Much like I feel my brother on a cellular level, the vacuum caused by her being taken is as obvious.
While the staff are all in shock, a couple of them being treated for their injuries, I feel like I’m in an alternate universe, one that has a gaping hole a mile wide in it.
Pushing the door to the bathroom open, I’m nearly sidelined by her residual terror. Layne’s caramel scent, still distinguishable under the chemicals, is saturated with her stress. It’s hard to focus on anything other than her fear, but I have to if I want to find her.
The faucet is running. Strangely, my ears don’t pick up on the sound, the thumping of my rage drowning almost all sound out. It’s the movement I pick up on. Once I see it, I start to notice more of the scene.
One of her shoes is near the door of the stall, and I track the scene back to the counter and the sink. And there, I find more evidence of her fighting off her attacker. Smudged handprintswhere she tried to hold on to the sink, clumps of hair on the floor where she would have been standing.
Leaving the bathroom, I walk back through the store, now picking up on another smeared handprint on the wall, where she tried to grab on to a doorframe, and a couple of steps later, her gun pokes out from under a display rack. The back door hangs at an angle, the small scorch marks from a detonation device on either side of it showing they came prepared.
They wanted my wife.
But they also knew where to find her.
Matteo and Dante are both on their phones, calling in our people.
I dig my own phone out of my pocket. Instead of talking, I log on to the secure app Ronin, Santiago, and I use for Trinity business. I hit the emergency button, and while I wait for them to both get online, so I can explain the situation, I squat in front of Edward and Bella, who are looking bereft at the loss of our girl.
“I got a screenshot from one of the cameras. We’re looking for a blue Honda van. I’m just waiting for the image to make out the model,” Matteo says, the phone still in his hand.
Dante passes behind me, going in search of the staff. “I’ve called an ambulance. Only one person is seriously injured, another has cuts, and the rest of the staff are shaken up. The Alpha was lucky he got pistol whipped and not shot in the face.”
“I care. I really do. But right now I need answers on how they found us.”
I trail after Dante and find the Alpha sitting on his ass, stars still in his eyes. The shop assistant is fussing over him, and by her stress, I’d say they’re pack.
Dante squats in front of the Alpha, and the man talks almost immediately.
“We were running toward the front, to open the doors to let you back in. The junior shop assistant hit the emergency button, dropping the shields. Please, don’t hurt her, she is hysterical knowing she unintentionally had a big part in stopping you from getting to your wife. The man who took Mrs. De Luca had another person in the van.”
“Did you get a look at him?”
“Yeah,” he confirms, nodding his head. “He didn’t hide his features at all. Dark blond hair, styled short but not shaved. Thin lips and round nose, but he had a trimmed beard and moustache, and he had gray eyes. Same color as a shark. He wore dark-colored clothes that looked tactical. He was fucking huge. And only spoke in Russian.”
“Let the girl know we don’t hold her responsible, and make sure you send any medical bills our way. If you have any images of him or have any details, please message my phone. You have the number on the booking.”
I stand up, and he tries to follow me to standing, but his knees give out, and when the woman looking after him goes to argue, he whispers quickly, reassuring her. I leave them; there is nothing more they can do, and I’d put money on them not being involved in Layne being taken. Obviously, if we find out they were, I will return.
“Something isn’t adding up,” I mumble, but my focus shifts to a message sitting in my inbox from Santiago. It’s abrupt and along the lines of he’s got a whole lot of drama he’s dealing with on his end, and he’ll be in touch. He includes a hurried congratulatory message regarding my recent marriage, but then he gets cryptic, or nostalgic, tossing the very crux of our alliance back at Ronin and me—We formed Trinity for a reason. Trust in that or die fighting for it.
“Valentine, are you good? Are you listening?” Dante snaps after I obviously missed something.
“Give me a second,” I answer while also replying to Santiago. My message back is not as cryptic as his, just an agreement from my end that I am still committed to our cause.
Ronin hasn’t seen either message yet. We tend to keep communication to a minimum, in case the wrong people crack into our messaging app. Our secure server is a different setup, and we’ve made it impossible to log on to unless you use a laptop or a desktop. On that server, we share detailed information that would implicate or get us killed by our own family. Leaving Trinity issues for later, I log off and get back to the conversation Dante is having with Matteo just in time to see Dante following her trackers.
“Shit,” Matteo whispers, when one of the flashing spots on the map stops moving.
“It’s the ring. We knew that would happen.” Dante’s calm response is exactly what I needed to hear.
What I didn’t expect was for the spots on the screen to start moving in opposite directions.
“What the fuck?” I bark, but before I can get a locator on the dot moving back toward the city, it blinks off the screen.
Dante chuckles, and it's dark, rippling with violence. “Whoever has our wife’s engagement ring probably thinks dropping the tracker in water or soda is going to short it out. But we got the latest ones. The tracker will shut off, but as soon as they take it out of the liquid, and once it dries, the tracker will reactivate. Modern technology for the win.” He winks.
And I now get a better understanding of his laugh, because once we have Layne and everything else is resolved, I will be destroying whoever has that ring.
