I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud, but my silence was answer enough—my own brother. The thought made me sick.
“What about Nora?” Panic edged her voice. “We left her with him!”
I pressed harder on the gas, the truck fishtailing slightly on the icy road. “Call Kane. Tell him to get to your place now.”
She fumbled with her phone, her hands shaking so badly she could barely dial. When Kane answered, she explained in rushed, fragmented sentences.
“We’re ten minutes out,” she finished. “Please,Kane. Hurry.”
I could hear his response through the speaker: “We are on the way. I’ll call when we get there.”
The drive back to Ella’s house was the longest of my life. Every second felt like an hour, every mile stretched into eternity. Beside me, Ella sat rigid with fear, one hand braced against the dashboard, the other clutching her phone.
“I keep thinking about the signs,” I said, needing to fill the silence. “The way he showed up right before the threats started. The bandaged hand that he never explained properly.”
“But he’s your brother,” Ella said softly. “How could he betray you like that?”
I had no answer. The Caleb I’d grown up with wouldn’t have. But the man who’d appeared on my doorstep was a stranger wearing my brother’s face.
“People change,” I said finally. “Especially when there’s enough money involved.”
Her phone rang, making us both jump. Kane’s name flashed on the screen.
“Kane? Are you there? Is Nora okay?” Ella’s voice was frantic.
I could hear his response clearly: “Yeah, Declan, Connor, and Rory too, we are at the house. Door’s unlocked, but no one’s here. No sign of struggle. Looks like they just... left.”
My blood ran cold. “Check the security system,” I instructed, loud enough for Kane to hear. “See if the cameras caught anything.”
A pause, then: “System’s been disabled. Screens are blank.”
Ella made a sound like she’d been punched. I reached for her hand, squeezing it tightly as I pushed the truck faster.
“We’re almost there,” I told her. “We’ll find her. I promise.”
When we pulled into Ella’s driveway five minutes later, the four men were waiting on the porch. Scout whined from the backseat, sensing the tension.
“I checked everywhere,” Kane reported as we approached. “The house is empty. Nora’s fox toy is gone, and so is her backpack.”
“He took her,” Ella whispered, her face ashen. “He just walked in and took my daughter.”
I placed my hands on her shoulders, forcing her to look at me. “We’re going to find her. Right now. But I need you to focus, okay?”
She nodded, visibly pulling herself together. “What do we do?”
“First, we check the security footage. Caleb disabled the live feed, but the cameras store backup recordings on a cloud server.”
Inside, I went straight to my laptop, which I’dleft on the kitchen table. The security app required a password—one Caleb didn’t know. Within seconds, I had the footage from the past hour playing.
There it was: Caleb and Nora, walking calmly toward my house. She was carrying her backpack and fox, chatting animatedly—no signs of force or fear. Minutes later, they pulled out of the driveway in my UTV, and he looked directly at the camera and waved.
“He knew we’d check the footage,” I muttered. “He wanted us to see this.”
Ella leaned closer to the screen. “Where would he take her?”
I rewound the footage, watching the direction they headed when it left the driveway. “North,” I said. “Toward the old logging road.”
Rory was already pulling out his phone. “I’ll call the police, get roadblocks set up.”
