Page 26 of Vengeful Lies

“Text says, how many more do you think she can take before her heart gives out?” Jake said, having moved to stand beside Cooper, as had Cole.

Given how bad Gabriella looked in the photo his guess was not many.

While she was fierce and brave and strong, had survived a childhood mostly on her own without the love, support, and guidance of parents, and she’d built a fortune with nothing more than her brain, she was no trained operative. She hadn't been taught how to withstand torture, and even if she had there was no cheating death. In the end it came for everyone.

But not Gabriella and not Essie.

Not now and not this way.

There had to be a way to determine where they were being held.

When his phone began to ring, Cooper held it out to him. “Olivia,” his brother told him.

Unless Olivia was calling to tell him she had an address or a name he wasn't really interested. Still, he reached out and took the phone, hitting accept.

“Cade, I got something,” she said immediately.

The excitement in her tone was infectious and he relaxed a smidgen. “What?”

“It’s not an address exactly but it is an area,” Olivia explained. “I was able to trace the basic location from where the email was sent. Then I went back to the footage we’ve been going through of all the vehicles that left the underground parking lot at the mall the day Essie and Gabriella were taken, and I think I put a few pieces together.”

Relief and hope edged their way inside him, cooling the simmering volcano, but Cade clamped them down. It was too soon to get his hopes up.

“One of the vehicles that left was a work van, for a stationary company,” Olivia continued. “Only when I started looking into the company it went under almost twelve months ago. So I wondered why someone would be driving a white van with the company logo on it. I did a little more digging and the company owned a huge plot of land with four warehouses. After the business closed, they were never sold or rented to anyone else. And they fall within the area that the email was sent from.”

“Olivia,” he gasped, realizing she’d just given him his only chance at getting his girls back alive. How could he ever repay her for that? She was quite literally giving him life saving information, and he wasn't just talking about Essie and Gabriella’s lives. Without them, he would die. There was no doubt in his mind about that. Without any will to live he’dbe a liability to his team, and sooner or later, wind up doing something reckless that would get him killed. “Thank you.”

“Psshh,” she said, and he could imagine her waving off his gratitude. “We’re family, we don’t thank each other for having one another’s backs. Now there are no guarantees I’m right and I’ll keep going through footage so we’re not behind if I'm wrong, but at least you have a lead. Let me know if you need anything at all, and we’ll ensure you and your team have it.”

“I will.”

“And, Cade, be careful. I know you want to run in and grab your girls, but don’t forget that one wrong move will get them both killed,” Olivia warned before she disconnected the call.

A warning he needed.

Because his instincts screamed at him to jump in his car, drive to the address, shoot anything that moved, and rush inside to get Essie and Gabriella.

But Olivia was right.

If he showed up there, chances were the first thing those men would do was kill his girls. There was no way they could risk them identifying any of them, and they were loose ends.

Smart.

His only chance at saving their lives was to play this smart and not fast.

“What did she say?” Cole asked as Cade lowered the phone from his ear, his mind already putting together a plan that he thought might work.

“She has a potential address,” he told the others.

After getting the email yesterday, of course he and his brothers had tried sending numerous replies, but none of them had been answered.

These men had one goal.

To get his family to back off from trying to get the names of the men who had hired them to abduct his daughter.

Knowing how ruthless and powerful these men were, there was no chance they were going to let go of the only leverage they’d managed to get without a fight. It was the only way they could ensure they kept their freedom.

Prey was a mighty opponent, one that had to at least equal whatever power they had. These men thought they’d found the weak link in taking his daughter, but they were about to find out what happened when you messed with a man’s child.

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