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She’d gotten in it, and it had driven off. She’d left. With Merce Dancastle.
I shook my head. There had to be an explanation. She wouldn’t have gone to him like that.
“Something is wrong. I don’t know what he said to her, but she wouldn’t do that. Wilder”—I swung my gaze from the screen to him—“get the sound from this. There has to be a way to do that. She’s in danger with that motherfucker. He lied to her, and now, he has her!” My voice was getting louder, I realized, verging on a shout.
The iPad was snatched from my hands, and I turned to my brother, who put it back on Blaise’s desk.
“She wouldn’t just go outside that late alone. Out to the road,” I told Blaise. “I know her. She’s scared. She was fucking terrified when I left. For me. If we can get the sound, it’ll tell us what happened. How that happened.”
“I know how it happened,” Blaise replied, cutting me off. “I set her up. She failed.”
What the hell did that mean?
I had to get out of here. I had to get to Athens. Find her. I considered running, but I doubted I’d make it to the door without getting shot.
“She didn’t fail! She was lied to. He threatened her. I don’t know. But there is a reason!” The franticness in my voice didn’t come close to matching the clawing inside my chest.
He’d taken her. She’d been taken from me.
“Her father is why she left,” Blaise said.
If blood could freeze in the veins, mine just did. I’d assumed he was dead by now.
“I used him. Gave him an out. We’d gotten all we needed out of him. You’d taken one of our key players and run off with her. I could either have the job finished or use him one last time. He did exactly as instructed, and he got to live. The bastard had no problem agreeing to set up his daughter in exchange for his life.”
The pounding in my skull was getting louder. Every time I inhaled, my lungs burned like they were going to explode. I didn’t want to know what he’d done, but I had to. It was the only way I could save her. If something happened to her, I’d not see another day because they’d put a bullet in my head, but not before I took down everyone who had played a part in this.
“Where is she?” My voice sounded like a strangled growl.
I noticed movement in my peripheral vision, but all I could focus on was Blaise and what he was going to tell me.
“Let’s not cause any more drama than there already is,” my brother suggested.
I didn’t know what was happening around me, nor did I give a fuck.
Blaise held his hand up in Gage’s direction, as if to stop him from doing something.
“Royal was given a phone tonight. A replacement for the one you had disposed of. The same number as before. She was told it was so you could reach her if needed before she went to bed.
“Her father called her on that phone and told her the truth. Where he had been, what we—you—had done to him, and said he was going home. He asked her if she wanted to go with him. That he could get her if she did.”
Blaise paused, giving me a pointed look.
“That’s why she was out at the road. What Merce told her? I don’t know. But Vinson was to get Merce Dancastle to be the one waiting on her.
“If she’d walked out there just to see if her father was okay, but not to leave with him, she would have passed. Of course, not going out there at all and staying inside to wait on your return was what I’d hoped for. The fact is, she not only went out there, but her father wasn’t there, and she left with Merce Dancastle—who we are now positive is involved in the laced drugs, although his father isn’t aware of it.
“Vinson told us she knew about the drugs and Merce’s involvement. He said she helped with it, did some drops herself. However, there is no proof, and it’s just his word, which means nothing.
“But she did leave Maeme’s to go to her father when he called.”
There were no words that came to me to defend her. I stood there, saying nothing.
I didn’t believe she’d just left me. I had been so sure that she felt something strong. The way she looked at me, there was love shining in her eyes. The sweet way she’d curl up in my lap and her hand would touch my chest. Her soft, contented sighs when I held her.
Was the truth about what had happened to her father —hearing his word without listening to mine—really all it had taken for her to leave me? To just walk away without a word? There had to be something else. I could not accept that the woman who had become the most important person in my life would turn on me so easily.
“Are we done here?” Thatcher asked, sounding so casual. As if the world hadn’t just been snatched out from under my feet.
