“Have you checked the yard? Done a perimeter sweep?” I ask. “Kids like to play hide-and-seek. Are you sure they’re not just hiding somewhere?”
“We have checked everywhere, Knight. There’s no sign of them. It’s as though they just vanished out of thin air.”
“Fuck. FUCK!”
I drag my hand down my face as my stomach ties into knots, and as I push my truck to its limits, I grab my phone, immediately bringing up my home security app. There aren’t any notifications, only alarms from where Hunter, Izzy, and Harper have gone running in and out over the past few minutes.
I double-check the back door camera, but again, I get nothing that tells me what the fuck happened to the twins. “You said they were in the guest room?” I clarify, bringing up the cameras from the side of the property, but the guest room window is in a blind spot. It won’t give me much, but if someone has taken them, I might just see something that could give me even the slightest clue where to start looking.
“It’s okay, doll,” I murmur as I try to concentrate on the road while also scanning through the footage over the past few minutes. “We’re going to find them.”
“What if they get hurt because of me?” she cries. “I gave Jonah my word that I could do this. I told him they’d be safe with me.”
“We’re going to get them back,” I tell her, just as a shadow cuts across the front lawn. My brows furrow, watching even closer, but the angles aren’t right, and it’s almost as though whoever is there knows exactly where my cameras are. I can’t see what I need to see, and as frustration burns through me, I see the slightest flash of pink dart across my screen, and I screech to a halt in the middle of the highway, needing to back up the footage and really concentrate on what I’m seeing.
“I’ve got something on the security feed,” I tell Harper as I back up the footage and hit play in slow motion, feeling sick to my fucking stomach that I am stopped on the side of the road when Harper needs me more now than ever, but I have to do this. I have to figure out what the fuck happened to those little girls. I need to know they’re safe.
Watching the footage through again, I come to the portion of pink flashing across the screen and hit pause, seeing one of the twins attempting to dash across the front lawn, and as I push forward to the next frame, I see the very edge of Mae’s face as she reaches out and grips the little girl’s arm, yanking her right back out of the shot.
“Fuck,” I grunt, throwing my phone down on the passenger seat, my chest heaving with a raging fury. “It was your mom.”
“What?” Harper says, disbelief thick in her tone. “It couldn’t be. She’s in the hospital. She hasn’t been discharged. I—”
“It was your fucking mother, doll. I got her on camera. She took the girls from the bedroom window. She lured them out and took off.”
“No, she . . . she wouldn’t do that,” Harper says, her tone breaking a million times over. “I know she’s a terrible person, but not even she’s this stupid. She would never involve the girls in this bullshit. Jonah will never speak to her again.”
“Well, she did.”
“FUCK!”
“I’m going to be there in ten minutes, doll. I need you to hold on. I need you to calm down. Do you understand me? We’re going to go and get these girls, but we’re doing it the right way with my team at our back.”
“It’s one thing for them to come after me, but the girls? They’re innocent.”
“I know,” I say. “Now, tell me you understand. Tell me you won’t do anything stupid.”
“Knight, I . . .” Harper sighs, her voice shaking. “I can’t take a back seat on this. They’re my nieces, and I gave my word that they’d be safe with me. I can’t just . . . I can’t just sit back and do nothing. Every second they could be harmed. I . . . I—”
“I don’t expect you to take a back seat, doll. I know the likelihood of that happening. I just need you to wait for me,” I tell her, unease beginning to burn through my veins, fearing that she’s going to take off, her emotions ruling her. “Now, let me talk to Hunter.”
I hear Harper’s shaky breathing as she hands her phone to Hunter, and not a moment later, his voice comes through my Bluetooth. “Boss,” he says, fucking distraught. “I don’t know what happened. They were right here. We could hear them laughing in the guest room, and then they just . . . They fucking vanished.”
“I don’t have time to deal with your guilt, Hunter. You can grovel later; right now, I need your head in the fucking game. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Perimeter search. What did it bring up?”
“Not much. Guest bedroom window was left ajar as though someone had tried to close it too quickly,” he tells me. “No tracks to follow in this weather.”
“Okay. I’ll be there in six minutes. Be ready to go,” I tell him. “The code to my safe is three, nine, two, zero. There are four guns, and another in my bedside drawer. Grab all the ammo and the bulletproof vest for Harper. But keep an eye on her. I can’t have her doing something stupid.”
“Got it,” he says. “I . . . wait. Harper. DON’T! HARPER! FUCK!”
There’s a scuffle, sounding as though he’s racing through my home when he roars in frustration. “FUCK! She took off with Izzy.”
“DAMN IT!”
