Page 109 of Hide From Me

Oh, son of a bitch. This didn’t sound like my choice.

“You won’t be taking her anywhere. Gently put her down and I won’t shoot you.”

The guy chuckled, and I could feel it against my ribcage where I was draped.

“Look, lady. I’m really fucking tired of this shit. I was hired to retrieve the girl. It’s nothing personal.”

All I heard were shots being fired and then the guy was running with me on his shoulder. There was a squeal, and I was being thrown into a dark space. My stomach sloshed about as the thing moved, and I was guessing this was officially a kidnapping.

FORTY

cas

“Rylee?”

Fuck. What in the hell was happening? The cameras at the apartment showed me some man, but I didn’t think it would matter. He was in nondescript clothing and I’d never seen him. The buzz cut said he was probably ex-military. There were too many of these little security places with assholes for hire.

“Zeid, can you do anything with these photos?”

We were on a wild goose chase. One of our buildings had been tampered with, shit planted, and the only thing we had going for us was that we had been on it before the cops got there. I didn’t need legal trouble, even if we could figure shit out in the long run.

“It’s going to take some time.”

The line beeped, and I was terrified to hang up on Rylee.

“Call my gran back, Zeid. Xander, Rylee’s phone is headed out of the city.”

So far, they hadn’t figured out that she had a phone, and she was fucking awful at hanging the thing up. Something told me this wasn’t a traditional kidnapping.

If it had been a rival gang, they would have made a point. They would have left threats or her body. There was nothing.The fucking envelopes had stopped with that last PI even though he’d tried to scare Rylee off from me. There had been no warning here. Who the fuck was this?

“What did Winnie say?”

Zeid held up his finger, still listening.

“Gran is saying the guy mentioned he was taking Rylee to her family.”

Zeid was hanging up and pulling up shit on his phone like the nerd he might have been in another life.

“While going through that PI’s papers, I found the grandfather at an address that’s an hour from the city. Judging by the direction of her, I’d guess that’s where we head.”

X was already heading that direction, but fuck. What if they found her phone and tossed it?

“Why would he kidnap his own granddaughter?”

No one spoke for a few minutes. Only the sound of the tires filling the cabin of the Escalade.

“I think we need to ask why both daughters left,” I said, breaking the silence.

X glanced over at me.

“Yeah, maybe you should have asked that when you sent her to live with that whore of an aunt. I stand by what I said all those years ago. If you were willing to start a war within the Spectors for her, we should have just kept her close. She would have been better off.”

My brow hurt at the amount of scowling I was doing.

“Fuck you. We aren’t talking about this again. We were barely able to keep each other safe, let alone some innocent girl.”

Zeid seemed to choke on a laugh, and it pissed me off.