Chapter Two
Caroline
Present Day
Someone took my daughter.
Someone took Juliet.
My brain transmitted the words, but couldn’t seem to comprehend them. My synapses were firing, but the spark wasn’t catching anywhere. I fisted my freezing hands until they were white in my lap. They were all I could see, all that made sense. Everything else was wrong… broken. A macabre nightmare I wished to wake up from.
Sayer reached over and covered my left hand with his, wrapping it in warmth and strength, providing me something solid to latch onto. “We will get her back, Caro.” His voice was steely, unbreakable iron.
My gaze traveled over his hand, following his long fingers to the masculine bone of his wrist, over his dress shirt, to the curve of his broad shoulder. His neck. His jawline. His face. Pieces of him that made sense. Things I could see. The rest of the world, beyond him, was nothing but abstract, unknowable things. Dark and ambiguous and pretend.
“Who took her?”
His jaw ticked, but his shoulder lifted in a shrug. “I have a theory.” His jaw ticked again. “But I don’t know for sure. I’ve made a lot of enemies in my life.”
I jerked my focus to the windshield, staring at the darkened road ahead. “We’ve made a lot of enemies.”
His fingers slid through mine, squeezing tightly. The gesture was meant to be comforting, but it had the opposite effect on me.
This was why I had run in the first place. This was why I’d left the man I loved and the future we’d planned. When I found out I was pregnant five years ago, I had no other option. The life we lived in the Russian bratva was too dangerous for a child, for my child. I knew her life would always be at risk. I knew the constant peril would force sinister hands into her life and try to take her from me.
Maybe I hadn’t foreseen this exact scenario, but I’d imagined a thousand similar ones. To ensure her safety, to keep her free of this god-awful world, I’d escaped. Only I hadn’t gone far enough.
And my shortsighted decision had led Sayer back to me. And now the DC underworld had followed him.
I didn’t blame Sayer. At least not yet. But it was hard to separate the two circumstances. Sayer showed back up in my life and suddenly Juliet is taken. The events were undoubtedly linked.
Doubt, suspicion, and ugly, ferocious blame brewed inside me.
I looked down to where our hands were still clasped in my lap and repressed an ominous shiver.
With his gaze out the window and one hand on the steering wheel, he said in a low tone, “We should talk about what happened.”
Sucking in a steadying breath, I quickly shook my head. He meant having sex. He meant talk about how we’d just had sex in his downstairs office at his restaurant, the DC Initiative. The one he’d recently opened in town to be near me after his five-year stint in prison.
I still smelled like him. My lips were still swollen from his kisses, my hair disheveled and tangled. “Not now,” I pleaded. “I… I can’t talk about it now.”
He could sense the panic in my voice, the reedy desperation. “Caroline…” he murmured.
“God, Sayer, I can’t right now.” Not when I should have been the one picking up Juliet from daycare. I should have been there to take her home. I should have never gotten distracted by old love and renewed lust and consistent stupidity. This man made me stupid. He was every bad decision and hasty regret. He was all my wrong choices and abandoned dreams.
And now Juliet had been kidnapped and I had nobody to blame but myself.
Same old shit, different day.
I couldn’t think about that now. I had to find Juliet. She was my priority. My stomach roiled and if I’d eaten anything today I would have puked it all over Sayer’s Jeep. A desperate tear slipped from the corner of my eye and I gasped a heavy sob.
“We’re going to get her back,” Sayer growled, slamming the car into a parallel parking spot in front of the daycare Juliet attended. Squad cars were everywhere, cops littering the yard in front of the building, walking wide-eyed parents and terrified children to their vehicles.
I ripped my hand away from Sayer without acknowledging his promise. I didn’t know if I believed him yet. I didn’t know if I needed to. I would get my daughter back no matter what, no matter what I had to do or pay or promise. I would get her back. It helped that Sayer was here to support me, but I didn’t need him.
They couldn’t keep her from me. I would move fucking heaven and hell to get her back.
I saw Frankie standing on the sidewalk and took off running for her. A uniform stepped in front of me and I slammed to a stop.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” she ground out, signaling for another officer to join her.
The officer must have noticed the wild look in my eyes or my frantic state. She rested her hand on her sidearm and moved with me when I tried to step around her.
“I-I’m the mom,” I gasped, doing my best to hold back a flood of tears. I couldn’t let them escape. If I gave into the emotion, I would drown in it. I would be useless and weepy and a prisoner to despair. Right now, I was desperate but furious. A lifetime of working with high adrenaline made me feel ready for battle, primed for the fight of my life.
“She’s the mom!” Frankie shouted from where she stood when she noticed me. “She’s Caroline Baker!”
“I’m Caroline Baker,” I confirmed.
The officer dropped her gaze to my boots and worked her way up, assessing my threat level. It was at fucking hazardous, but she didn’t need to know that. “Can I see some ID?”
I patted my pockets and reached for the nonexistent purse on my shoulder. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I growled. My purse was packed with stolen items sitting in the basement office at DC Initiative.
“Ma’am?” The officer’s eyebrows rose.
“I forgot my purse,” I told her, swallowing my fury and impatience. Fighting with the police would get me nowhere. “I panicked. We just left. I didn’t even think to grab it.”
“We?”
I opened my mouth to tell her my relationship with Sayer, but my tongue tripped over convoluted explanations. Or how to explain it to the cop fast enough to push past this bullshit and get her to give me details. “My, er—”
A hand thrust past me and reached for the officer’s, saving me from answering. “Sayer Smith. I’m Juliet’s father.”
Holy shit. Her father. I dumped an imaginary bucket of ice water over my head to get my brain to focus again. It was that… he said it so effortlessly, so smoothly. Her father, like he’d said it a thousand times. And even though he’d used his alias, the blow was just as effective at knocking the wind out of me.
The officer was visibly charmed by him. Her guard lowered a little and the suspicion melted from her furrowed brow. “Smith?” To me, she asked, “Baker?”
“We’re not married,” Sayer explained just as easily as he’d said father. “Actually, Juliet hasn’t even met me yet. Unplanned pregnancy.” He paused, letting the cop fill in the blanks. “I moved to the area to have a relationship with my daughter. Caroline and I are working on how to tell her.”
The officer’s voice dropped. “Oh.”
My tongue went numb as I tried to retain all those little details I would need to regurgitate to the police on the hour, every hour until we found her. Or as often as they asked me to explain, knowing that would be often.
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” Sayer said soothingly. “We’re still trying to figure out the logistics ourselves.” He turned his head and our gazes collided, the hard look in his eyes telling me we really would have to talk about what happened. And soon.
I felt lightheaded. There was too much going on. I needed to get Juliet back. The rest could wait. I knew that. Logically, I knew that. But, goddamn, someone would pay after this was over.
The officer stuttered over what to say next while Miss Beth and Miss Harmony from the daycare joined us. “Caroline,” Harmony whispered, pulling me into a hug. “I’m so, so sorry.”
A gust of wind rustled my clothes, drawing attention to my cold, wet shoulder. Harmony was crying all over me. I took a step back and settled my hands on her shoulders, keeping her at a distance. New Caroline would have hugged her back and offered comfort. Old Caroline blamed her for handing my daughter over to a stranger. Old Caroline hated her. Old Caroline wanted to strangle this woman.
“What happened?” I hoped my tone would sober her up a bit.
She sucked in a struggling breath, shaking through her sobs. “We were at rest time,” she sniffled. “The fire alarm went off. It was mayhem with all the littles ones. And the babies were sleeping.” She dropped her face into her hands and tried to compose herself. Her voice pitched high as she spoke through her sobs. “In the rush to exit the building, th-there was a man waiting outside. H-he was hiding. We had our hands full. Each teacher is responsible for a certain number of children, but we accounted for Juliet before we left the building. When we went to do our final count at our safe spot, she wasn’t there.”
Fury bubbled in my blood, turning my skin hot despite the icy wind blowing down from the mountains. “You didn’t even know she was gone?”
Sayer stepped in front of me, breaking the crushing grip I had on Harmony and didn’t realize until I released her. “How do you know a man took her if you didn’t even know she was gone?”
“The security tapes,” she hiccupped. “The fire department searched the building and when they couldn’t find her we watched the tapes to figure out what happened.”
Sayer turned to the local PD that had gathered around us. “We need to see those tapes.”
The original officer shared a look with an older male officer next to her. “Of course.”
They led us inside of the now empty daycare facility. I remembered having a warm feeling of rightness when I’d toured the building, stupidly believing this was the best fit for my baby. And safest.
Betrayal spread through me, a hot, sharp tingle that poisoned my blood. The logical side of my brain knew it wasn’t their fault. They hadn’t lived a life of crime and sin. They hadn’t summoned the ghosts of my past into my present. I’d done that. I was the responsible party.
But the emotional part of me, the hurting mother that had lost her baby girl, needed to blame someone, needed to lash out and destroy whatever was connected to this deep, dark pain and fear.
Another officer took over, speaking with a tone of authority and calm decisiveness. He was twice my age and had a gray handlebar mustache that looked like it was made for him. He started going over theories and the fire, how it seemed to be arson to drive people out of the building, and details about the footage, but I stopped listening to him.
The police were a necessary evil at this point. I knew who had my daughter. At least I had a short list of suspects. And I wouldn’t be handing any of their names over to the small, rustic, Frisco police force. Best case scenario, they’d work hard for a few days, realize they had zero resources to find her and would give up. Worst case scenario, they’d pull in the FBI and everything I had worked so hard for would blow up in my face.
Besides, I wouldn’t need their help to find her. Whoever took her wasn’t planning on keeping her indefinitely. She was only the mechanism to draw me out. Or Sayer. Or both of us.
The black and white footage started playing. The quality was grainy, distorting the images and making faces almost unrecognizable. Maybe Miss Beth and Miss Harmony should take some of the exorbitant tuition I paid them every month and invest in a better security system.The angry, irrational rage monster snarled in my chest, and I clenched my fists until my nails dug into my palms to keep from snapping at everyone around me.
There he was. He had a hat on so I couldn’t see his face, but his frame was masculine and the clothes he wore suggested male. The kids filed out of the building two by two, teachers spread between them intermittently. Nobody noticed him. He stood obscured from sight within an offset corner of the building, but if somebody had been looking around they would have seen him immediately. But all their eyes were on the children.
Again, logically I knew this was the daycare worker’s job, this was how they were trained to react to the possible threat. Emotionally, the information added fuel to my fuming fire.
Juliet walked at the back of the group, hand in hand with another boy who seemed half asleep still. My stomach clenched at the sight of her and a silent sob racked my chest.
Juliet. Only an hour ago.
I swayed unsteadily on my feet, the dizzy feeling intensifying at my helplessness of watching this video now. One hour later. One hour too late. A heavy arm wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me into the attached body. Registering it was Sayer and that every one of his muscles had gone rigid and stiff, I stayed next to him, giving and receiving comfort simultaneously.
We watched in horror as the faceless man, took one step forward, grabbed Juliet’s hand when her teacher’s head was turned and yanked her toward his body. Within a second, he had his huge hand pressed over her face. It was so big that it covered her nose, her mouth and up to her eyes. They were around the building in the next second, nobody noticed she’d been taken, nobody turned and wondered where she’d wandered off to. The kids and teachers marched quickly off screen, the camera left to capture only the kidnapper’s escape.
An officer changed the tape and with it the camera angle. I continued to watch the abduction in escalating horror. I swelled with pride as Juliet continued to struggle and fight, never once giving into the monster that was three times her size. She kicked out and when that didn’t work, she bucked, trying to shake him off her. Her little fists swung wildly until he used his other arm to restrain her against him. At some point she must have bitten him because he nearly dropped her.
The footage ended when a windowless van pulled up on the side street. The man threw Juliet in the back of it and slammed the doors closed. My stomach flipped violently at the thought of my little girl in the back of that van, terrified, confused, panicked. The kidnapper calmly slid into the passenger side and the van drove away.
I scanned quickly for a license plate, but there wasn’t one. “Rewind it,” I demanded. “I want to see it again.”
“Ms. Baker—”
I dropped my tone, brokering no room for argument. “Rewind it. I want to see it again.”
They finally acquiesced. I watched the tape six more times before I came to the conclusion that there was nothing remarkable about the van, no dents or markers that would lead me to find the right one. Just like there was nothing remarkable about the man that had taken my daughter— other than he knew exactly what he was doing.
And he didn’t hesitate.
That was something you became familiar with in my line of work. Someone who had never done that before would have hesitated. There was doubt that accompanied your first couple jobs, the fear that you would get caught, the hesitation from lack of experience. First jobs were sloppy and full of problems.
This guy wasn’t a newbie. He knew exactly what he was doing. And there wasn’t even a twitch of uncertainty. He was confident he wouldn’t get caught.
Not until he wanted to be.
Motherfucker.
“Mrs. Baker, we’ve issued an AMBER Alert and have our best men tracking your daughter. We’re coordinating with the police departments in Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs and Grand Junction,” Officer Mustache said to me, apparently trying to reassure me that watching the security footage one more time wasn’t going to help anything. His voice became stern, parental. “You’ll have to come back to the station with us. We need to file an official report and ask you more questions. It would also be helpful to have a current picture of your daughter.”
Irritation buzzed through me. We were wasting precious time. But telling him that would only make it worse. I had to play the part. What would normal mothers do? They would go with the nice policemen and tell them every single thing they wanted to know. They would be compliant and helpful. They wouldn’t know that it would be faster and more effective to fly to DC and burn the whole goddamn city to the ground.
I softened my expression and looked at the man with my best impression of doe eyes. “Do you mind if I talk to my friend first?”
“Do you need a ride to the station?” he asked. “You could follow in your own car, but are you up to driving?”
Wiping beneath my eyes I inclined my head toward Sayer. “Juliet’s father will drive us over. We’ll be right behind you.”
He nodded and walked off. I let out a slow breath and leaned on my hands, resting on the front desk. I felt sick and helpless and more furious than I had ever felt in my life. I would murder whoever took her.
Frankie and Gus were standing in a corner of the room with Sayer. He’d walked away after the third repeat of the surveillance video. I didn’t know if he’d seen everything he needed to see or if it was too much to stomach over and over and over. Seeing her on the screen but helpless to do anything to bring her back was the single most frustrating thing I had ever experienced.
My jaw ached by the time I walked over to Frankie. I realized I’d been grinding my teeth for the last hour at least. Pressing a hand to my temple, I cursed the brewing headache pounding my skull.
Frankie’s eyes flashed, distressed, offering an apology. “God, Caro, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I bit out. And I meant it. She was the only person I didn’t blame for losing Juliet. “I just… I need to get her back.” Emotion pushed up my throat and threatened to choke me. Turning to Sayer I dropped my voice. “Do you know who it is?”
He shared a look with Gus, before meeting my gaze. “Atticus.”
My heart kicked at my chest. Fucking Atticus. “You’re sure?” I had to ask, even though he’d sounded sure… he’d sounded one hundred percent confident.
He nodded. “Positive.”
I forced a breath out slowly. This wasn’t good news by any means, but at the very least, he was an enemy I was familiar with. We didn’t have to fight our way through the entire Italian mafia family or pick off Irish in back alleys hoping to find a helpful lead. It could have been even worse than that—our enemies were endless.
Atticus was the devil we knew. Totally evil and more than a little deranged, but he would be easy enough to track down. Plus, we were guaranteed he most certainly had an agenda. He didn’t kidnap kids just to kidnap them. He wanted something from us, something he knew we would trade for the life of my daughter.
That hopefully meant he wasn’t going to hurt her.
If he even made her slightly uncomfortable he would never get what he wanted. Hell, he’d get the opposite. I would rain down vengeance until he was a weeping, broken man begging for mercy.
“Take me to the station?” I asked Sayer. “They want an official statement and such.”
He nodded. “Of course.”
I turned to Frankie, hoping she was already on board. “Be ready,” I ordered. “As soon I get home, we move.”
Gus cleared his throat. “Caroline?” I hadn’t even acknowledged him yet. I had a feeling it was Atticus—a lingering intuition I didn’t want to voice until now. So facing Gus, Atticus’s brother, was too difficult, the wounds and soul-ripping too fresh.
Forcing my gaze to meet his, I raised my eyebrows.
“I’m sorry,” he croaked.
My brain split again. Logically, I knew that Gus wasn’t Atticus. They had always been night and day. They had always been opposite ends of the spectrum. Gus was lighthearted and easygoing. He was kind. He was funny. He was sweet. Atticus was an unhinged psycho.
But emotionally… I wanted to kill someone with my bare hands and right now it was him. Because he was related to my daughter’s kidnapper. Because he and Sayer thought it would be a smart idea to show up in my town and stir the pot. Because I wanted to blame everyone and everything and push some of these crazed emotions out of my frantic body.
I couldn’t bring myself to answer him. Sayer stepped back, tugging me by the wrist to follow him. “It’s not your fault, Gus. Caroline will remember that before we see you guys again.”
Gus nodded while I ripped my arm away from Sayer. He was going to order me around now? He thought he was in charge again? I saw straight red. A screen crashed down over my vision and painted the entire world in crimson.
Turning around, I stomped off, determined to find a lingering policeman to ride to the station with. “I’ll find my own way,” I told Sayer.
He grabbed my wrist again and locked his fingers around the bone. “Enough of this, Six. Breathe for a minute and think things through. I understand that you’re scared; you have every right to be. I understand that you’re pissed; you have every right to be that too. But if you don’t settle down and remember the people that are here to help you, you’re going to make this much more difficult than it needs to be. Don’t forget how fragile this relationship is right now.” He moved a finger between us, and nodded his head toward Gus. “Don’t forget how delicate this renewed trust is, how shaky. You need us. It would not behoove you to make us your enemy.”
I yanked on my arm, but he held it firmly in his, tightening his grip until the pain cut through my misplaced anger. Following his advice, I took a steadying breath and let the oxygen reach my brain and cool the simmering fury.
He stared at me and I felt the force of his unsaid emotions, the truth of his warning. I realized, with some surprise, that he wasn’t reminding me of my own feelings. It was Gus that didn’t trust me. It was my relationship with the two of them that was broken. He was threatening to remove his help if I didn’t settle down.
I swallowed the bitter taste of helplessness and took another deep breath. I sounded like an enraged bull, but the exercise was helping.
“I need to get my daughter back.” It wasn’t an apology, but it was something.
“Our daughter back,” he gritted out through clenched teeth. “And we will. We’ll get her back together, but you have to start being a team player or I will take you out of the game.”
His arrogance was staggering at this point. “Sports analogies are beneath you.”
He took a step forward and slid his hand over my shoulder, up the back of my neck so he could grab a fistful of hair at my nape. He tugged my head until I looked up at him, his grip biting with pain, and dropped his mouth to my ear. “You were just underneath me, not two hours ago. Now pull yourself together, Caroline, and get this over with so we can get to work. Yeah?”
Despite the circumstances, despite my bitchy attitude and the weight of this consuming fear, I managed to nod. “Okay.”
His grip tightened momentarily, but he dropped a sweet kiss to the corner of my mouth. He released me, and I tottered backward a step. He was already out the door and headed to his Jeep by the time I’d pulled my wits together. I could blame Sayer for Juliet’s disappearance all I wanted, but I was grateful he was here. If anyone could get my daughter back, our daughter back, it was him.
And when we killed Atticus, he would make the asshole suffer.