Chapter 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Jesus fucking shit.

It was debatable which stopped working first—my lungs or my heart. Both had stopped normal functions. What was indisputable was I was going to kill Billy Rice with my bare hands.

"Keep your shit," Zane instructed, coming into Aria's living room.

The only room I'd yet to be in and already I was murderous. It wasn't the lamp that was broken, the table that was turned over, the cushions that were askew on the couch. It was the blood smear on the floor. Not a little blood—a goddamn lot of blood that trailed from the kitchen to the front door.

"Smith!"

My gaze snapped from the blood to Zane.

"Lock it down. Either you're helping or you're in the way. You lose it, you fuck this for Aria."

I glanced around the room I'd walked through hours before and saw it play out—Aria fighting for her life after I left her alone. Aria running through the living room, a crazy man after her because I'd underestimated what he was capable of. Aria sleeping in her bed where I'd left her.

"Smith," Jonas said from beside me.

"Give me a fuckin' second."

"Brother."

"When it's your woman…" I snapped, but didn't finish when I spied Aria's smashed cellphone on the floor, partially under the couch. "Fuck."

Billy's cell was in his kitchen. Aria's on the floor. His car in his driveway.

Kira was shady as hell on the phone—which meant she had nothing and no way to track Aria.

Jesus fucking shit .

"Z," Linc called from the kitchen. "The Captain's calling."

Captain Taylor.

Hearing Aria's dad's name was a hit to the gut. The man had to be going out of his mind.

"He's getting on a flight," Zane told me before he went to get his phone.

Jonas stepped over the blood staining the floor.

I have a confession.

My gut rolled.

What's that baby?

I'm falling for you.

I heard her whispered words in my head, felt the kiss she'd brushed on my chest.

On the heels of that, Rie's voice came at me.

This is all your fault.

I followed Jonas into Aria's bedroom. Bloody prints on the walls.

Aria's blood.

Bile clogged my throat, raw fury flowed through my veins, fear ate at my insides.

The bed was unmade from us sleeping in it, but that's not where the struggle had taken place. Her closet door was open, bloody smears on the door, clothes pulled off the hangers, more clothes still on the hangers on the floor like she was holding on to them while someone—no, while Billy was pulling her out. I glanced up at the shelf above the bar of clothes.

Her gun safe.

Aria was going for her weapon when Billy got her.

Fucking shit .

I peeked into her bathroom. Completely undisturbed.

I paused in the doorway, looked back at the bed to where I'd last seen her.

I very much dislike Billy Rice.

Jesus shit fuck .

I moved back down the hall in a haze, visions of Rie at eighteen bloody and beaten at the hands of her father. A beating she'd taken while I sat in the idling car outside her house. Those visions morphed into a beaten and bloody Aria.

When the kitchen came into view, the scene before me hit hard. The bile clogging my throat turned thick and started to choke me.

Coffee machine on its side on the counter, the handle to the carafe on the floor. A puddle of coffee on the floor had time to seep under the kickplate of the lower cabinet. A drawer was pulled completely out, the drawer box and its contents scattered. A broken mug. Two of the stools Aria kept pushed under the bar on their sides. A chair from the small breakfast table half out the broken window. It looked like a war zone. But it wasn't all the broken shit that held my attention, it was the blood—everywhere. The counters, the cabinets, on the fridge, pooled on the floor.

This was ground zero.

This was where Aria was drinking coffee, talking to her father, when Billy got to her.

An unexpecting Aria, thinking she was safe because I told her she was, having an early morning call with her father in her kickass kitchen she'd remodeled herself. The kitchen where we'd teased and flirted and she'd smiled shyly at me. The very place I started to fall in love with her.

Our beginning.

You'll need to earn that sir, Sailor.

My eyes drifted shut and terror exploded behind my lids.

"Time to roll out," Zane yelled from somewhere in the house.

Yeah it fucking was. I couldn't find my woman while standing in her kitchen staring at puddles of blood.

Cash Philips

Everyone was seated around the conference room table. Expect Smith. He was prowling the perimeter like a caged tiger waiting for dinner. Kevin and Myles from the Blue Team had been brought in, as had Linc and Leo from the Red Team.

More firepower.

I didn't know why Zane had chosen those men in particular. Not that it mattered; it could've been any of the men from any of his other teams and they would've been just as lethal.

"I've got dating profiles on each of the phones," KK started. "George Rice, GB Calvin, George C Rice, Calvin Rice."

"How is this sick motherfucker's dating profiles going to help us find Aria?" Smith bit out.

Smith was losing it.

I knew my brother, he was hanging on by his fingernails. When he could hold on no longer he would be uncontrollable.

His woman had been gone six hours and we didn't have dick.

I glanced from Kira to Smith.

Fucking Christ, it hurt to look at him.

My gaze slid back to Kira and it hurt to look at her, too. She was feeling this. Our Kid Genius had all the answers at the tip of her fingers. Anything we'd needed she'd provided. But now she had nothing.

Fuck yeah, our girl was feeling this deep.

"We need the full scope?—"

"Full scope?" Smith interrupted Jonas. "My woman is in the hands of a deranged motherfucker. There's the full scope. We don't need to understand the fullness of his sickness. We need a location."

Kira flinched.

"I'm not pissed at you, KK."

Kira nodded but kept her attention on her screen. Her fingers flew over her keyboard double-time. Something had caught her interest.

"Whatcha got Kid?" I inquired.

She shook her head and kept pounding on her keyboard with her shoulders tense. It was the way her eyes squinted that told the tale. I'd come to learn something new about her, being in the same room with her while she did her thing after working a decade with the woman remotely—she glared at her screen when she hit pay dirt. And she was squinting now.

"Kira?" Zane snapped from the head of the table.

Slowly, her eyes lifted to the big boss, fear and excitement mingled.

"We need to clear the room," Kira started.

"No fucking way," Smith growled.

"Trust me?—"

"I trust you with my life, but there is no chance in hell I'm leaving this room. What did you find?"

If Smith's fury was blanketing the room, Kira's fear was cloaking it.

"He uploaded pictures to his cloud," she whispered.

But it might as well have been a muzzle blast going off in the room.

Smith paused mid-stride, his face contorted in barely contained agony, and his hands balled into tight fists.

He was bracing for the worst.

"Put them up on screen."

"Smith—"

"Put. Them. Up."

Kira looked at Zane, my eyes followed, and I watched him begrudgingly nod.

Two seconds later when Smith punched his fist through the wall, I was up out of my seat, as was Jonas.

"Brother," Jonas warned. "You tearing about the room isn't gonna help."

Jonas and I crowded Smith, but my eyes stayed locked on the image of Aria. Blood covered her pretty face, a gash above her right eyebrow the obvious source of most of the blood, but the laceration on left cheek was open and oozing, too. Right eye swollen shut, angry red welt at her jaw, bruising under her left eye that would turn gnarly shades of green in the next few days. But she was alive. Dead was dead. The eyes told the tale, and there was still fight in that one eye.

"Don't touch me," Smith grunted.

Neither of us moved away from him.

The end was near, I could feel it.

Smith's body jerked in an unnatural way that had me reaching to catch him. He didn't fall but only because his forehead went to the wall, his hands went up, and he steadied himself.

"Fuck," he groaned. "Fucking fuck ."

"All I need is one…" Kira mumbled. "Come on, asshole, give me something…" there was a pause in her mumbling but her hands kept moving. "There."

Three images replaced the close-up of Aria.

One was of her in the passenger seat of a car. The blur out the window meant Billy had been driving when he'd taken that picture. The second was of Aria in the fetal position on the floor. Her body curled into itself on a blue and red rug. Out the window was a body of water. Next to that image was one of Aria on the navy-blue couch, her bare legs scratched to hell, oversized t-shirt I didn't have to ask to know was Smith's torn and bloodied. She was positioned in one corner, head resting on the back cushion, lulled to the side, eyes closed. The shot was wide; in the background the water was clearer as were the buildings on the other side of the channel.

"Where is that?" Zane demanded.

"Well, King of Patience, if you'd give me a second, I'll tell you."

Kira was back.

Thank fuck.

If she was sassing Zane she was close to finding something.

"I think that's the Hyatt Grand," she said.

Smith shoved away from the wall, pushed past Jonas, and in two wooden, tense steps he was behind Kira.

"You get this one-time pass, looking over my shoulder," Kira grumbled.

"Ocean City," Smith announced. "What clients does he have in the area?"

Garrett came into the room with his phone to his ear.

"A car was found abandoned in a marshy area outside of Cambridge." Garrett paused, looked at Smith, then gentled his tone. "Blood present."

Smith was going to feel this, not because there was blood found in the car. Cambridge was south of Trappe—Billy had to have driven by his house to get to Cambridge. Which further meant, it was likely at some point while Smith was driving northwest to go back to Aria's, Billy was driving on the opposite side of the road headed Southeast.

If that wasn't a mindfuck I didn't know what was.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Smith seethed. "He drove her right by us."

"Orange building to the right is The Grand. Garrett, pull up a map on the other monitor."

Fuck, yeah, bossy Kira meant she was on to something.

Not that Smith had caught on; he was too deep in his head to notice.

His first love had been beaten to death. Not only was this too close to the bone—his past and his present colliding in a way that would fuck with any man in this room—but he'd wasted time dwelling on shit his bitch of an ex had spewed instead of seeing the woman who was standing in front of him.

It didn't take much to see Aria loved him. Either she was shit at hiding it or she hadn't bothered. My bet was she hadn't bothered. In the limited time I'd spent with the woman it was clear she was who she was, felt what she felt, and didn't waste precious time pretending she was someone she wasn't.

I liked her straightway.

I liked her more when her eyes went soft when she'd looked at Smith.

Smith needed a woman like Aria.

No, needed Aria.

And my brother would get what he needed.

Full stop.

How ever I had to make that happen, I would.

"From the angle of those pictures, they had to be taken from this area." Kira pushed her chair back, uncaring she'd slammed into Smith.

The Kid Genius was in full-on genius mode.

Thank fuck .

She stopped next to the screen, pointed at the map, and bossed, "G, zoom in on Drum Point."

The map zoomed in. She studied it, looked back at her laptop, then pointed.

"Here. This house at the end of Drum Point Road with the pool. This is where he has her."

"Are you positive?"

Kira's eyes cut to Smith in disgust. Our girl didn't like to be questioned. If she gave intel, it was correct or she didn't give it at all.

Not surprisingly, her gaze softened.

"Yes, Smith. I'm positive. Now please go get your woman and bring her home."

Smith was out of the room like a shot, Jonas dogging his heels. Easton, Cooper and Theo followed.

"Myles, Kevin, and Layla, back to Billy's house. Talk to the police and see if the storage manager gave them anything. We still need to tie up George's name being on the invoice. Linc, Leo, you're with me. We're going to the Grasonville house. She might be pissed but the rest of those walls are coming down. We've got roughly seventeen hours until Captain Taylor lands and I want this shit wrapped up in a nice bow with his girl home safe."

I hadn't followed my team. Kira's eyes had locked with mine. She had something to say. Whatever it was needed to be said so that I could kit up.

Before I could prompt Kira, she rushed across the room. Her hands smacked me in the chest, her fists balled up my tee, she rolled up on her toes while yanking me to her in a display of fright I'd never seen from her.

"You have to get her out of there, Cash."

"We will?—"

She tugged my shirt again.

"You have to. He won't survive."

She wasn't wrong.

"Listen to me, KK, we're gonna get her out and bring her home."

" Alive Cash. He's shut down. He's barely breathing. If we lose her, we lose him and we'll never get him back."

My hands went to her shoulders. I dipped my head and touched my forehead to hers.

The lock I had on my emotions slipped.

"I promise you, she's coming home alive, Seven."

"Okay."

"We got this. We got him."

There was a moment of silence before she softly muttered, "Cash is King."

That almost made me smile.

"Goddamn right, Cash is King. Now let me go so I can grab my gear and kick in some doors."

She nodded, released me, and stepped back.

I was at the door when Zane called my name.

His blue eyes glittering with anger. Face a mask of sheer evil. He said not a single word but the jerk of his chin said everything.

Permission.

Any means necessary.

Both Aria and Smith were coming home alive.

Consequences be damned.