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Sliding her arms around my waist, she embraced me. After a few seconds, I swiped at my eyes and put my arms around her. “Thank you, Vic.”
“Take a few deep breaths and let it all out. Cry if you need to; there’s nothing wrong with that. But then pull yourself together and let’s work with the boys to bring Emilia home.”
I kissed her forehead and released her, then did what she said. Took a few deep breaths and cleared my head. “Let’s get back inside. It’s fucking freezing out here.”
I held the door open for her and we made our way back to the meeting room.
If my face betrayed my fears, nobody said anything. Marian put a fresh mug of coffee down in front of me and excused herself.
There was nothing more I could do but wait until the two men had something. I picked up my phone and opened the text messages, but there was nothing. I stared at the photo of Emilia that Janet had sent me, and my heart ached. I closed the message and put the phone on the table face-down, unable to bear staring at it a moment longer.
When a phone rang, I picked mine up again hopefully but realized it wasn’t my ringtone. Dominic reached for his cell and held it up to his ear. “Hey, you got anything for me?” He listened for a few moments before placing the phone on the table and hitting a button. “Okay, you’re on speaker now.”
“Hi, Tucker.” Julian greeted the man on the other end.
“Is the fiancé there?”
My brows furrowed as Julian answered. “Yes, Jason Bennett is here, along with his head of security, Connor Rayden. Guys, on the line is the rest of our team, Tucker and Jack.”
Tucker let out a deep, “Hi,” and then another voice I’d never heard before introduced himself as Jack Sutton.
“Thank you for helping me out. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.” And I did. I knew none of these men owed me a goddamn thing. I’d only met one of them years ago. Yet all four of them were there, working out a plan to bring my Emilia home.
“We’re happy to help, Jason.” Jack’s voice came through loud and clear. “Julian and Dominic have brought us up to speed. I know this isn’t easy, but we need you to sit back and let us work out a plan for getting Emilia home safely.”
I realized they must have called their teammates while Victoria and I were on the roof. “Do you know where she’s being held?”
“Not yet,” Tucker supplied. “We’ve got a drone in the air looking for her.”
My breath caught in my throat as my eyebrows raised. “A drone?”
Julian nodded. “This particular model has thermal imaging which looks for heat signatures. We know there’s at least three people: Emilia, Janet, and Helena, and possibly a fourth in the man who helped Helena with the kidnapping.”
“So you’re, what? Flying it over warehouses on Staten Island?”
“Exactly.” Dominic nodded and gestured toward his screen. “Tucker is controlling everything from our base in Asheville and we’re watching the feed from here.”
“What if they’re no longer on Staten Island, though?”
Julian leveled his gaze at me. “Then we’ll explore the surrounding areas until we find her. We can launch more drones if need be.”
“How do you know you’re even looking in the right area?”
If the two men were getting tired of my questions, they didn’t let on. “We don’t, but it’s a good place to start. We worked out an area to start a search based on the location of the tower where her cell phone last pinged before the signal was lost.”
I scrubbed a tired hand over my face. “Do you think I should start trying to put some money together, just in case?”
Victoria and Julian looked at each other before he turned back to me. “You won’t need it, Jason. We’ll find her before the deadline is up.”
Victoria spoke up, “And even if you do need it, you won’t have to worry about dealing with banks. I have access to ten million in cash I can give you.”
It was easy to forget that Victoria Nolan was a billionaire in her own right. While her clothes were custom-made and her accessories clearly designer, there was nothing snobbish about her.
So it shouldn’t have surprised me that she could get her hands on a sum that would be considered unreachable to most people, but to her it was just spare change. Still, it did.
“Thank you, Victoria. I’d rather leave the banks out of it if I can.”
She nodded and touched her ex-husband’s hand, and he curled his fingers around hers. My mind drifted for a few moments and I allowed myself to wonder if they were seeing each other again.
