He curses under his breath. “The twins and Mia are missing.”
Everything inside me goes still. My head might be pounding, my vision a little off, but none of that matters anymore.
“What happened?” I demand.
Asher grimaces. “I’m guessing the same thing that happened to you.”
“Shit.”
Asher exhales sharply, running a hand through his hair. “Can you stand?”
I nod, but the second I push up, the world wobbles. Asher grabs my arm, keeping me upright.
“We don’t have time for this,” he mutters, scanning the dark woods. “Emma ran off. Mia followed. And now?—”
A scream cuts through the night.
Mia.
We push through the underbrush, each step fueled by adrenaline and barely contained rage. It takes us a few minutes to get to the main road.
The muddy road is fresh with tire tracks, deep grooves where someone took off fast.
Asher curses under his breath, kneeling to run his fingers through the grooves that came from his truck.
“Son of a bitch,” he mutters. “They took my goddamn truck.”
My stomach churns. Jason wasn’t alone; that much is clear. The ambush was planned. He wanted Mia, and he got her.
I exchange a look with him, my stomach twisting. “You keep a spare key in it?”
His jaw flexes. “Glove compartment.”
“Son of a bitch.” I kick a rock out of the way and look down at my phone. The screen flickers, then dies. “Mine’s fried. Yours?”
Asher checks his, shaking his head. “No signal.” He curses, rubbing a hand over his mouth.
We make it to the house, breathless, our boots slamming against the wooden porch. Asher shoves the door open, and the moment we step inside, I know something is wrong. The air feels thick, charged with the absence of the people who should be here. The surveillance hub should be humming, screens flickering with live feeds, but when Asher flicks the switch, nothing happens.
Dead silence.
I grip the edge of the desk, knuckles white. My head is still pounding, my body aching from whatever the hell they hit me with, but none of that matters. Not when Mia and the girls are out there.
Asher moves to the counter, grabbing a notepad and a pen. “Damon’s gonna come back to a ghost town if we don’t leave something behind.”
He scribbles something on the notepad.
“M & girls gone. Comms dead. Tracking east.”
He rips the page from the pad and slaps it onto the counter. “Let’s move.”
I don’t need to be told twice. We step back out into the night, every second wasted when Mia and the girls are in Jason’s hands. And that’s something I can’t live with.
Asher curses and moves quickly to check the servers, fingers flying over the keyboard. “Everything’s down,” he says, voice tight. “They took out the feed.”
I run a hand through my hair, pulse hammering. “That’s not a damn coincidence.”
“No, it’s not.” Asher’s jaw clenches.
