Matt scanned the docks mapped out in front of him on the high-resolution tablet screen. The plane trip to New Orleans had been uneventful, and would have been calm, even, if he’d been able to stop pacing up and down the plane for thirty seconds. Despite checking in right before takeoff and the moment they’d landed, having to switch his phone off for the duration of the flight had been pure torture. He spent the entire flight imagining all the things Victor could be doing to the two people who meant the most to him in the world.

Mason had tried to reassure him that Victor wouldn’t hurt Brayden, but Matt couldn’t make himself believe it. He’d seen firsthand what Mancini was capable of when he was just a boy himself, only several years older than Brayden. Victor’s thugs had murdered his father in cold blood that night, right in front of him. If Matt hadn’t listened when his father used his dying breath to tell him to run, Matt would have joined him that night. His body had grown cold as ice settled in his center, bleeding out across his body. Even if Mason was right and Victor wanted to keep Brayden alive, Matt was under no illusions he cared in any way about Lauren. The man would kill her right in front of her son if he thought it would further his cause. Brayden would never recover from that.

Only the fact that he was in a tin can thirty thousand feet in the air had prevented him from punching something at the thought. Matt clenched his jaw and made up his mind.

This ends today.

All of it. No matter what the situation was when the plane fucking finally touched down, Victor was going to pay.

He looked across the car at the man who had picked them up at the airport. Sam Hyde. Mason had been whisked away by one of his associates in another car. He was taking care of meeting with the police, making it appear, at least, that they were paying attention to the law. From what Matt could gather so far, Sam had as much intention of actually doing that as Matt did. The man was quiet, unassuming, perhaps even a man people often ignored. Years in hiding, first across the country and then in Monroe, had taught Matt to look beneath the surface, constantly assessing people’s allegiances and motivations. It had been all that had kept him alive those first few years before he’d found his feet. There was no mistaking the glint in Sam’s eye or the expressions beneath his everyday facade. The man was highly intelligent and absolutely deadly. For the first time since the plane, the ice around Matt’s heart cracked. If anyone could help him bring Lauren and Brayden home, it was these guys.

He scoured the map, hoping that it would tell him something—anything—about where Lauren was hidden. DARC Op’s hacker had pulled up a flight manifest for a plane that had taken a strangely similar journey to theirs, flying directly from Gwinnett County airport. A charter flight, it had gone wheels up before they’d even noticed Meg, Lauren, and Brayden were missing, and could have landed in New Orleans by the time they’d found Meg. He rubbed at his eyes, the glow from the screen in the dark car ramping up the headache that had been steadily pounding behind his eyes for the preceding hour. He’d fired his phone back up the minute they’d cleared airport security and called Scott, but there’d been frustratingly little progress in the one and a half hours he’d been in the air. It had taken a while to even get the locals on board. Lauren and Brayden had only been missing for a couple of hours at that point, and they were apparently having a hard time believing that someone could have kidnapped a woman in Georgia and flown her out to New Orleans in an afternoon. A missing boy alone might have done more, but they’d assumed Brayden was just somewhere off with his mom. Some asshole detective had looked up Lauren’s details when Scott had insisted, but when her record came back with little more than a few parking fines, they’d almost been waylaid. It had only been Scott’s extreme language in reply, plus, Matt assumed, some intervention from the quiet man sitting opposite him in the car, that had the police doing anything at all when he’d arrived.

Victor Mancini had no legal residence in the state, nothing for the cops to get a search warrant on. Sam had barked commands into his cell when that news had come in, asking whoever was on the other end to search Victor’s financial records. The man had to be sleeping somewhere, and no way would he settle for anything under a one thousand thread count. Those kinds of places required a credit card to be passed over simply for booking in. For once, Victor’s taste for the finer things—and his contempt for anything else—could work in their favor. There would be no cheap fifty-dollar-a-night motels for Victor Mancini, and that fact might just save Lauren and Brayden’s lives. Meanwhile, it was Matt’s task to scour the map of the local area, looking for anything familiar, anything that would spark a memory.

It was funny. He’d spent a decade repressing every thought, locked in nightmares, and wishing that he could forget everything of his past. Now he wanted to remember it all. Every offhand comment, every little fact, right down to the taunts on the night they killed his father. Somewhere in there had to be a clue to where the bastard was holding Lauren. Matt hoped that Brayden would be with her, but he wasn’t holding his breath. Mancini had probably gotten him out of the state, maybe even out of the country, as fast as he could. He scrubbed his face again, the motion doing nothing to wipe away the stress and exhaustion. It would break Lauren’s heart if they didn’t find Brayden that day, and so it was up to Matt to keep going until they did. Only when both of them were safe in his arms would he ever relax again.

Sam’s cell rang again, and he placed it on the seat between them, putting it on speaker. The voice of the man Mason had gone with—Jasper—echoed throughout the car. “Nothing at the Sophia.” They’d at least been able to get the cops to search the boat the Mancini family had moored at a local marina, but it appeared that the search had gained them nothing. Matt resisted the urge to throw the tablet across the car. The damn thing was proving to be as useless as he was in the whole fucking mess. He’d been placing every shred of hope he had that things might miraculously turn out okay on that damn boat. Hearing they’d found it empty was like a knife had slashed him across the chest, the pain that would be nothing compared to the war of emotions raging within him. He was simultaneously forcing himself to keep up hope that he’d find them both safe and alive while his mind ran through every sickening image it could conjure up, as if his own psyche was intent on causing him the most pain of all. His nightmares had nothing on the images running on an endless loop through his mind every time a new report came in with nothing other than bad news. If only there’d been something on that damn boat!

The boat.

The yacht may have been empty, but that wasn’t the only business Victor Mancini had with boats. He’d only known sketchy details at best in his childhood, but he had known that his father spent a damn long time at the docks. Far too long for a man who didn’t work in the slightest way with the cargo freighters and container ships that came in and out of port. The place had been a rabbit warren of large warehouses and swaths of concreted roads and parking bays. Cranes hung overhead and massive container ships sat in port, large enough to make the large steel boxes they carried look like Lego blocks. Bright colors were everywhere, the combination of organized chaos and rows of what looked like the same ship and the same warehouse over and over again had made it a disorienting place. Matt had lost his way more than once when he’d followed after his dad some nights. He imagined that anyone who didn’t work there regularly would. There were far too many corners and side alleys to hide things in.

His head snapped up. You could easily hide a person there. In the right place, a low-trafficked corner or close to loud machinery, no one would even hear a scream.

The tablet dropped from his hands. Matt paid no attention to how or where it landed. He looked at Sam. “We’re still looking for a boat!”

Sam’s eyebrows furrowed as he scooped up the tablet from where it had fallen somewhere in the foot well and zoomed it to their location. “Explain.”

Matt’s words almost tripped over themselves as he rushed to explain. He was right, he was sure of it, and he finally had a course of action. He had to get to Lauren and Brayden right that fucking minute. “We’re looking for a boat, but not the yacht. Mancini’s too smart for that. Victor’s son, James . . . he was trying to get out of the family business, go legit, but I’d bet Daddy wouldn’t let that happen.” Matt’s fingers drummed on the leather seat as Sam tapped on the screen, moving the view toward the industrial center near the water. It was as if the guy could read his mind. “James got himself involved in imports and exports. I know that much from the info I managed to find out from the outside.” He looked up from the tablet and locked eyes with Sam. “What if he docked here? What do you bet Victor Mancini still has access to the carriers and warehouse his son used?”

One five-second phone call and an even quicker word to the driver of the car from Sam and the car was turned away from the marina and hurtling toward the docks. He left the line open, talking to a guy called Tansy this time, as directions were called out, sometimes seconds before a turn. Ten minutes later, after running a red light and breaking probably every speed limit Louisiana had, the car pulled in to the entrance of the port. A small team of uniformed police were gearing up as Sam and Matt climbed out of the car, including a circle of guys wearing tactical gear and loading up with heavy weaponry—SWAT.

A man with a bar on each collar approached them, holding out his hand. “Lieutenant Brandon,” he said, introducing himself as he shook Matt’s hand. He turned to Sam, inclining his head. “Your tip was right. We found a warehouse leased to James Mancini still operational in the lot.” He turned his body toward the team gearing up behind him. “My men are getting ready for a first survey of the area now.”

Sam nodded and walked to the back of the car, popping the trunk. He pulled out a ballistics vest and slung off his jacket, revealing a holster holding a Glock. “I’m going in with them. My boss should have cleared it with your superintendent by now.”

The Lieutenant nodded. “You’re good to go.” He turned to Matt. “You stay here.”

Matt opened his mouth to argue, but he was cut off by the retort of a gunshot as it rang through the air. Flashes of his father falling to the floor as the knife flashed into his chest swamped him, and he gasped for breath. He locked his knees and forced his lungs to draw in air until his vision cleared. That was over. His past didn’t matter, not anymore. Lauren and Brayden needed him.