I hang up, throwing my phone at Gabe's dashboard. It hits with a thud and then falls to the floor.
"What's happening?" my brother asks, his eyes shifting from the road to me and back.
"Someone took her." The words feel like they're being spoken by someone else. My chest is tight, my throat clogged. I'm not myself. I'm someone else watching as the world I've carefully crafted is destroyed piece by piece.
My vibrating phone is the thing that pulls me out of it. I reach down, fishing it off the floor as I can feel Gabe's burning gaze on me. There's a video in the text, and I open it, my eyes glued to the screen as I watch my car pull in front of the building. He was right; neither Wallace nor Grace exit the vehicle, but someone else gets in. I can't see his face, but I can see the gun in his hand.
"She's in trouble," I tell Gabe. "Someone got in the car when it arrived at the penthouse. He has a gun."
"Shit," Gabe mutters, and I feel the car speed up, the force of it throwing me back into the passenger seat. "Tell me you have a tracker on that car."
My brother once again provides the bright ideas that my panic-stricken brain can’t come up with. Something swirls in my gut, a feeling I haven't had in years. Gratitude. I find myself grateful to be with one of my siblings again.
I pull up the tracking info, relief flooding through me as I watch the little red dot moving on the screen. My knee bounces as I shout directions to Gabe as he drives way past the speed limit.
My jaw aches from clenching it so hard, and I fight off thoughts of this ending badly. I have to keep picturing her alive.
I think about her laugh. The way she bites her lip when she's concentrating. How she curls into me at night, trusting and warm.
How I fucked her in a coat closet because I couldn't stand the thought of another man touching her.
How she told me she's mine, and that one word sent a pulse of pleasure through me.
How I never told her what she actually means to me. Because I was too scared to admit that something was growing between us, that I care for her more than I should as a fake husband.
The pin stops moving. We're not far from it, less than a mile.
"Hurry," I tell Gabe, but we don't get far before New York City traffic stops us and even his fancy car can't get through it.
"I think there's some kind of accident up there." He's craning his neck to see out the window. I look down at the tracker that's completely stalled not far from us, and the realization washes over me like a tsunami of dread.
They fucking crashed.
Shit, shit, shit.
I swing the door open and run.
My legs move before my brain catches up, sprinting out of the car and across the street. Gabe doesn't question me, and I can hear his door open and his stomping behind me.
It's not far, but I have to weave through the grid-locked cars until I reach it.
Immediately, I know it's my car crumbled against the side wall. Windshield shattered and smoke rising from the hood.
"Grace!" Her name tears from my throat.
The driver's side door hangs open. Wallace slumps over the steering wheel, blood soaking his shirt.
No.
I wrench open the back door.
There are pearls everywhere. One comes rolling out of the car, coated in red, and my heart feels like it's stopped beating, or maybe it's exploded.
Because my wife lays there in a puddle of blood.
48
GRACE
