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“Yes, boss.”

“Call me when it is done.”

I end that call too.

The car hits the freeway. Now that I don’t have anything to arrange, the fear is returning. Zidaru’s men are as cruel as the man himself. My chest tightens and I have to use every coping mechanism I learned during years of surviving the streets to force myself to breathe evenly. Uncontrolled emotion might lead to missed signals which could result in Rosalie getting hurt any more than she’s already suffered.

I think about Rosalie on the lounger with her hand on top of mine. How that seemingly tiny gesture made something in my world shift. I think about her on my bed with her cheek on my pillow tracing the knife scar on my ribs, last night when she said goodnight, Vince with her mouth against my throat.

I want to wake up with her every day of my life. Never again do I want to go through this agony of not knowing if she’s alright.

Vernon is twelve minutes out from Vizio in traffic. We are there in nine.

The warehouse Marco pins the SUV to is the smallest of the three my men have been watching, which is useful, because it means fewer of them. My team is already in position. Six of my best men, two cars staggered a block on either side of the entrance, Marco in a van with four screens going at once.

I get out of the car.

Sal is at my shoulder.

“Breach,” I say. “Quiet. Fast. I want her back and I want every man in that warehouse down before I am fully through the second door.”

“Yes, boss.”

The first door is sheet metal and gives on the second shove. The outer room has two of Zidaru’s men. One has a weapon on his hip. The other is drinking coffee from a paper cup. Sal takes the one with the weapon. I take the one with the coffee. Neither of them makes a sound.

I step over the second one.

And I see the sneaker.

It’s a small white canvas thing with a pink lace. Lying on the concrete three feet inside the inner doorway, like somebody had kicked it off their foot on the walk in.

She left it for me.

Something in my chest wrenches.

I pick it up. Hand it to Sal.

“She’s close.”

“On it.”

We head toward the sound of a voice.

The voice belongs to a man talking on a phone.

The voice is saying something I cannot make out, but the tone of it is pleasant, which means he is still playing a game. That means he has not hurt her more than he thought he could get away with.

The door is standing partly open.

I take it in through the gap in one glance: small concrete room, one lightbulb, one table, one empty chair, one man standing against the wall with a phone. Rosalie in a chair in the middle of the room with her wrists zip-tied in her lap and her left cheek a flat red and a small line of blood at the corner of her mouth.

She lifts her head when I kick the door open. Her eyes find mine.

She says my name.

Soft. Breaking.

“Vince.”