The car engine roars as I tear down the last stretch of highway before we reach the motel where I took Camille from Sean. I fired everyone from my security company and contacted a completely new contractor before we left. I even paid triple the month’s fee to have the men rush over to my place. I still feel wrong for leaving her behind. In the moment, I was pissed. I was feeling so furious and angry that I was lashing out at the wrong people, and in that instant, it didn’t feel reckless to trust Camille’s safety to another private security firm. But now it feels like a risk. An intolerable risk.

I almost turn the car around, but I know my daughter is somewhere. She’s scared and alone, wondering why her daddy hasn’t saved her yet.

I grip the steering wheel so hard it might snap, clenching my teeth as I rip across the road.

“So what do we do if he’s at the motel?” asks Murph.

“Glove box,” I say.

Murph opens the glove box and sucks in a breath of surprise. “Where the fuck did you get these?”

Tanner leans over from the back seat to get a look. “What the fuck, Dean?”

“They’re just pistols. Smith and Wesson. You don’t point them at anything you don’t want dead and they aren’t a big deal. Take them. Safeties are on.”

“Do you even know how to work a gun?” asks Tanner.

“Of course I do. I had a retired navy SEAL train me when I bought them.”

Murph tentatively takes one of the guns out, holding it like it might bite him. “The safety is on,” I say again.

He carefully hands the other gun to Tanner, who looks down gravely at it.

“We’re really going to do this if we find him?” asks Tanner.

“You have any other ideas?” I say coldly. “We can’t just ask him nicely to give her back. We make him see we’re not fucking around, and if he’s smart, he’ll give her up. If he’s not, then we’re going to have to escalate things.”

“And why exactly aren’t we calling the cops again?” asks Murph.

“Because the cops have to play by the rules,” I say. “And I can’t afford to let rules come before saving my little girl. Nothing can.”

My brothers look like they want to say more, but they know better than to push me on this. Despite where we are now, we didn’t grow up easy, and I lost track of how many times I had to fight to keep them safe when we were growing up in foster care. No. No fucking amount of money can take that edge from us.

Tanner racks a bullet in the chamber of his gun and tucks it in his suit jacket. Murph tries to do the same but fumbles the weapon, sending it bouncing to his lap.

“For fuck’s sake,” I say, snatching it from him while my other hand is on the wheel. “I’ll give this back to you when we get out, when you’re less likely to shoot yourself in the nuts.”

The motel looks just as shitty in the middle of the day as it did the night I took Callie from here. Honestly, it looks even shittier now. We get out of the car and I tuck the pistol in my waistband with the safety still on. I hand Tanner his, racking a bullet in the chamber before I do. “See this?” I say. “That’s the safety. Just flick it with your thumb when you want to shoot. And don’t point it at me, Tanner, or Jen if she’s in there. Okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Why are you just talking to me like I don’t know what I’m doing. Pretty sure Tanner doesn’t know shit about guns, either.”

“At least he didn’t drop the thing in the car. Same goes for you too though, Tanner.”

“Yeah, I got it,” says Tanner, who slides the barrel of the gun down the front of his waistband, covering it up with his suit jacket.

“It was this one,” I say, leading us to the room Camille sat outside. Room 121, according to the sign. I look between my brothers, making sure they are all ready. Tanner’s hand hovers suspiciously in front of his belt, Murph actually has his tucked in his pocket, where he’s probably clutching the pistol. I keep mine in clear view. At least one of us can look like we’re not about to go fucking bonkers.

I knock hard on the door. “Open the fucking door,” I shout.

There’s no answer, and I’m not feeling patient, so I kick it beside the doorknob and the flimsy door shatters open.

A man and woman with white hair and age-marked skin sit on the bed, arms around each other.

“Were you two making out?” asks Murph, who lets his hand drop from his jacket.

“Did you just kick down our door?” asks the man, while his eyes dart between us rapidly. The woman he’s with clutches tightly to him, shaking.

“Where’s Sean,” I ask.

“Sean Hamilton? Last I saw him was at bridge three nights ago. Has he gotten into trouble again?”

“What’s Sean’s last name?” Murph asks me in a low voice.

“Fuck if I know, but something tells me he doesn’t play bridge with these two,” I whisper back. “He’s not here.”

“Sorry for interrupting,” says Tanner as we file out of the room.

“Use protection!” shouts Murph just before the door closes.

I swat the back of his head.

Tanner rolls his eyes. “Murph, that lady was like seventy. Nature has her plenty protected, asshole.”

“Damn, man. You’re the one trying to call her seventy. She still had some curves in the right places. I’d call her sixty-five years young.”

I get in the car and slam the door, staring at the dashboard as I fume. I knew it was a long shot to find Sean there, but it was the only real lead I had for now. Beyond knocking down every door in the fucking city, all I can do is wait for my guy to get back to me about the plates, and waiting does not feel like an option. My little girl is out there somewhere, and every second that goes by could…

I shake my head, feeling my anger threaten to boil over again. No. She’s going to be okay. I’m going to find her and she’s going to be okay.

My phone rings and I snatch it up as Murph and Tanner get back in the car, still arguing about the old lady’s age.

“Camille?” I ask as I pick up. “Is everything okay?”

“Don’t be mad,” she says quickly, “But I have a plan, and I kind of already started it without you.”

“Camille…” I say in a low voice.

“I called Sean. I said I wanted to meet him. I said he could have me if he gave Jen back.”

“You did what?” I ask through clenched teeth.

“I told you not to be mad!” she says quickly. “It’s a trap, Dean. At least that’s the plan. The guys you hired said they’d come along and tail me to make sure nothing happens.”

I grip the phone so hard I hear it creak in my grip. She’s making me choose, whether she realizes it or not. She’s putting her life on one end of the scale and my daughter’s on the other. But I’m not going to choose. Maybe I’ve only known Camille for a few weeks, but the strength of what I feel for her already is too powerful to ignore. And even if I didn’t know her, I couldn’t sacrifice one life for another.

I think to some that would make me sound like a shitty father. After all, what kind of man wouldn’t give up a woman he’s only known a few weeks for his daughter? But fuck that and fuck them. It’s not that simple. Jen would want me to find a way that keeps everyone safe because she’s a good kid, and neither of us would be able to live with it if the cost of her freedom is Camille.

“You can’t do this,” I say calmly. “I forbid it.”

“You forbid it?” she asks shakily. “Dean, I was right there. I told her to run, and--” she sniffles through the phone and takes a heaving breath. “I should have been able to protect her. They took her because I couldn’t stop it. Do you understand that? If there’s even the miniscule chance I can make this right, I’m going to try, no matter the cost.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Camille,” I say.

Her voice sounds cold. “You weren’t there.”

“I didn’t have to be. You want someone to blame? Blame Sean. He’s the only one at fault here, and we’re going to make him pay. Together.”

There’s a long pause. “How?”

I look down, letting the pieces come together in my head. “You go through with the meeting, but we’re all going to be there, and that fucker is either going to take us to Jen willingly or at gunpoint. That’s how. You said the security is already coming?”

“Yeah,” she says. “They’ll be there.”

“Good. If Sean had my guys bought and paid for before, we have to assume they’re still working for him. I don’t think he’ll come alone. Whether he comes with his idiot friends or with military contractors, we have to be ready.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” she says. “Sean works construction jobs. He barely makes enough to pay for the motels we bounced around in. There’s no way he could afford to bribe your security guards.”

I already came to the same conclusion, but I have a piece of the puzzle Camille doesn’t. I know what lengths Barry would go to in order to get me back for passing the company to Peterson instead of him. Buying some lowlife scum like Sean and my bodyguards sounds exactly like the kind of spineless thing he would pull. “I think I know the answer to that riddle. Remember the asshole from the night of the play? Barry?”

“Shit,” she says. “You don’t think he…”

“I do. In fact, I’d bet my fortune on it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means getting Jen back is only the first step, because Sean is just a pawn in all of this. Barry has enough money to keep pouring into this for as long as his anger lasts, and if I know him at all, that could be forever. But one thing at a time. Jen first. We have to get my little girl back.”

“I’m with you,” says Camille. “Whatever it takes.”

Camille calls us a half hour later with the location for the meetup. It’s an abandoned trailer park about ten minutes from the motel. We wait on the side of the highway until Camille drives past in the Bentley I told her to take from my house. She’s tailed by a caravan of blacked out SUVs--the new private security team. We pull out behind her and follow the SUVs, which trail her by half a mile or more to avoid tipping Sean off, who, of course, insisted on Camille coming alone.

“An abandoned trailer park?” asks Murph. “How does that even happen? Like one day everyone just decides they’ve had it and they walk away from their homes?”

“It happens because they built them in a flood zone,” I say. “Remember all the flooding we had two years back? The place was under water for several weeks, and I guess there wasn’t anything worth going back to when the water finally cleared.”

“How does he know about it?” asks Murph.

“Hell if I know. Maybe he lived there. Maybe one of his cousins did or something. Does it matter?”

Murph sinks back into his seat, eyebrows furrowed. “You think he’ll bring Jen?”

“I fucking hope so, but I doubt it. Camille agreed to trade herself for Jen, but he told her to come alone. If he was actually planning to give Jen back to us, he’d leave her somewhere safe and drop her off later. There’d be no point bringing her now.”

“Maybe he’ll take the trade,” says Tanner.

“I hope,” I say. “But I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.”

We pull off the highway and follow a back country road for a few miles before the SUVs pull off into a grassy field, driving about a quarter of a mile before we reach the cover of some large trees.

My brothers and I get out and head toward the SUVs, where eight men armed with assault rifles and tactical gear are unloading from the vehicles and checking their equipment.

A man with gray at his temples steps forward. I didn’t have time to meet the men in person yet, but I recognize his picture from the email my assistant sent over after contracting them. He’s the squad leader. Stopes I think was his last name, but I’m not sure. Frankly I don’t care, either.

“You Mr. Sharp?” he asks in a gruff voice.

A couple of the men glance up at us, sizing my brothers and I up.

“Yeah.”

“She didn’t tell us much,” says Stopes.

“We don’t know much,” I say. “This could get bloody, though. I know that much.”

Stopes nods to his men, who nod back, cocking weapons and racking bullets in chambers before they fan out and head toward the trailer park through the trees.

My brothers and I follow behind.

“Got any more of those big guns we can borrow?” asks Murph. “Dean just gave us these little things,” he says, holding the pistol up like it’s a dirty paper towel.

One of the men near the back eyes the gun. “That’s a Smith and Wesson Performance Center, Model SW1911, man. I wouldn’t call it little. Only point that fucker at something you want real dead,” he says, turning back to keep his eye on the path he takes through the underbrush.

We reach the top of a hill a few minutes later and have a clear view of at least thirty mobile homes. Some are tipped on their sides with moldy water lines almost up to the roof. It’s clear that the water carried some of the homes from their original positions, and there’s waterlogged possessions and furniture still rotting in the boggy ground.

There’s a patch of clean white in the field of brown decay. Camille. She wears a white dress and has her hair back as she steps purposefully toward the center of the park. A shitty pickup truck is parked on the other end, and my eye twitches when I see Sean get out and motion for three men to follow him. They are the same assholes from the night I got the shit kicked out of me. I would feel relief to see them instead of the contractors, but the men carry hunting rifles and shotguns casually and with a cocky glint in their eyes I don’t like at all.

Besides, there’s no telling who could be watching from the treeline on the opposite ridge. For all I know, my ex security detail is over there with rifles just as deadly as the men sinking into prone positions and aiming down at the men approaching Camille.

It takes everything in me not to run down right now and put myself between her and danger, but my head wins out over my body. If I made myself known right now, I’d be putting her in even more danger. From up here we have the element of surprise. The men know to drop Sean and his friends if they so much as look at Camille the wrong way, and they have the firepower to do it.

I pull out the pistol and line up the sights on Sean’s face, tracking him slowly as he crosses the park toward Camille.