Parker: A Reed Security Romance

by Giulia Lagomarsino

  “Alright, we’ll make sure you get home safely.” Hunter wrapped an arm around her and guided her over to where Derek stood. He helped her out of the room as Hunter turned back to me.

  I glanced down at the blood on the floor one last time and ran through what Carrie had just said. It could have ended so much differently. If Carrie had never opened that door, Kate might still be alive. She might have had a chance to get out the back door and run. But instead, Carrie led them right to her.

  I turned to go, but a flash of gold on the floor caught my eye. Under her desk was the gold locket that I had gotten her after Raven was born. Inside was a picture of each of our kids. I slowly bent over and snatched it off the floor. The clasp was broken, probably broken in her struggles to get away. I closed my fist around it, the chains dangling between my fingers. I held my fist to my mouth, kissing the locket. I would not let her down again. I would get her back and keep her safe.

  I stared down at the blood on the floor one last time, wondering how much of that was hers. I was usually so in command, so ready to push forward through anything, but that had been too close. My life had almost been ripped away.

  “Hey,” Pappy said, snapping me out of the haze I was in. “Kate is gone. Let’s go get her back. Don’t just stare at the fucking floor.”

  That snapped me out of it. I nodded and stormed past him, ready to get back to work and bring the woman I loved back to me. Racing out to my motorcycle, I threw on my helmet and immediately dialed Reed Security as I drove back to the property.

  “Sebastian Reed.”

  “Cap, I need Becky to get footage of the clinic. It’s been broken into. One man dead, and Kate’s missing.”

  “On it.”

  He hung up and I sped through town to get back to work. An angry energy that I hadn’t felt in a long time started buzzing through me. Whoever took her had fucked with my family, with me, and they weren’t going to get away with it. The gate opened for me and I quickly parked, rushing over to the elevator to get to the IT room. I just need a trail, any trail to go on, and I would find her.

  “What do you have for me?” I barked as I walked into the room.

  “She was taken by one man out of the clinic. They got in a black Ford SUV, but I could only track it as far as a parking garage in town. They switched vehicles inside. I’m working on tracking every vehicle that left the garage around that time, but it’s going to take time. Everyone was leaving work, so it was busy.”

  “Then we go talk to every fucking person there. Someone must have seen something.”

  “I’m working on it,” Rob said, his fingers flying across the keyboard. “I’m working on getting phone numbers now, but it’s going to take a while to go through all these.”

  “I don’t give a fuck. Get five more guys working on it. I need that information now! I’m going to the parking garage to see if I can find anything.”

  I turned to leave, but Pappy caught up to me, grabbing onto my arm. “Hold up, I’ll go with you.”

  “Do whatever you want,” I snarled.

  “Hey, just remember who’s on your side.”

  I stepped onto the elevator and ran a hand over my face. “Fuck, I know, but…”

  “I know, man. We’ll get her back.”

  “You can’t promise me that.”

  “Maybe not, but I can guarantee that we’ll do whatever the fuck we have to so that she’s back here. We all care about Kate, man. We’ll do whatever we can for her.”

  I nodded and stepped out, but Hunter motioned for his truck. “You’re just a little too hyped up to drive right now. I’ll take you anywhere you need to go.”

  “What about everyone else?”

  “Cap already put everyone on lockdown.”

  “Too fucking late,” I muttered. “I should have fucking known. I thought we had time.”

  “We didn’t have all the information, Hud. There’s no way you could have known the extent of what was going on.”

  “But I should have suspected it. I’ve gotten too fucking soft.”

  “Are you kidding me? Hud, it’s because of you that we train as hard as we do. I mean, we were in shape and doing good when you came along, but you took us to another level. Half of us might be dead right now if it wasn’t for you. Me included.”

  “I just need to get her back,” I said quietly. I couldn’t imagine my life without Kate. I thought back to that year that I had been away from her. It had been fucking torture to not hold her in my arms. At least then I knew she was alive, but that year apart had reminded me how precious life really was. And then when she was taken from me and held prisoner…If it hadn’t been for Maggie stepping up and taking her place when those gangs went after her, she would have broken. My woman was strong, but she wasn’t Maggie. She wasn’t built for my life. She had too much good in her.

  Hunter pulled into the parking garage and drove around slowly, giving us a chance to look for any clues. “Top level,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “That’s where I would do it.”

  He drove to the top and pulled to a stop on the nearly deserted level. I got out and walked toward the northeast corner, furthest from the ramp. I walked along the perimeter until I spotted it. There was blood. Not a lot, but enough, and it was recent.

  “Over here!”

  Pappy came running over and knelt down next to the blood. He had a pack slung over his shoulder and pulled it out to get a sample of the blood. “We can test it back at Reed Security, make sure it’s her.”

  “It is.” I knew it deep in my soul. I didn’t need anyone else to tell me. I glanced around, trying to find anything that would tell us where she had gone, but it was pointless. There were no cameras up here, and no other buildings close by were tall enough that anyone would have seen anything.

  I pulled out my phone and dialed Becky. “I need satellite footage from the top level of the parking garage. That’s where the transfer took place.”

  “I’m checking now,” she said. I could hear her fingers running over the keyboard, but it didn’t make me feel better. I needed a lead, not just a search. “I’m sorry, Knight. There were no satellites moving over that area. There’s nothing to go on. We’ll keep searching.”

  I hung up, not knowing where to go from here. I was stuck until Becky or Rob came up with something for me to go on.

  “Let’s go back to Reed Security. We can start going through the video footage with Rob and Becky. Maybe you’ll see something they won’t.”

  I nodded, but I was fucking pissed, mostly at myself. I could find other people in five minutes or less, but when it came to my own fucking wife, she had vanished and I had no clue where she was.

  We headed back to Reed Security and back to the IT room. Becky spun around in her chair and handed me a piece of paper.

  “These are all the people I’ve already knocked out of the running. All these people went home after they left the parking garage. I ran backgrounds on all of them, and I didn’t come up with anything that would link them in any way to the government or anything that we’re dealing with.”

  “How many more do you have to go through?”

  “Another fifty,” she said defeatedly. “We’re working as hard as we can.”

  “I know you are, Becky.”

  My phone rang and I pulled it out. Jim Caldwell. Maybe he could help me.

  “Jim. Tell me you’re close.”

  “Not even in the area,” he whispered. “Listen, something big is going down right now. I can’t get away.”

  “That probably has to do with me.”

  Dead silence and then a long sigh. “I should have known.”

  “Look, I stepped in some shit, and I’m not even sure what’s going on yet, but somebody took my wife.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “The dead body and the blood trail out the door would certainly suggest it. Besides, I found where they switched cars. I need satellite feed, but there was nothing in that direction.�
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  “Shit. Alright, give me some time. I’ll see what I can find out. It may take me a few days to get away. You should see the chaos around here.”

  A few days. That wasn’t good enough. “You’ll get your ass out here now or I’ll come for you. This is my wife we’re talking about,” I shouted into the phone.

  “I know that, but everyone’s being watched. Do you want me to lead them right to you? I’ll get there as fast as I can, but you need to lay low.”

  I gritted my teeth in frustration. I needed all the resources I could get right now, but if Jim ended up leading the FBI back here, it wasn’t just me I had to worry about. It would blow my cover and put everyone that helped me in a horrible spot.

  “Just hurry up.”

  “Knight, you gotta see this,” Cap said, jerking his thumb for the lobby. I followed him out there where a guy no older than twenty stood. “Tell us why you’re here.”

  “Uh, I was just asked to deliver this letter. Made a hundred bucks,” he grinned.

  “Who was it from?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “No idea, man. The guy just handed it off and asked if I could get this to his friend.”

  “His friend?”

  “Yeah, some guy named Garrick Knight.”

  My blood ran cold as I stared at the envelope in front of me. Without another thought, I snatched it out of his hands while I heard Cap and Hunter trying to figure out what the guy looked like. I stared at it, my hands shaking slightly as I turned it over and opened it. Pulling out the photograph, I saw Kate being shoved into the back of a blacked out SUV. It was taken outside her clinic. This didn’t mean jack shit anymore. It gave me no information, since I knew they had switched vehicles.

  “We could trace the SUV they were in,” Hunter suggested. “Maybe we’ll find somebody that matches the profile.”

  I shook my head slightly. “It’ll be a junker or stolen. It’s not going to tell us anything. Besides, when they switched vehicles, they would have wiped it down.”

  “You’re going off the assumption that these are professionals.”

  I flipped the envelope over and showed it to him. “It’s addressed to Garrick Knight. A person with enough power to know who I am isn’t going to be sloppy. The only thing this tells us is that Kate was actually kidnapped.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “We wait. They’re showing this to us in the hopes that we’ll back off. They’ll call to negotiate.”

  “What are you going to do?” Cap asked.

  It wasn’t in me to sit back and wait for something to happen, but I didn’t have much of a choice right now. I had no leads and nothing to do. I was drifting.

  “We wait.”