“I gave Lennon my birth mother’s locket—which by the way I was always planning on giving her—but I added something a bit special to it… just in case.”
I had a feeling I already knew where this was going.
Zeke opened his laptop, logging in and within a few keystrokes he opened the app.
“Isn’t this technology illegal?” I heard McDaniels ask as Zeke turned the computer around for the entire room to see.
“Maybe,” Zeke said. “But are you really about to complain right now when I can pinpoint Lennon’s location within a half-mile? She’s in the Blue Ridge mountains—”
Athena practically threw herself at Zeke, nearly making him drop his laptop.
“Thank you,” she breathed as she squeezed him tight.
“She’s our family,” he muttered, suddenly looking shy when she pulled away. “But my only requirement for sharing this is that we get to go and help get her out.”
“Me too,” Brooks said.
I nodded. “And me.”
Dallas opened his mouth and I shot him a look.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “I’ll run point from the comms, Iguess. Damn coma.”
“After all this is over,” I told Athena as we headed from Dallas’s hospital room to her waiting car. “We need to have a serious discussion about Lennon and our place in her life. We need to come to a clear understanding.”
Athena glanced at me and really looked at me for what felt like the first time ever.
“I agree, and for what it’s worth, I am sorry.”
I didn’t say anything. Her apologies would have to wait until Lennon was safely back in our arms. Only then could we figure out how all of the jagged pieces of this family fit together.
Chapter Thirty Six
Somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains
Drip, drip, drip.
The sound of running water was like elephants dancing on my aching skull as I finally woke up on the ice cold ground ofsomewhere.
My first thought was the last one before I had unceremoniously been knocked out in the back of that whack SUV after being kidnapped:
That bitch had stabbed me in the neck with a hypodermic needle!
Despite my aching head and clearly shitty situation, I silently vowed that, If I ever got the chance, I was going to make her pay for doing that to me.
As I lay on the ground, I started to take stock of my situation, trying to remember my father’s words from when I was younger.
He had been crazy about safety—especially when it came to being kidnapped. Apparently he was convinced that because I was so cute and because I was the child of such public figures, I was almost assuredly going to be kidnapped, so I needed to know what to do.
But the joke was on him, because it took until I was fully grown for it to actually happen.
First rule of being kidnapped,Lennie, he’d told me.Try and figure out where you are.
I could remember his serious face that looked so much like Carter’s except for his big hazel eyes and twitchy beard that used to tickle my cheeks when he kissed me.
Opening my eyes took some effort but I managed it.
The room I was in was dark and dank, definitely some kind of cellar or basement because it was made up almost entirely of cement blocks save for the rickety-looking wooden steps that I was sure led up to a locked door.
