I did.
Launched into it with the full picture that dated back to the stoner guys getting the guns, to Zayn hiring Noa, the theft, and the escape from police custody.
“That’s my girl,” he mumbled under his breath.
“It was impressive as fuck,” I agreed.
From there, it was the shootout, the car chase, the safe house, the boat, the tracker, the fight and the kidnapping.
“We’ve done everything we could to try to find the car that he left in on traffic cameras, but…”
“It’s a simple black car with fake plates,” he guessed.
“Exactly. And now that we know this wasn’t related to the guys with the guns, we thought it could have to do with previous cases. But I don’t know about her cases. She mentioned that you… kept a close eye on her.”
“That your nice way of saying that she called me nosy? Don’t gotta sugarcoat shit with me. She called me nosy right to my face. Wasn’t wrong, either. But you’re right. I’ve been keeping an eye. Trained her well, but I still worry. She’s all I got.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“You came on a bike, right?”
“Right.”
“Then let’s get a move on,” he said, walking toward the back of the house.
“Where are we going?”
“See that boat? There,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I got a car. But we gotta go across the water to get to it.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
So I held his guns while he got the boat ready, handed them over, then climbed in myself.
My stomach dropped, the memory of fleeing from the boat in the tender still way too fresh in my mind.
All the fear, panic, and desperation I’d felt then had only amplified in the hours since.
“Hang on,” Nathaniel warned.
Then he pushed the throttle and we fucking flew through the water.
I glanced at Noa’s old man, then the place he chose to call home. I couldn’t help but wish that this wasn’t how I was meeting him. This wasn’t how it was meant to be. I was supposed to be in some itchy dress-up outfit, jangling with nerves, sweating across my scalp and down my back, worried her father would hate me and tell her to dump me.
I made a mental note that when we got Noa back, I would insist on the three of us having a proper introduction. Awkwardness and all.
The boat ride was longer than I expected and the engine was too loud for us to really be able to hear each other, so we were silent, both lost in our own thoughts about the one thread tying us together.
Noa.
And what could be happening to her.
Nathaniel’s hands were white on the wheel and I could tell by the look in his eye that he was a million miles away. Likely beating himself up for raising his daughter to be so skilled that she felt drawn to a career that would be dangerous.
“Always been worried this would happen,” he said, confirming my thoughts, when we finally got to land.
