gather more guards. “Keep looking at what’s around there, and I’ll be back.” Holden nods, and when I walk away, he grabs my hand.
“Bring her back to us, Ryder.” I squeeze his hand but don’t offerany promises. I’ve made that mistake the last hundred times we’ve gone out to follow a lead. I squeeze his hand one last time and go in search of the others.
Please let us find her.
“From what Holden showed me,this house is the only house for about ten miles. Everything out there has been abandoned for a long time,” I tell the guys as we’re strapping on our vests a couple of miles from where the house is. I check the magazine in my AK-12 and click it back into place. There are ten of us, including me, Micah, and Dex.
“We stay tight as a group going to the house, then fan out with your partner and shoot on sight.” Dex slaps a picture of Zane on the hood. “Except him. He stays alive.”
We’ve had cops crawling up our asses for weeks because Gage was found in a stolen car, and Zane disappeared with Les. We didn’t even ask them for help because whatever they can do, we can do better; we don’t have to stay inside legal lines. We searched Zane’s apartment from top to bottom and didn’t find anything that would implicate him in taking her on his own, and there’s also the video footage of him getting shot when he tried to protect Les and Gage.
“Let’s go,” I say, taking off toward the house. A huge gate surrounds it, so one by one, we scale it and drop to the other side on quiet booted feet.
The house comes into view, and it’s bigger than we first thought. It’s a sprawling country-style house that looks way out of place in this abandoned part of town. We don’t see anyone guarding the outside, so either this isn’t the right place, and we’re about to scare the shit out of someone, or they thought we would never find it.
We all rush up on the front porch; Dex counts to three with his fingers, lifts a booted foot, and kicks the door. It splinters around the door jamb and flies open. We spill in guns at the ready, andsomething already doesn’t feel right. Dex and I share a look; he’s thinking the same thing as me.
I signal to fan out, and everyone partners up, leaving Dex and me together. We search every room in the front of the house from top to bottom before moving deeper into the home.
We move through a formal-looking living room sweeping it on our way and every room in between. We go through a space that is nothing but windows that looks like it used to be a conservatory but is empty now. I swing around, looking at the room, and an uneasy feeling starts to set in.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” Dex says, looking around with me, doing the same thing with his weapon. “The house looked bigger from the outside.”
I know who to ask. “Holden,” I call out on comms, “Can you see us?” I know he’s tracking our phones, but I need to make sure.
“Yeah,” he answers.
“We’re staring at a wall. Is there anything else here?”
“Hold on,” he replies, clicking away at keys. “There should be about fifteen hundred more square feet ahead of you.”
Dex and I start feeling the wall for any trigger for a hidden doorway, but neither of us is opposed to blowing it up if we need to. Dex’s hand slides down beside a picture frame, and you can hear the door open. We ready our guns again, and he pulls the door open. The smell hits us first with the overwhelming stench of an old musty basement and piss.
The hallway narrows, so I fall in line behind Dex, walking down it, lights on the wall every so often. We get to the only door at the end, and I see the bolts on the outside, indicating this room is to keep someone in.
Dex and I share another look before he reaches for the handle. He jerks it open, and we rush in, sweeping our guns around. There’s a dirty single bed immediately to our left with ropes hanging from the frame, chains hanging from a steel beam, and a raggedy curtain pulled closed at the end of the room. We slowly walk toward it; I reach out and grab it while Dex aims, ready to fire. I take a second to hope that Les or even Zane isn’t dead behind it. I pull it back, and aguy dressed in all black is slumped against the wall with his neck bent at an odd angle. A white skull mask is lying beside his leg, and it’s the exact mask the guys were wearing that grabbed Les. Holden enhanced the video the best he could, only to find out the assholes were wearing them. He doesn’t look familiar, so I snap a picture on my phone so that Holden can run it.
