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“No. No. I’m going to text you the clients I know of. I do know some. I just don’t have the list.”
My smile’s tight. It pulls at my skin. “And if I can’t find it? I’m not a fucking lapdog. I’ll do better going in, guns blazing.”
“No!”
Interesting. Maybe he’s concerned about his daughter. Maybe he’s a lying sack of shit who’s close to his brother on the rotten branch of the family tree. “I’m here now. Gotta go.”
I hang up.
Then I call Smith. “I want eyes on Grant Hanlon. As in up close and personal. I think he’s up to something.”
“Okay, but?—”
“Just get it done for me, please? Shit, gotta go. Another call coming in.”
And bang, there it is. Right after I talk to fucking Grant. A text with a time and an address. The list for the girl, it says.
Then my phone rings. It’s like fucking Times Square on my phone. Everything’s happening all at once. This is a cell number, one I don’t recognize.
The text came from my people, because that’s the only phone number I give out as JM. This? It’s direct.
I wait a second before answering.
“Is this Malone?” a panicked female voice asks.
“Yes.”
“I’m Scarlett’s friend, Lacey. She gave me your number to call in case of anything. She’s gone.”
“What the fuck do you mean, gone?” The bottom to my world falls out. “Define fucking gone.”
“I got to SoHo where we were going to meet, and… someone took her. Broad daylight,” she says as sharp, clawed panic digs in deep, drawing blood. “They’ve got her. Kidnapped.”
I don’t panic. I’m not that kind of man. Not panic on this kind of vision-wavering, icy level. “Who?”
“The people who took Amelia,” Lacey says.
Fuck.
THIRTY-FOUR
scarlett
I think we’re in the outer edges of Bushwick, from what I can decipher from their low muttering in the front seat. Dad has some long-term storage in Bushwick for some clients who want to use a space where they can keep things until needed. Now that the blindfold is off, I recognize some containers with the company logo on them.
Or maybe this is a place a client owns. I don’t know. When they grabbed me, they blindfolded me in the car. I tried to fight, but two big burly men aren’t people I can easily overtake.
“Do you know where we are?” I whisper.
Amelia shakes her head. “No. He didn’t say. Just put me here.”
“He?” I give her a look. Amelia knows something. She’s scared but she’s not talking.
I take a breath. “You can tell me anything, you know that, right?”’
“Scarlett…”
I wait, but she doesn’t finish.
