Page 74 of Fallen Heir
Nic glanced at the corner clock. “Over an hour.”
My gut twisted. An hour. She’d been gone for over an hour and we didn’t have a goddamn clue where he’d taken her.
“I pinged her phone already,” Ben muttered. “Still at the condo.”
“Of course it is,” I snapped. “He’s not stupid.”
Nic never stopped moving—her hands flew across the keyboard, eyes darting between a dozen feeds and code streams. She was already pulling footage from every corner of Manhattan, tracing the black sedan that carried my entire world inside it. We were just behind on time. Unable to stop him. She tracked the vehicle through midtown, then downtown, through the Lower East Side… block by block, frame by frame.
“I’m digging through both of their accounts,” she said, voice clipped but focused. “Credit cards, bank activity, digital footprints—anything that pings. If he stops long enough to breathe, I’ll find him.”
“But without a tracer—” Ben started.
“There’s no way to follow in real time,” I finished for him, the words bitter on my tongue. And that was the reality. We were blind. Chasing shadows. Every second that passed, she moved further away.
“I had eyes until just past the Brooklyn exit,” Nic muttered suddenly, frustration lining her voice. “Then nothing. He turned onto a side route—industrial strip just off Flatlands. No cameras. Gaps in surveillance for miles.”
My jaw clenched. Of course he knew the back ways. He’d planned this like a fucking ghost. No way he was working alone.
Still, Nic didn’t stop. She started pulling old highway cams, linking feeds that were never meant to connect. It was like watching a chess master think six moves ahead—and move all the pieces at once.
I glanced at her, and for a moment, the weight in my chest shifted. Not eased, just… redirected. Because if anyone could outthink Bruce, it was Nic.
I’d always known she was good. But right now? Right now, she was terrifying.
It was like she could see the whole city when she sat at a keyboard—and God help the man she was hunting.
I rubbed my hands down my face, the pressure building behind my ribs like a fuse waiting to blow. Savannah was out there. Alone. And I had no way to reach her.
Not yet. But I would.
Even if I had to burn the whole goddamn state of Alabama to the ground.
Chapter 25
Savannah
The sound came first. A low hum beneath me, steady and rhythmic, like a heartbeat I didn’t recognize. Then the roar—distant at first, then louder—rising and falling with a familiar cadence.
An engine.
I was in a moving car.
Light flickered through my lashes. I blinked against it, squinting as hazy lines of white and gold streaked past the window beside me. Streetlights. Faint outlines of trees. Motion.
It crawled beneath my skin, panic blooming sharp and fast.
My head throbbed—deep, pulsing, as if someone had cracked it open from the inside. I tried to lift it, but the effort sent a sharp bolt of pain down the back of my neck and into my spine. My stomach turned.
How long have I been out?
Instinct kicked in before logic. I tried to shift—tried to move my arms—but the second I did, pain exploded around my wrists. Something cinched tighter as I pulled, biting into the skin.
Plastic zip ties.
I was bound.
My ankles, too—tied together, shoved against the backseat like luggage. My shoulders ached from the awkward angle. My mouth was dry, too dry. I tried to swallow and tasted cotton.
