by Leigh James
I grabbed my coat and my laptop, hurtling past a surprised-looking Ryan. “I’m going out for the day. Cancel my meetings.”
“Okay?” Ryan wasn’t used to me leaving with the day booked like this, but these weren’t normal circumstances.
This was the new normal. It would require some getting used to.
Levi looked less than thrilled when I rolled through the doors of my house a little while later. “Don’t you have a multibillion-dollar company to run?”
“Yeah, I do. But I figured I could do it from home today. Wonders of the Internet and all.”
Levi rolled his eyes and appeared to say something under his breath, but luckily I couldn’t hear it. At least Ash looked happy to see me. “You’re telecommuting for the rest of the day? Nice. We still haven’t tracked down the full license plate, but I’m going through a stolen vehicle database, and I think I’m getting closer.”
I looked at Levi. “See? This is what I’m looking for. Progress.”
Levi grabbed his laptop and cell phone and headed outside toward the pool.
“You really shouldn’t go there,” Ash said, jerking his thumb at Levi’s retreating form. “You know how he gets when people tell him what to do. It’s not going to help—and you need all the help you can get right now.”
“I know. But it just doesn’t feel right for me to be sitting in my office. Every hour that goes by, Lauren’s closer to losing her company, and her sister could be moved farther away from us. I don’t trust that Li Na will deliver Hannah, so I’m hoping we can accomplish something in this brief interim—like saving the only family Lauren has left. Is that fair?”
“Of course it is.” Always the reasonable one, Ash nodded. “I’m just saying that for sanity purposes, you shouldn’t get into a pissing contest with Levi right now. You know he wants to prove something. Let him do it.”
I set my laptop on the island and fired it up, pulling up some compliance reports I needed to review. “What do you mean he wants to prove something? To who?”
Ash shook his head. “To you, dumb-ass. He’s always wanted to prove something to you.”
“So let him. There’s no better time than the present.”
Chapter 6
Lauren
A few days later, Bethany and I finalized the first draft of the Purchase and Sale Agreement. We’d completed the task in record time, and we were both exhausted. My vision blurred from reading so much, and from lack of sleep.
“Bethany, please get the package together for the attorney. Send her all the documents we’ve prepared so far, then ask for an update.” I stood up, stretching. “And I’m going to ask Li Na if I can talk to Hannah.”
Bethany looked skeptical. “You think she’ll agree to that?”
“We’ve accomplished more than I thought was possible over the past few days. We’re sending them proof of our progress, which is exactly what she asked me for. It can’t hurt to ask, right?” I wanted to see my sister, alive and as okay as the situation would allow. If Li Na’s men had done something to her, the deal was off. “I’m showing Li Na my due diligence—the least she can do is reciprocate.”
Bethany sent off the P&S, I sent an email to Li Na, and then we continued working. We reviewed financial statements throughout the afternoon without hearing back from either Li Na or her attorney. I didn’t know much about the lawyer, Petra Hickman, except that she was a partner at an enormous firm in San Francisco and had a venerable résumé. Bethany said Petra was an asshole, but she said that about most people.
The sky started darkening, and Bethany looked at her watch. “I think we should take a break. We need our IP team to get started on the trade secret transfer documentation. Are you okay with stopping now?”
We’d been working since five this morning. I nodded. “I guess since we haven’t heard back from the attorney, we won’t hear anything until tomorrow anyway.”
Bethany started packing up when her phone buzzed. “It’s Petra—she said she’s reviewing the documents, and she spoke with Li Na. Li Na’s in a meeting, but she’ll be in touch with you later tonight.”
“Okay. Good.” A chill went through me, a mixture of excitement and dread. Will I get to talk to Hannah tonight? It had been days, and I had no idea if she was okay. Is she eating? Did they hurt her? Did they…do anything else to her?
I willed myself to stop thinking about it, because I would go insane.
Bethany looked as nervous as I felt. “Do you want me to come home with you?”
“No, I’m okay. I’ll text you as soon as I hear from Li Na. I’m fine—as fine as I can be under the circumstances. Go home. I promise I’ll call you.”
I watched as she left, my heart heavy. While we worked, I could almost forget about Hannah and Wes, almost lose myself in analyzing the verbiage of the documents. But as soon as we stopped, even for a moment, the pain and panic took over. It was no different right now. I hustled to get my things together and called Timmy. “Meet me at the car?”
The whole ride home, my phone was silent, unnervingly so. I kept checking it, afraid I’d accidentally hit the mute button and had missed everything, had ruined everything, and that I’d lose the opportunity to talk to Hannah. It was full-on dark by the time we pulled off the exit for Gabe’s house.
“You okay, Ms. Taylor?” Timmy asked, breaking my reverie.
“Not at all, Timmy. You?”
He shrugged. “I’ll be better when we get your sister home, and when Wesley’s okay.”
I smiled at my bodyguard, who rarely spoke unless spoken to. “Me too.”
My phone buzzed with a text just as I was about to go through the doors. We received the P&S. Will review. Have your laptop ready in five minutes, it read. I hustled into the house and put my computer on the island.
“I think Hannah’s about to Skype me,” I told Gabe. Levi and Ash were out in the field, trying to generate leads to find Hannah. I wished they were here to see this.
Gabe sprang up immediately. “Did you talk to Li Na?”
“We turned in a lot of documents today—I asked to talk to Hannah in exchange for turning this around so quickly.” I swallowed hard as I waited for the screen to come to life. “I want to see her.”
I grabbed Gabe and held on tight. The screen lit up sooner than I was prepared for, and a picture appeared—suddenly, there was Hannah, sitting listlessly in a chair. Her hair was matted and her blouse was torn at the throat. She looked terrible—clearly in much worse shape than a few days ago.
Someone barked an order, and she looked up at the camera. There was a visible bruise on her cheek, and her eyes were red-rimmed.
The world tilted beneath me. “Hannah! Oh my God, what did they do to you?”
“Huh?” My sister looked at the screen blearily at first, then her eyes focused on me.
“Hannah, what did they do to you?”
“Calm down, I’m okay. They just hit me.”
I gripped Gabe’s hand so I wouldn’t fall over.
She managed a small smile. “It’s okay, they only did it a few times—after I told them to fuck off. A few times.”
I winced. “Hannah…”
“Trust me—they totally deserved it.”
It took everything I had to stay calm. “Please tell the guards that if they hurt you again, or if anything else happens to you, this deal will not go through. Are you listening to me?” I raised my voice so the men could hopefully hear me.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. I couldn’t afford to completely lose it. “Their boss wants my company more than she wants anything—and she won’t get it if they hurt you! Remind them this is a very important deal and that they are low-level pawns. If they do anything else to you, the deal is off! And I will tell their boss that myself!”
Hannah turned around, away from the screen. “Do you animals hear that? You’re low-level scum, and if you touch me again, you’re dead! Got it? Need me to translate that into first-grade English for you?” She turned back to me and shrugged
with what I could only imagine was false bravado. “They’re not really that smart. They might not understand.”
“Please don’t say anything else that’s going to get you hurt,” I begged. “We’re going to get you out of there. Soon.”
“I told you not to risk yourself for me.” Hannah’s voice had a reckless, dangerous edge.
“Gabe had one of his friends, a neurosurgeon, check in with Wes today,” I babbled, trying to think of something I could say to make her face change back to normal so she was herself again, not this fearless, dirty captive who looked like she might try to bite the next hand that fed her. “He’s doing better. They think he’s going to make a full recovery.” A fabrication, but I needed to give Hannah a reason to come back to me.
She nodded, her chin wobbling almost imperceptibly. “Good. That’s good.”
“Of course it’s good, but he needs you. So you do what they say, and they’re not allowed to hurt you, and I’m going to call Li Na right now—they won’t touch you again, I promise.”
“Don’t make me stupid promises.” Hannah’s eyes filled with angry tears. “I told you not to negotiate with her—she’s a murderer, Lauren, and a liar. If you think she’s going to let me just skip out of here someday, you’re crazier than I thought!”
I gripped Gabe’s hand so hard, it must’ve hurt. “You listen to me. You don’t need to worry about Li Na. You just worry about staying safe and staying alive. You worry about coming back to me and back to Wes. He needs you, and so do I. Please don’t look like you’re giving up, because I can’t do this without you.”
“Can’t do what?”
“Anything!” I started to cry, probably the last thing I should be doing. “I can’t do anything without you. So stop fighting the people who have you, and keep your mouth shut.”
Hannah grimaced, but I thought I saw a familiar spark in her eyes. “There she is. My bossy big sister.”
I wiped my eyes and jutted my chin out. “That’s right. Don’t you forget it—and I have a lifetime supply of bossiness waiting for you back here. Let’s concentrate on that.”
The guard said something in the background, and before I was ready, the screen went dead. I stared at it. The blank screen reflected how I felt inside, black and empty. I turned to Gabe. “Those animals… Those animals hit my sister…”
The tears came then, along with sobs, racking my body with spasms.
“Oh God. I’m so sorry, honey.” Gabe wrapped his arms around me. “She’s okay, though—she’s alive. We need to focus on that. Hopefully what you said will sink in.”
I tried to listen to him. But all I could do was cry, because my heart was breaking.
GABE
Lauren sent Li Na an enraged email—documenting the conversation with Hannah and every visible bruise—then curled up into a ball and cried herself to sleep again. I held her until the sobs subsided, and she finally fell into a restless sleep. Then I sat there for a long time, just watching her.
I couldn’t sleep. Images of Hannah’s bruised face kept coming back to me. Lauren’s shuddery breathing pierced my heart. And I kept thinking about Wes, lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to a hundred tubes.
Li Na had ripped my family apart.
I made sure Lauren was settled, then went out to the empty living room. Levi and Ash had come back late from meetings with the police and the FBI and must’ve gone straight to bed. I grabbed Asher’s laptop and fired it up. He’d been unable to ascertain the final digits of the license plate on the security tape. Numbers were my thing, so maybe there was something I could do. I opened up the images from the video feed and started working on an algorithm. I knew that if I could run the different variables, I could possibly match them with a plate from the database Ash had accessed.
By the time the sun came up, I’d figured out the plate number and found a match in the database. I mentally high-fived myself as I went in and sat on Ash’s bed, staring at him as he slept. After a minute, he half opened his eyes. “Have you been staring at me? That’s really rude.”
“I figured out the plate number.”
Ash sat up, instantly alert, the dark circles under his eyes indicating he’d had only a few hours of sleep. “How?”
“Math.” I opened the laptop and pulled up the database. “I found the listing in the database—it looks like the plate was taken from a car at a shopping center in Sunnyvale. Which is only ten miles from Lauren’s house. I’m sure they’ve switched cars since then, but at least it’s a start.”
Ash hopped up and dressed quickly. “I’m going to get it traced and see if we can find where they dumped it. And then I’m going out with the crew. We’ll start searching the area.” He nodded at me. “Good work.”
“I know. Being a genius has its advantages.”
I hustled out to tell Levi what I’d done. Already dressed in a pressed shirt and khakis, he nodded at me over his coffee.
I grabbed a mug for myself. “I figured out the plate number. I used an algorithm and ran the variables.”
Levi’s eyes brightened. “If you’re looking for compliments, you came to the right place. Nice job. Is Ash on it?”
“Yes.”
He started pacing, his mind clearly racing. “Excellent. Finally, a break.”
“I just hope something comes from it.”
“It will.”
I sat down with my coffee. “We spoke to Hannah again last night via Skype—she looked like hell. They’ve been beating her.”
“Jesus.” Levi curled his hand into a fist, looking infinitely pissed. “I’m going back out there, and I’m going to find her. With the plate number, we have a place to start tracking them. I’m also meeting with the NSA today, to compare intel.”
“Good—I hope they have something.”
Levi nodded. “Since your tech expertise is coming in handy, I have something else for you to do.”
“What’s that?”
“I want you to review those two Skype videos more thoroughly with your IT team. You work with the most sophisticated people in the industry—hopefully they can figure something out. Maybe reroute the IP address and track it back to Shenzhen, or something. But there’s gotta be a way to get more information about Hannah’s location from that interface.”
“I’ll send the tape from last night to Dave and Leo. If anyone can figure something out, they can. But they reverse-engineered the first session, and the signal was rerouted from a proxy server in Russia—which is what these people do. Li Na has this routine down pat.”
Ash came in, fully dressed and ready to go. He nodded at Levi. “I have a call in to the police to find out if this car has been dumped. I’m going to head to Sunnyvale while I wait to hear back from them. I need to do something—if I sit around here anymore, I’m going to go nuts.”
I stood up. “I’ll go with you.”
Ash and Levi exchanged a quick look. “I don’t think so,” Levi said. “We should leave the fieldwork to the experts. You did a great job tracking the number, and we appreciate the hell out of it, but you should stick to what you’re good at.”
I ignored him and turned to Ash. “Can I come? I’ll go crazy waiting to hear something.”
Ash looked miserable. “I think we need to stick with the plan. But I promise I’ll text you as soon as I find something. Please tell Lauren I’m going out there, and I’m going to find something, okay? I promise.” Nodding at me one final time, he took off.
I stared Levi down. “Why won’t you let me help?”
“Gabe—you just helped by finding that plate number. But I don’t have insurance to cover your ass out in the field. Ash and I will take care of it with our team. Why don’t you go see if Lauren’s up, and if she’s okay?” he asked, dismissing me.
He might not be doing it on purpose, but Levi was getting under my skin. His nose was going to get broken again—soon. Still, I headed to the bedroom without touching his precious, smug fucking face. For now.
Lauren needed me, an
d I needed to keep my shit together for her sake.
She rolled over, just waking up. “Hey.” Her eyes were puffy and unfocused.
I slid into bed and pulled her close, kissing her forehead. “Hey yourself. Would you like some coffee?”
“Yeah—but I need to get up and get going. I have to get back to the office.” She sat up straighter, and then she seemed to fully wake up, a look of realization dawning over her face. She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “Oh my God. Hannah…”
I held her. “It’s okay.”
“I can’t believe she’s…gone. And I can’t help her. And those animals… They beat her.” She sobbed against my chest.
I rocked her against me. “Hannah’s tougher than we knew. She is not letting these people get under her skin. At least, she’s not showing it. She’s strong, babe. I never would’ve thought your sister would handle herself like this, but she’s a fighter.”
Lauren brushed her tears aside and laughed, a messy jumble of emotion. “She really is kind of a badass, isn’t she?”
“She takes after her big sister.”
“I could never be that brave.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do.” She shook her head. “When our parents died, I was the one who held it together. Hannah fell apart—she was young, and it was so sudden. It was horrible, but I didn’t cry. I thought I was the strong one because I didn’t let any of my emotion out. I did that for Hannah because she was my baby sister and I was trying to protect her. I was trying to be strong for her.”
She wiped her face roughly. “But I can see it now—she’s been the strong one all along. She doesn’t hold back, and she never has. She lives closer to the truth. She’s never been afraid of it.”
“It’s good that she’s strong. She’s going to make it through this.”
Lauren stared out into space for a minute while she processed. “I don’t know… I’m worried she’s going to get herself killed because she won’t keep her mouth shut. And I’m worried she’s not going to cooperate because she doesn’t want Li Na to get what she wants.”