Page 24 of Salvation

“If we pay,” I said finally, thinking out loud, “we tell these fuckers that the Reckless Kings can be extorted. That taking our families gets results.” I shook my head, fury building behind my sternum. “And there’s no guarantee they’ll let Yulia and Clover go once they have the money.”

Beast remained silent, watching me work through it. Hawk knocked back his whiskey and set the glass on the desk.

“Amateurs get nervous,” Hawk said. “Make mistakes. Especially once they have what they want.”

I nodded grimly. We all knew what that meant. Once the kidnappers had the money, Yulia and Clover became liabilities. Witnesses who could identify them.

“And if we don’t pay,” I continued, the muscle in my jaw jumping as I clenched my teeth, “we risk them hurting my family to prove they’re serious.”

“True,” Beast acknowledged. “But paying doesn’t eliminate that risk. It just changes the timing.”

I stopped pacing, my hands curling into fists at my sides. The weight of the decision pressed down on me like a physical force. Behind the rage, behind the fear, I felt the crushing responsibility of choosing the path that would bring my family home safely.

Yulia’s face flashed in my mind again -- not from the kidnapper’s photo, but from the fair earlier that day. The way she’d looked at me on the Ferris wheel, something warm and hopeful in her eyes. The almost-kiss by the roller coaster, Clover’s interruption coming seconds before our lips would have met. The promise of later. A later that might never come if I made the wrong choice now.

“We’re running out of time,” Hawk said quietly, breaking into my thoughts.

I turned to face them both, decision crystallizing like ice in my veins. “I’m not giving those bastards a dime,” I said, each word precise and final. “We find them, and we get my family back our way.”

Beast nodded once, satisfaction gleaming in his eyes. “Your call, your lead. What’s the first move?”

“Shield,” I said immediately. “I need to know what he’s found. Traffic cams, security footage, anything that might give us a direction.” I pulled out my phone, checking the time. “Just a bit over six hours until their deadline. I want them found before then.”

“And when we find them?” Hawk asked, though his tone made it clear he already knew the answer.

I met his gaze steadily, all hesitation gone. “When we find them, we show them exactly what happens when someone takes what belongs to a Reckless King.”

Beast moved around the table, clapping a heavy hand on my shoulder. “The whole club rides with you on this, Salvation. Every brother, every resource. We don’t stop until your family is home.”

The solidarity should have comforted me, and on some level it did. But as I left Church and headed for the tech room, all I could think of was Yulia and Clover, bound and afraid in some unknown location. Of the men who’d dared to take them, who’d touched what was mine.

Those men were already dead. They just didn’t know it yet.

* * *

Time was slipping by. I’d been in the tech room for over an hour. The place hummed with electronic life, the air noticeably cooler than the rest of the clubhouse to keep the equipment from overheating. Shield sat hunched before a bank of monitors, his fingers flying across the keyboard as streams of data reflected in his glasses. The blue glow from the screens cast everything in an eerie light, turning familiar faces into hollow-eyed ghosts. I stood behind him, too wired to sit, my eyes burning from staring at footage for what felt like an eternity, searching for any glimpse of the men who’d taken my family.

“Anything?” I asked, for perhaps the twentieth time in the last hour.

Shield didn’t look away from his primary screen, where traffic camera footage from near the fairgrounds played at double speed. “Nothing definitive yet.” His voice lacked its usual sardonic edge, replaced by the flat efficiency of a man who understood exactly what was at stake. “I’ve got algorithms scanning for any vehicles that left the fair parking lot within the timeframe, but the camera coverage is spotty at best.”

I leaned forward, bracing my hands on the back of his chair. My shoulders ached with tension, every muscle in my body coiled tight. “Show me the footage from inside the fair again.”

Shield nodded, pulling up a different window on one of the side monitors. Grainy security footage from the fairgrounds appeared -- a high angle shot of the midway where I’d last seen Yulia and Clover. I watched, breath caught in my throat, as tiny figures moved through the frame. There -- Clover stopping at a henna tattoo booth. I didn’t see either me or Yulia, which meant she’d gone back without us. The moment of separation that had started this nightmare.

“Can you zoom in on that guy?” I pointed to a figure in a baseball cap hovering near the booth.

Shield manipulated the footage, enlarging the section I’d indicated, but the resolution degraded to near-uselessness. “Sorry. These security cams are shit quality. Can barely make out faces even at normal size.”

I exhaled slowly through my nose, pushing down the frustration that threatened to boil over. “What about after? Any cameras catch them leaving?”

“Working on it.” Shield switched screens, pulling up a patchwork of footage from different cameras around the fair’s perimeter. “The problem is, I need something to work with -- a face, a vehicle, anything. Without that, it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack.”

I straightened, pacing behind his chair. The room was small, barely large enough for the equipment and the two of us. Hawk had joined us earlier but had left to coordinate the brothers searching the streets. Now it was just Shield, me, and the endless parade of faceless strangers on the monitors.

“What about traffic cams near the fairgrounds?” I asked. “Any vehicles leaving in a hurry? Or carrying too many passengers?”

“Running those now.” Shield gestured to a monitor on his left where footage played at high speed. “I’ve got facial recognition scanning for Yulia and Clover in any vehicle leaving the area, but it’s a slow process. And if they were forced to duck down…” He let the implication hang.

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