Page 44 of After All The Wreckage
“Thanks,” I said, and we headed down the street toward a parking garage.
I tried to shake off the tender, gentlemanly move, but the way our arms kept brushing as we huddled under the umbrella only sent my body into overdrive. Just like it had when I’d held him in my arms on the rooftop when the need to comfort him had taken over any other thought. My heartbeat banged wildly, louder and harder than it had while sneaking into the control room or taking pictures of a suspicious man.
What I felt for Gage was stronger than anything I’d ever experienced. That all-consuming flame I’d felt burning as a teen was threatening to spiral out of control. But neither of us could afford for me to let it because the cost of a mistake now would be too great, and I refused to be the reason Gage lost his brother.
Inside the garage, he pulled the umbrella down, shaking it off, and I put more space between us. If he noticed, he didn’t say anything. But then again, I was sure all he was really focused on was his missing brother. I was the one who needed to pull her shit together and stay focused.
The car smelled of rain and damp and Gage. It reminded me of autumn days. Of spice and falling leaves… Home.
I swallowed hard, propped my laptop on my knees, and opened the backdoor I’d just put in place on the server. I swiped through different cameras, finally finding the one on the side of the building overlooking the alley. It was an older system and the camera was somewhere in the scrollwork on the roof, which meant it was neither a great angle nor very clear.
I rewound the footage until I could start it close to the time Monte had left the Capitol on Friday, and then hit Play at four times speed. Nothing out of the ordinary appeared at first. A garbage truck emptying the dumpster, a few vehicles, and several people in suits using the alley as a shortcut. The sun went down, making the footage even more difficult to decipher. Then, a shadowy figure appeared that could possibly have been Monte.
Gage inhaled sharply as I slowed the speed back down.
We watched as Monte did exactly what I’d thought, jumping up to grab the last rung on the fire escape. He moved upward, checking the windows on each landing just as we had. The camera lost him before he pulled himself up on the roof, but it was obvious that was what had happened.
I repeated the process, speeding up the video and slowing down whenever Monte came into view. We watched him come and go a couple of times during the day on Saturday.
A twisted hope rose in my chest that his phone had just run out of battery. That we’d see him climbing down from the rooftop again this morning and we’d be able to pick him up on other street cams I could tap.
But then, late on Saturday, the worst happened.
It was dark again as Monte walked back into the alley with a fast-food bag in hand. Two men in ski masks jumped him from behind, throwing a hood over his face.
Fear and anger rolled through me as Gage growled out an anguished “Fuck.”
We watched Monte struggle with his assailants. He nailed them with his elbow and fists, but they were two large, muscular men and he was just a teen boy. They had him subdued with his arms zip-tied behind his back in under a minute. A dark sedan skidded into the alley, and they tossed him into the trunk. The men glanced around to make sure no one had witnessed the kidnapping, picked up Monte’s fallen backpack and food bag, and took both with them into the car before speeding off.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Gage hit the steering wheel over and over again.
My heart tore apart at the pure torture in his voice. His body was tightly coiled. His jaw clenched. He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes, fighting tears that flooded mine.
I shouldn’t have felt this much for him or Monte. They weren’t my family. They were people I’d known for a handful of days once upon a time. But I did. I felt every ounce of fear and horror and anger that Gage did. The connection I’d always felt for Gage drew me to his emotions, an invisible noose contracting around my heart and lungs.
I swallowed hard, turned back to the video, and squinted at the impossible-to-see driver before attempting to make out the license plate. The footage was so grainy and so dark, the plate was nearly impossible to read. The streetlights barely bled into the alley, turning everything into a hazy, gold-like nightmare. I thought the sedan was gray rather than black, but I couldn’t even be sure of that.
“I’ll run the video through software to try and clean it up. See if we can get a better view of the plate, but we should take this to Metro PD right away,” I said softly.
“I would have brought him, Rory. I would have brought him. He didn’t need to do this on his own.” Every syllable was a tormented cry.
I set the computer on the floorboard, pulled his hand from his face, and twined my fingers with his. When he turned to me, the agony in his eyes sliced through me like a knife.
“I know this is the worst scenario you wanted to see, Gage. I know it’s hard to think of what we saw as being good in any possible way, but it means the police will finally take you seriously. They’ll put out an AMBER Alert. They’ll be all over it.”
“Two days late!” he growled. “Why would those men take him? What could they possibly want?”
A list of things popped into my head. Human trafficking was at the top. But I wouldn’t say that to him. Couldn’t. And there was still the weird interaction with Dunn and West at the Capitol. The way they’d asked about Gage’s mom. The way the screen had gone black when I’d watched the video with Lucidia. Maybe it was nothing more than Dunn not wanting to be tied in any way, shape, or form to a missing kid, especially if he knew the family in some way. But my instincts said somehow this was all tangled together.
“Do you want me to drive?” I asked, squeezing his hand.
Confusion bled through him for a moment, as if he was trying to figure out where he was and what to do next. His grief was so great, it washed out of him in a wave that threatened to pull me under with it.
“Gage, do you want me to drive to the police station?”
His face contorted, and he pulled away from me to slam a fist into the steering wheel a few more times before he turned the ignition over, jammed the gear shift into Reverse, and squealed out of the parking spot.
I wanted to comfort him.
