Page 79 of Rise of the King (Checkmate 5)

16

A Week

Jay

Aweek.

They’re gone for a whole week, and it goes by insanely fast, but at the same time, painfully slow. On the first day, after eight hours of eavesdropping on the friends as they drove, Soph sat by her computer with a steely focus and searched for our man.

Her research has come to a halt since leaving the Benson building – her main computer was destroyed and left behind, her paper files destroyed, her momentum broken. But according to her, the important stuff was saved digitally and is still available.

Right now, time is a problem because our enemy is searching just as eagerly as we are. The difference is, Kane’s not hiding anymore. They must know where he is by now, which means they’re planning the hit. They’re a billion steps closer to him than we are to them, and that pisses me the fuck off.

“CAB,” Soph sits in front of her computer and murmurs repeatedly, as though that helps her concentrate. “CAB, CAB, CAB. Who are you, motherfucker? I’m coming for you.”

On the third day, with tears in her eyes and shaking hands, Soph went into mourning because she found another player just like Abel and Trenton. Thatshouldbe good news for us, but finding him meant finding the load of girls he was exchanging in that very moment. “It’s too far away,” she choked past quivering lips. Pushing her lunch aside, she ran a trembling hand through her messy hair and shook her head. “We can’t get there in time. We can’t save them.”

Soph made an anonymous phone call and reported that drop to the local police, and yet, the six p.m. news showed her faces that she’ll never forget.

We couldn’t get there in time. We couldn’t save them.

By the fifth day, I was ready to tear our house apart because planting a GPS tracker in their car was a good plan and all… until I realized too late that they would be parking at the hotel and leaving it there for their whole vacation. The town they’re staying in is small, and the girls yammered about suntanning and chilling out the whole time.

So in my mind, I imagine them sitting on the beach with tans, drinks, and smiles, and not moving their asses again until it’s time to come home. But in reality, I see and hear nothing, because their car is parked in an underground parking lot and doesn’t move once after they arrive.

“Next time, we slip some kinda device into his cell or something.” I pace the living room and shoot dirty glances at the couch. “Sophia! I’m speaking to you.”

“Yeah, sure thing,” she rolls her eyes. “I heard you disrespecting me, so now I’ll get right on that for you. I’ll find an expensive ass tracker, slip it into the thug’s cereal, and pray I don’t have to dance in his lap to distract him. Totally not a big deal.”

“Sophia! I haven’t heard him in five fucking days! He could be in the ocean with concrete shoes, and we wouldn’t know.”

“I bet you would know.” Finally, her dark eyes come up and meet mine. “I felt it when Ellie died. I bet if you searched deep inside you right now, you’d feel him there.”

“You’re too blasé!”

“You’re too strung out. He’s fine. Eric would sound the alarms, remember?” She turns her laptop and presents her surveillance feed of Kane’s kitchen. Eric leans against the counter with a stupid grin on his face and his phone pressed to his ear. “He sealed the deal with Laine? Finally! Wait… Karaoke? What the fuck, man? Who are you?”

“See?” She shows me a gentle smile. “He’s fine. Go out the back and work out. Your lungs soundwhistle-y. I can hear you from here.”

On the final day of their vacation, late in the afternoon while the summer sun beats down on our houses and turns them into hotboxes, a horde of people collect on Kane’s lawn and confirm today’s the day my brother comes home.

I had only a moment to panic at the crowd, to collect my firepower and prepare to go to war for my brother, but then the whispers filtered in: they’re not the enemy. They’re Jess and Laine’s family, and they’re here to make sure the girls are fine after a week away, just like I want to see that Kane is fine.

We’re all just family who are sick with worry and don’t know how to deal with the curveballs life is throwing at us.

“What’s up with that house over there?” Alex Turner, chief of the local police and family to the blonde twins, sits on Kane’s front porch with a brand-new baby in his arms and scowling eyes as he looks straight into my living room window. He doesn’t see us, but his stare makes me nervous anyway. “Who lives there?”

“Dunno.” Eric stands by the front door with a furry hat on his head and no care for the hundred-degree weather. “Young chick, drives a red SUV. She’s pretty quiet.”

“You go over and scout it out?”

“Nope.” Soph sits on the couch beside me and watches the laptop that sits on my legs. “He hasn’t set foot on our lawn. I can break his security, but no one can break mine.”

Proud of her devious ways, I press a kiss to the top of her head and smile. “It turns me on that you hack people’s shit, Soph. You’re so badass.”

“Everything turns you on. A gentle breeze on a good day that rustles your shorts turns you on.”

Chuckling, I hold her close and don’t explain that it’s not the breeze that gets me excited, it’s her. Just her. Always her.

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