6
Harlow
“You’ve staged this whole thing, haven’t you,Harlow?” Justin planted his palms on the table and leaned forward, his lips stretched with a cruel smirk that exposed the tips of his teeth. Up this close, Harlow could see the pale rings of the contacts he wore against the whites of his eyes. “Cooked this up to generate interest in the next season, no doubt. You crafty little bitch. It’s genius, I’ll give you that.”
Harlow did not deign him with a response. He didn’t trust his tongue.
“When is she coming back?” Justin asked. He chuckled. “I imagine it’ll be a little while—maybe a week or two. Maybe a month, depending on how much the media eats this up. Are you looking to bring her back at a smaller convention so you can blow the story up, or are you going to do it somewhere bigger, risk being drowned out by coverage of other big players? If it were me, I’d do it somewhere small—give them all something to talk about.”
While Justin talked, Harlow opened up the GPS on his phone and plugged in the numbers written in black ink across his arm. If he was lucky, Evie would be stopped somewhere—a building, a house, a public location. If he was unlucky, the coordinates Simon had given him would zero in on the interstate.
If that happened, he was fucked.
“I mean, it was a damn good performance on her part. For a second, evenIwas convinced.” Justin snorted. He pushed off the table and paced the small back room he and the other celebrity guests had been brought to as a security precaution. Prince watched from his place against the wall, his dark eyes unreadable and intimidating. “But it makes no sense. You can’t haveHeaven, Lockedwithout the main character. If she wasn’t happy with her contract, they would have bent over backwards to fix it… so it’s got to be a ploy. What an Oscar-winning performance.”
Alyssa, who’d been furiously tapping her phone screen, looked up from whatever she’d been doing and rolled her eyes. “Ugh, oh my god, Justin, can you seriously shut up for a minute? You’re soannoying.”
Like a bull seeing red, Justin turned on Alyssa. The sharp click of his pristinely polished dress shoes brought him across the room straight to her, and without a second thought, he tore the phone from her hand and whipped it across the room. It struck the wall with a crunch, then dropped to the ground, dead, its screen shattered irreparably.
Alyssa gasped, then slapped Justin across the face with an open palm. Justin hissed in pain and went to grab her by the hair, but Prince, who’d rushed from his position by the wall to Justin’s side, caught his wrist and pulled it back.
“Prince!” Justin spat. “Let me go!”
Prince paid him no mind. “Ms. Dunbar, step down.”
“Are you serious right now? You’re tellingmeto step down?” Alyssa asked through gritted teeth. “I think you need to be telling that to Britain’s biggest douchebag.”
While they fought, Harlow activated the street-view option of his GPS and rotated the display, surveying the area Simon’s coordinates had led to. The street was residential, occupied by tall brick apartment buildings with faded facades. Harlow zoomed in on the building in question. The apartment number was painted across the glass doors: 2769. All he needed to do now was locate the street, which would be easy enough. Harlow set to work, progressing through the map on the search for landmarks or street signs, while Alyssa, Justin, and Prince engaged in a dangerous game.
Everyone else in the small room gave them as large a berth as possible. No one spoke. Tristan, who spared them a frightened glance every now and then, cleared his throat uneasily, then ducked behind his bodyguard like he was afraid the noise would attract the drama toward him.
“Until we’re given clearance to leave this room, you will back away from Mr. Outerbridge.” Prince held Justin by the shoulder, but every now and then, Justin lashed out in an attempt to break free. “You will keep your distance, and he will keep his.”
“Do you evenseethis psycho?” Alyssa fanned her hands at Justin, glaring, but she stepped to the side. “He broke my fucking phone! Whodoesthat? If he doesn’t back off, I’m going to have him arrested. I’mnotgoing to let it go.”
Half a block away from the apartment, written across a green awning, was a business name—Trefore Ave. Delicatessen.
“Bingo.” Harlow opened a new tab on his browser, searched for 2769 Trefore Avenue, and was directed to an ancient rental listing for one to three room apartments. It looked like someone had taken his little girl home.
The knowledge was both reassuring and horrifying. Harlow did his best to push thoughts of what might be happening to Evie aside and focused on the positive. While she was gone, she hadn’t been transported out of Aurora—whoever had blackmailed her into disappearing, whoever had pulled the strings to make sure the convention lost power for that terrifying moment, was local. Or, at least, they were camping somewhere local until they could transport her elsewhere.
No one had thought to throw her cell phone away. If he was lucky, she’d keep it hidden from them until he found her and took her home.
And Harlowwouldtake her home.
There was no doubt in his mind that she’d been taken. Evie had never acted this way before, and he doubted that she ever would have had she not been influenced by an outside force. Whatever that force was, Harlow would put a stop to it. No one would threaten his daughter. No one would make her feel so miserable and helpless that she had no choice but to run away.
With a destination set in his phone, Harlow pressed the button on his earpiece. His men were scattered through the convention center, hunting down the individual responsible for the power short while he took care of securing the other celebrity guests and doing the legwork on locating Evie. Now that the guests were secure, Harlow’s purpose narrowed to a singular focus—Evie. “I’ve got coordinates. I’m leaving. I’ll be dropping out of range, so you’ll need to reach me via cell phone with any updates.”
“Roger that, H.”
“Get the fucker.”
“We’ve got things handled here.”
Harlow knew that they did. Brad, Cooper, Mitchell, and the rest of the guys on the team were competent, and while his leadership enabled them to work as a cohesive unit, they were all highly capable while on their own. They would pursue their objective relentlessly.
He trusted them.
