Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 70931 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70931 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
I hand Thayer the phone. “Motherfucker,” he mutters under his breath. “We need to find out everything we can.”
I scan the details and look on social media until I piece things together. “This was right after our fight,” I say in a little voice. “We were—he left, angry, and it looks like shortly after that there was a mob attack. But there’s no telling where he is or if he was taken, he just… vanishes.”
My throat is tight. I’ve heard Lyam’s cries in the middle of the night. I’ve seen his scars. I’ve seen him thrashing in the sheets as if trying to escape. If they took him again… if he’s held at the mercy of someone else… God help his captors. He’ll slaughter them. That is, if I don’t get to them first.
“Cosette.” Thayer’s sharp tone cuts through my mental haranguing.
“What?” I snap.
“Sit down.”
I stare at him as if he has an eye in the middle of his forehead. “What?”
“Sit down.” He points to a chair. “Now.”
I don’t have the energy to argue, so I sit but I glare at him just the same.
“Have you eaten today?”
“Are you even serious right now? Lyam is missing and you want to know if I’ve eaten?”
“Of course he does,” Philippe says, shaking his head at me. “What would Lyam say?”
I know exactly what Lyam would say. I grumble but I take the piece of bread with butter Thayer hands me and eat it. I chase it with hot tea, hoping it melts the lump in my throat, but no luck.
“Sit, Cosette.”
I didn’t realize I’d stood back up.
“Stop pacing and sit.”
I flounce into a chair and look away from Thayer. Aggravating, bossy brothers.
I look around the apartment. It looks like the middle of a crime scene investigation. Computers open, notebooks at the ready, twelve of the most high-tech mobiles I’ve ever seen. People are concentrating, speaking in hushed voices. There are phone calls and notes, someone’s brewed a pot of coffee. One thing is clear for sure: they’ve lost one of their leaders, and it’s more than a little unnerving.
I want to bury my head in my arms and cry, but I can’t. I have to stay strong.
I stand and stretch. Drink a bottle of water. Pace the room. Look down at my phone and back up again.
God, I wish we hadn’t argued.
I wish we’d had a nicer conversation before he left.
I wish I knew he was safe.
I wish—
“Got it!” Manny, one of the youngest Gerard family interns, sits in front of a massive computer screen. “Got it!”
We all pause. Silence reigns in the room while we all look at him.
“The drone! I found the security drone from that location.”
Thayer’s gone stone silent, stiff as a board.
“Let’s see it,” he says. He shakes his head. “This is usually Lyam’s field of expertise.”
Manny pans out on his screen. The date’s clearly written across the top of the screen. It’s the same day he left.
The screen blossoms into bright light and it takes me a minute to realize we’re functioning as eyes for the overhead drone. From this bird’s eye view, we can see the density of the buildings, the general layout of our urban area. The traffic looks like little play cars, and the Louvre from this distance looks tiny. Vibrant green spaces mark the parks, the tinge of blue the River Seine. But as we draw nearer, I can see crowds of people.
“Look,” Manny says. “This guy here gives a signal. Then after he signals, they turn on him.”
I shake my head from side to side. “It was a setup. A total setup, wasn’t it? You can tell just by looking at that… It wasn’t like someone just saw him and got upset. Between the footage from the drone and this clip I found online, this isn’t the way things go. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, there are like fifty people attacking him? They were planted.”
“Agreed,” Thayer says. “It would be the easiest method in the world, right? Get people afraid of us, then blow the whistle. Have them think that they’re in danger because the bad guys are here. Make the actual bad guys innocuous enough that the others there don’t send a guard after him. Then, attack. Yeah, it makes sense.”
My heart races. I want Lyam safe. The first time they had him, he was a bargaining chip, but now… “Zoom in,” I tell Manny.
I stand and cover my mouth when I see two men bring Lyam to the ground. One sticks something in his neck. A second puts a bag over his head, and a third helps carry him away. I blink, staring, waiting for them to emerge from the crowd so we can see where they went.
They don’t.
“They didn’t leave,” I tell Thayer. “How come they didn’t leave?”