From the front came Con’s voice. “She’s smart. We’ll find her.”
“Elin’s been digging through Ellory’s computer, tracing her steps,” Mason said, the empathy in his tone slicing through Ash.
Before he could react to either statement, Con’s phone vibrated. He turned his head to Chickie who was behind the wheel. “We need in that chopper. Now.”
Ash snapped. “What do you know, Con? What thefuckaren’t you saying?”
“An email just came in. It’s from Ellory’s number. There’s a video attachment.”
Ash dug the heel of his hand into his knee and stared at the floor. Fury and terror fused into something sharp inside him, cutting from his ribs straight through his gut.
Chickie skidded into the parking lot where the chopper waited. He cut the engine, everything dead still as Con pulled out a tablet.
The video loaded and Ash looked at it for exactly one second before he had to look away.
Ellory. Hooded. Hands bound. Nothing on her but her bra and panties, which meant they’d stripped her down and gone through everything and found nothing. She was sitting straight-backed and her chin was up even though she couldn’t see, and the way she held herself even now…made his chest crack clean open.
His chest heaved, and he had to swipe a bead of sweat away with the back of his knuckle.
A voice attached to an unseen person was gritty and scrambled, not unlike the one that had projected into Times Square when Cipher targeted Izzy.
“Don’t come after me. You do, she dies. Give me twenty-four hours and I’ll send you her location. She’ll be unharmed. You have my word.”
The video cut.
Nobody moved for a second.
Then Con said, low and final, “We’re not waiting twenty-four hours.”
“No,” Ash said. “We’re not.”
Con’s phone buzzed, and he snapped it to his ear. He listened for a beat before putting it on speaker.
Opal’s voice exploded through the vehicle. “A tracker’s missing! She took a tracker when she left.”
Ash’s head came up. “Trace that tracker. Even if he stripped her and moved her to a new location, we’d be close.”
Another voice filtered in. Elin’s voice was frantic. “She wiped some files from her computer. I’m not sure yet what she was researching—or what she found.”
Ash remembered then. The last message he’d sent her. 459.
He drew out his phone and switched it out of airplane mode. It took a few seconds for it to come back online, and when it did, he saw her message.
4592
She’d deciphered his code…and said she loved him too.
He was grappling with hard emotions when Dante’s voice broke into his thoughts.
“I got the tracker. Pulling up satellite now. I’ve got the heat sensor.” A beat of silence, then Dante picked up his head and looked at Ash. “There are three people in there.”
The guys talked over each other.
“The tracker can’t be on her clothes.”
“If Cipher stripped her, he would have found it and destroyed it.”
“She’s got nothing on her.”
