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“You don’t trust her?”
“I’m not saying that.” Rylie shook her head. “We just need her to act natural. I know this is a tough call. But it’s necessary. Please know that I appreciate your big heart for wanting to tell Bree’s mom. But we can’t do it.”
There was a knock at the front door, and Sophia went to get it. She was cautious, all things considered.
“Open up, it’s me,” Angie called out.
Sophia let her in.
Angie gave her a brief hug, then hurried past her. She dumped her jacket on the bench in the hallway and pushed her way between Lydia and Rylie.
“Kids are settled,” she said. “Beth is feeding them pizza and threatening a midnight movie if they're good.” She set her keys on the counter and looked around the room. “Okay. Twenty-six hours.” She said it the way she said everything operational, fast and factual with no time to spend on pleasantries. “Mary's timeline hits twenty-six hours at six tomorrow morning. Which means if Lettie and Peggy haven't delivered schematics by then—”
She stopped.
She had been looking at Sophia, then at Lydia, then at Rylie. Now she looked at the devastated face of Kayla.
“Fuck. I’m so sorry, honey.”
“It’s okay, Aunt Angie. It’s the truth.”
“Well I have an idea. I already started on it. Let’s deliver fake schematics.”
Sophia stared at her.
“I’m serious. Lydia, I dare you to tell me that you can’t put your hands on some version of this helicopter. They’ve been building this for what? Ten years? There have to be seventeen thousand iterations.”
Sophia watched as Lydia sat up straighter.
“And Rylie, don’t you tell me that with all the people you know on the dark web, that there isn’t some secret black hat or white hat you know that can’t doctor up those fuckers. Everybody owes your alias a favor. It’s time to drag out Sylvia Hess.”
“We think we might have narrowed down where Bree might be being held.” Lydia said.
“What?” Angie turned to her partner, shocked.
“It was Kayla. She got us the information we needed,” Rylie said.
Angie looked down at the map open on Lydia's tablet. At the section of waterfront with Lydia's cursor sitting on it.
“What's that?” she asked.
“National City waterfront,” Lydia said. “We think we have a corridor.”
Angie went still. “You have a location?”
“We have a corridor,” Sophia repeated carefully. “We're narrowing it.”
“How?”
“Bree reached out,” Sophia said. “She got to her phone. She texted Kayla.”
“Damn. You go, girl.”
“What are you going to do?” Kayla asked.
“We’re going to do everything,” Angie said grimly.
“And then we’re bringing Bree home.” Rylie said with a fierce grin.
