22

Jager

Tears streamed down my face, but I couldn’t wipe them because my brothers were holding me down. Jake and Christian held my arms while Will pressed his chest against mine. It could’ve resembled a hug if I wasn’t trying to break free of him.

The tears dried as I pushed my way closer to the wreckage. An immense heat emanated from the steel container, scorching my face.

“It’s too hot,” cried Will. “The metal will burn your skin right off if you try to go in there.”

“No,” I shouted, thinking of Bianca’s soft skin torched by the bomb. “I have to see her.”

“No, brother. You don’t. You shouldn’t.”

“It will take at least a couple of hours for anyone to get close to that container. You can’t go in, Jager.” Will’s voice broke. “I’m so sorry, man.”

This time, he wrapped his arms around me and held me to his chest. Christian and Jake squeezed my shoulders. They offered me comfort, but I couldn’t allow it. I couldn’t believe she was dead. I’d only just found her again. Everything was perfect. We had our whole lives ahead of us. “She can’t be dead,” I whispered. “She can’t be. I was going to ask her to marry me.”

Will pressed me tighter. My chest felt as though it imploded, and pieces of my broken heart crumbled down to the pit of my stomach. My throat convulsed, and I gagged from the pain.

I pushed Will away.

This couldn’t be happening. She was not dead.

“No,” I said. “No. I won’t believe it.”

I turned to Walsh. “What fucking happened?”

“I told you. Those guys carjacked us—”

“I don’t believe you. I don’t fucking believe a word of that story.” I grabbed him by his shirt collar and pushed him up against the brick wall of the warehouse. “Tell me the truth. What happened? Because I don’t believe she was in there.”

Will wrapped his hand around my wrist. “Let him go, Jager.”

“No.”

“We’re checking out Walsh's story,” said Khan. “We have police canvassing the area for the men he described.”

“You’re not going to find them because they don’t exist,” I said, still clutching Walsh’s shirt between my fingers. “Why did you take her? Where is she now?”

Walsh’s panicked eyes changed for a moment. In them I read something peculiar. Cunning? Arrogance? Deceit? I wasn’t sure, but he was hiding something.

Towers.

What if another car took Bianca and was now on its way to kidnap Towers?

I let go of Walsh’s shirt, and he fell forward with Khan catching him.

I marched to Will’s truck. “We got to get back to Bianca’s office. We need to secure Towers. Maybe someone is taking Bianca there. But I’m not sure. Nothing makes sense right now.”

Will started the car while Jake and Christian climbed into the back. My knee bounced as Will took every side street to reach the office, avoiding heavy traffic as much as possible.

“I need your thumbprints,” I said as I pulled out my phone. After opening the scanner app, I made everyone press their thumb to the screen.

When we reached the office, I opened my door before Will came to a complete stop at the front of the building. I raced to the elevator and pressed the button over and over until the doors opened. It didn’t speed it up, but it made me feel better doing something other than waiting.

“Can you check the cameras while we go upstairs?” I asked Will. “They’re in the large boardroom down the hallway.”

“Definitely,” said Will, and Christian followed him.

The tenth floor was empty, or so it appeared at first.

“Jager?”

I turned toward the voice. Jeremy stood still, his eyes assessing me and my brothers. I narrowed my eyes. “What are you still doing here?”

“I told you. I had to pick up some things for tomorrow’s event. Why are you here?”

“I need to speak to Towers,” I said.

“He’s not here.”

“The hell he’s not.” I turned to Jake. “Stay with him.”

Jake nodded, but Jeremy’s eyes were still on me.

When I reached Towers’ office, my blood went cold. The room was empty. Towers wasn’t here. But Jeremy knew where he was. I was sure of it.

Fuck!

I was done playing games. Tagert and Walsh were either working together from the beginning or paired up later, but they knew more than either was saying, and it was time I used the skills I learned in service.

My fingers felt as cold as the blood in my veins while I marched back toward Tagert’s cubicle. His eyes widened when he took one look at me.

He stepped back, but Jake was there behind him. Pulling a steel chair from another desk, I threw it in front of Tagert. “Sit.”

“I’d rather stand.”

I grabbed him by the shoulder and pressed my fingers into his shoulder until his knees buckled. “I said sit.”

“Jager,” Jake warned, sensing the rising hostility in me, but I ignored him.

“I haven’t figured it out yet, but I know you and Walsh are working together. I don’t know the whys either, but at this point I don’t give a fuck. All I care about is finding Bianca and Towers.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He stood from his chair, but before he could take a step forward, I kicked him hard in the shin with the heel of my boot. He fell back into his seat, gripping his leg. “Ow, man. Shit. That hurt,” he cried.

“I know. And it’s only going to get worse if you don’t start talking.”

“I told you I don’t know anything.” His voice pleaded with me, but my cold heart didn’t care.

“Are they together?” I asked, moving behind him.

“I don’t kn–”

I grabbed his head between my arms and tilted it until I could feel the tendons. I knew with one small movement I could break it. My muscles tightened, ready to squeeze.

“Jager, don’t.” Jake put his hand on my bicep, but I didn’t loosen my grip.

“You are not getting out of here alive unless I find her.”

“You can’t threaten me like that. I’ll call the police.”

“Not before I break your neck.”

Tagert tried to inhale sharply, but my forearm restricted his airway. He coughed against the restraint.

“Jager, you have cameras set up all over the building, don’t you?” asked Jake.

“Yes,” I answered, not taking my eyes off Tagert. My fingers found the pressure point where I knew I could turn the lights off in his head and they twitched as they hovered over his flesh. But I needed him alive. “But not inside individual offices. The legal department said it went against some sort of office privacy policy.”

“Then let’s wait to see what Christian and Will find on the tapes. If someone abducted Towers, you would have footage of it. Let go of him until Will gets back.”

There was no way I was letting go of this asshole. I didn’t trust him to be an inch away from me. “Call Will. I need to know now.”

Jake reached for his phone and dialed Will’s number. Tagert’s pulse beat rapidly beneath my fingers. He was nervous now.

“Have you found anything on the tapes?” asked Jake. He nodded as he listened to Will’s response. Then he looked at Tagert.

“What did he say?” I asked.

Jake hung up the phone and stared at the man whose life I held in my hands. “He said that Towers was seen walking into his office at 4 p.m. but never came out. Which would make sense since I called him at 6 p.m. and he was still here. But then Will said the cameras caught Tagert walking into Towers’ office at 6:15 p.m. and leaving twenty minutes later. Alone.”

My arms tensed.

“Yes,” Tagert tried to scream, but my hold was too tight. “I went to talk to him and left.”

“Where did you go after your chat?”

“To sit at my desk.”

“If you sat at your desk, you would have seen Towers leave. The cameras don’t show him leaving, but you said when we arrived that he wasn’t here. So, tell us, what the fuck did you do with him?”

I tightened my grip and Tagert clawed at my arms to release him, or at least give him enough air to breathe.

Jake sighed. “Listen, Tagert. This man has been through a lot today and I don’t know what he’s capable of right now. If you value your life, just tell him where Towers is. If you get yourself a good lawyer, you might get out while you’re young. After all, is it even kidnapping if the man hasn’t left the building?”

I knew Jake was trying to rationalize with the guy, but it made my stomach turn, thinking that Tagert would get away with this.

I could end it now. Make him pay for what he did… what he did to B… No! I refused to believe she was dead.

“Where the fuck is he?”

While I wanted to snap his neck, he was still useful to me alive. I didn’t need a weapon to kill Tagert, but he didn’t know that. Perhaps he needed to understand how serious I was. I spotted a letter opener on the desk and grabbed it.

“Jake, no!”

I held the dull blade to his artery. “Don’t fuck with me, Tagert. Tell me where they are.”

He struggled beneath my arms. “I don’t know where Bianca is.”

“But you do know where Towers is?”

Tagert pressed his lips together, and something inside me snapped. Twisting the opener so that I held it like a dagger, I found the fleshy part of his shoulder and pushed it against his skin. Hard.

“Ow! Oh, fuck! Stop!”

I felt his flesh give way and the blade sink into the soft tissue. I knew it hurt like a motherfucker with a dull blade, and I was glad.

I leaned down and whispered in his ear. “I will keep finding places to stick this in you until you tell me where they are.”

Tagert kicked and shoved against me, but my forearm over his trachea didn’t budge. There was no way he was getting away from me. I twisted the blade and Tagert screamed, the sound piercing my ear, but I ignored the ringing and asked again. “Where are they?”

“He’s here!” he finally shouted.

“Where?”

“He’s in his office.”

“I checked his—” Fuck!

I dropped the letter opener and Tagert tried to stand up, but Jake put his hand up. “Uh no. Sit your ass down.”

Knowing Jake wouldn’t let Tagert out of his sight, I raced back to Towers’ office. Will and Christian followed me there. “We couldn’t find anything on the videotapes of a kidnap.”

“That’s because Towers never left.”

“What was that scream back there?” Christian asked calmly.

“You don’t want to know.”

I ran the palm of my hands across the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, looking for a lever or a button to open the door to the secret room in Towers’ office. I’d noted it the first day I got here. I should have thought of it as soon as I realized Towers was missing.

“What are you looking for?”

“A lever or a switch. There’s a secret room somewhere behind this wall.”

Will and Christian crouched down beside me.

My heart sped up at the thought of finding Bianca behind this wall alive. I didn’t want to picture it too clearly, as I would surely lose control here and now.

“I found something,” said Will.

There was a button, mid-way across the bookshelf. “Go on, press it,” I said, almost afraid to do it myself.

Will pressed the button, and the bookshelf started to move forward. It slid across the floor and stopped about three feet from the wall. It was dark inside, so I used the flashlight on my phone.

The light was narrow, but it caught something deep inside the dark room… a man’s foot. Raising the flashlight, I could see Mr. Towers’ slumped body propped up in one corner of the room, his head lobbed to the side, and his eyes closed.

Christian moved past me when I stood there, frozen. He crouched next to Towers and placed two fingers on his neck. “He’s alive.”

His words should have revived me, but I wasn’t in shock at finding Towers inside the secret room. I was scared stiff that Bianca wasn’t here beside him.

I swallowed the emotions rising in my throat and my hands shook at my sides.

“Jager, are you okay?” asked Will. He was beside me, but I barely heard him.

I shook my head. No. I wasn’t okay. Bianca wasn’t here. And if she wasn’t here with Towers, was she inside that storage container? Was her burned body lying there now while I was running around the city looking for her?

I fell to my knees in the dark room and dropped my head into my hands. Despair crept up my legs, numbing my limbs as it traveled up my body, leaving a feeling of emptiness in its place.

How would I get through this? How could I go on? I didn’t think I could lose her a second time, and definitely not like this.

I couldn’t lose her. Not. Like. This.

Will wrapped his arm across my shoulder and I wanted to sink into that floor and never get up again.

“Why?” I asked.

“Nobody knows why people do sick things.”

I shook my head. “But it doesn’t make any sense. Why kill her?”

Will shrugged. “I don’t know, brother.”

I felt myself slipping into darkness. I’d done it before when we lost Jordan, and it took months to crawl myself out of it. I fought to hold on to the light. I knew if I let myself go, I would not come back from this. “Why kill Bianca and not Towers?”

I couldn’t make sense of her death. It wasn’t an accident. Someone had set a bomb in that container. They wanted to deliver a message. But to whom?

None of it made any sense. Why kill her? Why set up a bomb halfway across the city from Towers? Why her?

Oh my God.

“What if it wasn’t a message?”

“What?” asked Will. “What are you talking about?”

“What if the bomb wasn’t a message at all?”

“I’m not following.”

“There was no note. No explanation. No reason to set up this elaborate killing… unless…”

“Unless?”

“Unless it wasn’t a message, but a distraction.”

“Go on.”

“Someone wanted me away from the office and away from Towers and they knew the only way for that to happen was to have me follow Bianca instead. They used her to lure me away from Towers.”

“But why kill her then?”

“I don’t think she’s dead.”

“Jager…” Will said slowly, patiently. “I know you don’t want to believe it—”

“I don’t. But it also doesn’t make any sense. We’ve got to get back there.”

“It’s still too hot to look around inside.”

“I don’t think she’s there. What if she’s in another container? We didn’t check all of them. She could still be inside one of them.”

The thought of her cold, scared, and alone pushed me up from the ground.

“I’ll stay here with Jake and Tagert,” said Christian. “If there’s a chance that Bianca’s still alive, you’ve got to find her.”

I nearly sobbed at the hope in Christian’s voice because I felt it again, too. Until there was proof she was gone, I would not give up looking for her.

As we took the elevator down, another thought popped into my head. “What if she’s not in a container at all? What if she was under our noses the whole time?”

“Where?”

I dialed Khan’s number, and he answered immediately. “Jager? Did you find Towers?”

“Yes, and he’s alive.”

“That’s good.”

“Are you still at the pier?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I think Bianca is still alive, and she’s there.”

“Do you think she’s in one of the containers?”

“Maybe, but I think there’s a possibility she may be closer than that. It would have been unlikely to place her inside a second container so far from the one that exploded. Walsh wouldn’t have had enough time, I don’t think.”

“Where do you think he put her?”

“Have you checked the trunk of the car? Towers was drugged. Maybe Bianca was too, and that’s why we didn’t hear her if she was unconscious back there.”

“Shit. Ok. Give me a minute. Chaudhary!” Khan shouted. “Get the damn keys from Walsh. We need to open this trunk now!”

I could hear some rustling and men shouting in the background. Perhaps more police had arrived or a bomb squad. I didn’t want to imagine anyone from the coroner’s office there.

Then, after a few minutes, there was silence. “Holy shit,” someone said. I think it was Chaudhary.

“Khan, what is it? Did you find something?” I swallowed. “Is it Bianca?” I whispered.

“Holy fuck. She’s here! She’s fucking here!” Khan, who was always so professional, let out a litany of profanity, and then, “Arrest the son of a bitch and call off any search for those supposed carjackers. We’ve got the bastard.”

At this, I crumbled inside Will’s truck and dropped the phone in my lap.

“Did they find her?” Will’s eyes were frantic as he must have heard something over the phone and now was trying to decipher my reaction. I couldn’t speak, could barely get the word out. “Yes.”

He dropped his head back and inhaled sharply. “Oh, man. Oh fuck, yes!”

I chuckled at Will’s relief and my euphoria.

She was alive!

I picked up my phone. “We’re coming right now.”

“Jager, wait!”

Khan’s voice was steady and professional again. “We’re taking her to the hospital. Her breathing is shallow. Meet us at City Grace.”

“I’ll be there,” I said and hung up the phone. “They’re taking her to City Grace hospital.”

“She’s going to make it, Jager. She will.”

I nodded and prayed that he was right.