We knew one another pretty damn well and right now, I was volatile as hell.
Kai gave me the directions and I repeated them to Tyler who had turned around and headed for the highway. “Deck. I suspect Tanner killed Lionel. He set this in motion.”
“And that means?”
“It means he wants them to bring him and Georgie in.”
“Why would he do that?”
“So you can’t have her.”
“Fuck.” I ran my hand over the top my head, back and forth then down my face.
“Meet you at the location.” The line went dead.
I threw the phone on the dashboard. “Tell me you’ve found something on this Tanner kid? Anything, damn it.” I stared out the window but saw nothing. The fear had changed to rage, and the rage was now a cold-steel determination to destroy and conquer anyone or anything that stopped me from finding Georgie.
Vic sat forward so each elbow rested on Tyler’s and my backrests. “I narrowed it down to one missing boy a year before this Tanner kid showed up at the motocross track where he met Connor and Georgie. A ten-year-old Michael Donald vanished from his Toronto home, never to be seen again. No leads, nothing. He fits Tanner’s description with the compilation. Time frame is right. I’m guessing whatever organization we are dealing with took him in, tortured him, trained him, brainwashed the kid.”
Tyler shook his head. “Jesus, he was a kid.”
I glared at Tyler. “Yeah, who can make Georgie disappear.”
“I know, Boss. But whoever these people are, they’re taking in children. They need to be stopped. Fuck, Connor would do whatever it took to take these guys down.”
Yes, he would. Connor was the guy who always helped the kids wherever our missions took us. And now he was part of an organization that destroyed them. “And we will.”
Josh spoke from the backseat. “Why would he want to bring her to them? Kai says he has a thing for her. I’d think he’d want to get her far away from these assholes. Not a chance would I let those fuckers near my girl.” Josh cleared his throat. “Sorry, Boss.”
“If he knows her and I are together, the only way to get us apart is to bring her in. If Kai is right, there is no escape from these people, so trying to run would be stupid.”
Our advantage, they had no idea what Kai had told us. If Tanner had yet to make contact with the organization, then there was a chance we could stop everything from snowballing into a total cluster-fuck of a nightmare.
We drove for a half hour before Tyler pulled over on the shoulder and nodded to a school down the block. “Looks like this is it.”
It was two minutes later that Kai pulled up behind us. Tyler reached over and put his hand on my arm. “I know you’d like to blow Kai’s brains out right now. Fuck, Boss, I do, too. But he wants London, that gives him a reason to go after them.”
I wouldn’t kill him, but fuck, I wanted to. Just the thought of Kai’s involvement in this … I unclipped my seatbelt and got out. Kai was standing with a knife in hand and without his usual air of cockiness.
“We bring her home,” I ordered. Because if we didn’t, my darkness would smother the only good parts of what I had left and I’d never come back from that—nor would I want to.
“YOU KNOW, I used to stand on a milk crate outside the shed and look through that window.” He nodded to the left at a dusty window at the back of the shed. “I’d watch Robbie with you. Hear your sobs. I wanted to soothe you, hold your hand, but they wouldn’t let me.”
I whimpered against the black rag he’d shoved in my mouth. “That’s how I knew what to do when I cut you at the shed. Then Kai refused to let me do it again. But I knew I was better at it. I knew how to help you, Georgie.” He reached out and I flinched away, but he managed to stroke the side of my face. “We’re connected, you know. We share the same pain. We’re the same.”
My eyes widened. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. My knees ached from kneeling on the hard, plank floor and he had my arms behind my back and tied with a belt—just like Robbie had done.
“Have you seen Kai’s scars? They’re bad. He must have fought them a long time. Me … I was only ten, so I didn’t fight them for very long, kind of like you didn’t with Robbie.”
That’s because I was already broken, you bastard. Connor dying, Deck leaving, had destroyed me already.
“They won’t like it that Kai failed to keep you and Deck apart. You know it was why he couldn’t leave JTF2 for those two years? They pulled some strings, made sure he was kept in the military until Kai had you completely immersed with us.” I moaned against my gag. He tilted his head to the side. “Kai … he’ll be brought in, too. They won’t kill him for it, but he’ll be tortured. Or maybe they’ll just torture the girl while he watches. He should’ve done what they asked and brought the girl to them when he was supposed to. They will make him suffer. He probably already knows it.” He chuckled as he ran a finger down my back. “Vault will be pleased with me for bringing you to them as soon as I found out you were with Deck. And if they’re not … ” he shrugged. “At least Deck will never have you.”
Vault?
He crouched down in front of me, holding out a carving knife. He tilted it back and forth, sliding his finger down the edge of it. “We’ll be here a while. My message won’t reach France until it goes through the channels here.” He ran his hand over my head like I was his puppy dog. “But I can help you. I’ll take away your pain like you want, Georgie.”