I blow through a stop sign, and it’s a good thing that it’s late enough that there aren’t that many people on the road. Because I can’t care about traffic laws or any of that when Priest’s life is hanging in the balance like this.
At one point, Gage reaches over and rights the wheel, guiding me away from the side of the road and back into my own lane. I’ve got so much adrenaline running through me, and my brain is just playing memories with Priest on a loop.
I think about how we didn’t get along at all when I first got here, and how much he hated me. How he wanted me dead. Looking back just makes it even more painful because we’ve come so far. All I can think about is the shit I haven’t said to him and the wild desperation in Julian’s face.
He told us he wouldn’t be lenient next time we crossed him, and we crossed him in a pretty big fucking way.
We end up in a warehouse district near the docks, and I bring the car to a halt in front of a line of buildings that stretches for several blocks, then yank my mask off. The men have already taken off theirs, and their faces are shadowed in the interior of the car.
It’s dark all around us except the light from the few street lamps that line the sides of the street, and it seems deserted at this time of night.
The whole place is quiet, and the silence is almost eerie.
“Which one?” I bite out, looking at Ash in the rearview mirror.
“I don’t know,” he mutters with a grimace. “I can’t pinpoint which building. But he’s here somewhere.”
The tension in my body only increases at that. There are a ton of buildings on this row, and they could be in any of them. That’s not fucking helping at all.
We’re close. We’re so fucking close to where Julian is, yet so far. And Julian had a head start on us. A pretty fucking big one. He’s had too much time. Anything could have happened, and the longer we wait, the more chances bad shit has to happen.
I get out of the car and start walking to the closest building. The windows are dark, and when I peer through, all I can see is dusty boxes and vague covered shapes.
Not this one.
We go down the line, checking each building for signs of life or a struggle, but we don’t find anything, and the longer it takes, the clearer it becomes we’re not going to be able to do this on foot. There’s just too many buildings to search.
But what else can we do? That thought comes to me again, and I’m almost sick with it. We have to keep looking. We have to—
The ringing of a phone splits the silence of the night, and I glance over to see Gage pulling his phone out of his pocket.
He scowls down at the screen, and I know instantly it’s Julian and hurry over.
“Where the fuck are you?” Gage says as soon as he answers, putting the phone on speaker.
At first, there’s no sound, other than the slight crackling of the call coming through. Then the screen goes black for a split second, only to fill with the image of Julian’s face.
He’s put it on a video call.
He swings the phone around then we see Priest. He’s chained up, bloody and sagging in the restraints. Julian moves back into the frame and jabs Priest in the arm with his finger, digging it into a clearly open wound.
Priest flinches in pain, but doesn’t cry out. I can see the muscles in his jaw working, and he’s straining, trying to hold back the scream.
I don’t know what Julian has been doing to him, but there’s blood running down that arm, and Priest’s chest heaves as he pants for breath.
“I know you took my money,” Julian spits. “I know you did. I want it back. You give me my fucking money back or I’ll kill him. We’ve been having a great time getting to know each other.” He digs his finger even harder into that wound and Priest closes his eyes, agony flashing over his face. “But I’ll end it right here if you don’t give me my shit back.”
The agony on Priest’s face makes me feel agonized too. He could be anywhere, and there’s nothing we can do if we don’t know where the fuck he is.
Something monstrous rises up inside me on the heels of that agony though. I feel like I’m about to explode out of my skin. I’ve never wanted to kill someone as much as I want to kill Julian fucking Maduro in this moment.
“Fuck you,” I spit, letting all my rage and hatred come out in those two words.
Julian sneers. “I should have killed you when I had the chance,” he says. “You and that bitch I married. Her pussy was the only thing I needed, and I should have gotten rid of her when she gave me what I wanted.”
Blood roars in my ears, and I can barely hear Julian as he keeps talking, over the pulse pounding rage that I feel.
“Doesn’t your friend mean more to you than money?” he’s saying, taunting us all now. “I thought you were all family or some stupid shit like that. Would you really let him die over money that doesn’t even fucking belong to you?”
He sounds angry, but so sure of himself. So sure he has the upper fucking hand. He knows how much we care about each other and that this is the best way to manipulate us.
Rage boils up inside me, and if there was a way to reach through the phone and kill someone, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Out of frame, he does something else to Priest, and we hear the grunt of pain that follows.
I stare hard at the phone, taking in what I can see, and then, all of a sudden, I have a moment of perfect clarity. Like all the desperation and anger and worry distills down into something that points me to exactly what I need to see.
There’s a window off to the side in the room where Julian is holding Priest. Just in the corner of the window, I can see a green highway sign. I can’t read what the sign says, but that doesn’t matter. The building has a view of the highway, which means there aren’t any other structures on that side of it to block the view.
Only the last row of buildings in this area are close enough to see the highway, and there are only two in that row. One of them is boarded up and abandoned, and I don’t think Julian would have taken the time to pry the boards off the windows and doors when he had Priest in tow and knew we would be coming after him.
Which means he has to be in one place.
“Give me my money back, or I’ll kill him,” Julian says. “And I’ll fucking enjoy it.” He ends the call, and the screen goes black again.
Knox looks like he’s about to explode, and Gage and Ash just look angry and sick. I look at all three of them.
“I know where Priest is.”
36
River
“What do you mean you know where he is?” Gage asks. He’s frowning, but there’s a spark of hope in his eyes that I’m telling the truth.
“I saw the window when Julian was gloating,” I tell him. “I could see a highway sign. Only two buildings here have a view of the highway.”
I explain to him about the one building being boarded up, and how Julian would probably have been too desperate to try to un-board it. Which leaves one building for us to check.
Gage looks at me with intense respect on his face. There’s stark relief in Ash’s eyes, and Knox looks like he’s ready to break into that building and start killing people.