Page 87 of Endeavor

I nod, and he rips the tape off, taking some skin with it. My eyes water as I bite my dry lip trying not to cry out from the pain. I attempt to look around, but it’s hard to see in the vast darkness surrounding us. Only the moonlight through the clouds illuminates the trees around us.

“What’s going on?” I manage as I try to swallow, my throat constricting as I do. I briefly close my eyes because focusing is making my head hurt more than it was in the darkness of the trunk.

“You all really are stupid, aren’t you?” he says with a hollow laugh that sends shivers down my spine.

I open my eyes and blink them, unsure of my next move. Do I play stupid? My mind is so blank right now, I can’t even think about anything but how to answer his rhetorical question.

“I must have gotten every ounce of intelligence our father had,” he scoffs.

I look up at him in total confusion. “Why are you doing this?” I ask the obvious question. I feel like the victim in some bad horror movie.

He rests his hands on the lid of the trunk, leaning over me. “Because he had it all. Our dad never gave a fuck about me. He fucking paid my mom off to go away. I didn’t know who he was until Mom died and I found things in a journal. Gran always said my dad was a bad man, but I knew he was when I read her diary. He never loved her or me. They had to be punished for what they did to us. If he had stayed with us, Mom could have gotten better treatment and she would still be alive.”

His words take a tone of pure evil, and I’m suddenly very aware that I may not make it out of this situation alive. Keep him talking, the words resonate in my mind. If he’s talking, he can’t be killing me.

“But why now?” I ask, trying to sound like I’m clueless.

He growls as he leans in and a sliver of moonlight gleams across his eyes, making them appear darker than normal.

He laughs then, a laugh of a villain, a laugh of a person who's lost all sanity. “Now? That’s rich. You think I’m just doing something now?” He changes his voice to sound like a kid. “Oh, poor me. What? I have a brother? Yay! I’m so lucky.” He pounds his fist on the car. “You think I just found out I had a brother! You are as dumb as your pathetic boyfriend.”

“Why didn’t you tell him you knew?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper.

He leans in again toward me. “’Cause I’m not a fucking idiot, Emma. You don’t show the opponent your cards, do you? I’m just fucking lucky that my stupid, arrogant brother had a stalker. It was easy to replicate the little sticky notes, even the handwriting. And then sending false death threats over the past few months, making it look like another stalker. I’ve had his security team and the cops on a wild goose chase for weeks now. When I knew he found me, I decided to take my plan to the next level. I had been biding my time, waiting for that moment, and then he came looking for me. It was better than I could have planned. I knew it was my time to take action, to finish what I started all those years ago. But I had to outsource that last ploy to keep him away while I got you. You didn’t even guess the note and text was from me. I thought maybe you’d say something to him; throw him off the track some more. But it doesn’t matter, they may figure it all out sooner rather than later, but it’ll be too late by then. Because I will take him down just like his father.”

My mind tries to process everything he has just told me. “What do you mean like his father?”

“You think it was an accident that killed Ken Daniels? Yeah, you’d believe that, wouldn’t you? Because I’m that fucking good. Three years of military service taught me a lot about how to dismantle cars. I could put an engine together out in the desert and then take it back apart. One little screw is loose and the whole car stops working. That’s all it takes, just a little tweak. Of course, I had to bury all my records, so the cops wouldn’t consider me a suspect with that little issue at Blythe’s place. But the military also taught me about computers and how to hide files. That security firm would figure it out eventually, so I had to make my move sooner rather than later.”

I swallow, but my mouth is so dry that I can’t even manage to do that. “What do you get out of this?” I ask, trying to keep him talking as long as possible.

He sits down on the bumper. “I’ll tell you what I get. I get revenge,” he starts before he launches into mindless babble about his rough childhood. I silently pray to the universe that someone will find us, even though I have no clue as to where we are.

Chapter Thirty-One

Grady

I’m sitting in the LA offices of our security firm. There is a wall of screens in front of me. It’s been two hours since Carl last saw Jason and Emma. The security firm and the LAPD are going through every possible video feed they can, trying to find them. So far, we’ve found that a black sedan with tinted windows left the parking lot shortly after Emma went to the bathroom. The camera in the back of the restaurant didn’t show the whole parking lot and if someone knew it was there, they could easily avoid being seen on it.

We’ve been tracking the license plate on some sort of software, catching glimpses of the car on other video feeds. It was last spotted on I-5, heading north.

“I got it,” some young guy says as he runs into the room.

Dean rips a piece of paper from his hands. “Fuck, it turned off onto a residential road near Lake Isabella. Looks like there’s just one cabin back there.”

I grab the paper and memorize the address. “I’m going,” I say to Dean, not even thinking as I run to my car, hoping my engine work amounts to a fast-driving car.

“Fuck no, you aren’t,” Dean says as he jogs after me.

“You can’t stop me,” I seethe.

“You don’t even know what you’re up against.”

I hop in my car that I had picked up after we left the restaurant. “I don’t. But I’m about to find out. Send backup to that cabin,” I command like some badass that I’m not.

Dean pounds his fist on the hood of my car and curses as I pull out of the parking spot and head toward Lake Isabella. The LA traffic is light because of the time of day, and as soon as I clear the little bit of congestion around the city, my body immediately channels everything I ever learned about driving. I’m going to get them back. I put the address into my GPS and then downshift.

My car whines as I fly up the interstate. I glance down and see that I’m pushing six and a half RPMs. I know that my car can do it, but I also know that at this speed, one wrong move means I’m dead or someone else is. My brain tells me to slow down, to not risk lives, but I’m beyond the point of rational decision-making.

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