Page 67 of Guarded from Sabotage

She’s right. I’m doing the exact thing I was afraid of in the beginning. Letting my emotions cloud my focus. I take a deep breath. And another. I reign in the rampaging fear and shove it into a reinforced box to deal with later. “Erik. Call Matt. I need him to look into everyone associated with Petrovic again. And her ex, Tanner. Check out the woman she met for lunch, too. Raya Fortune. Tell him to get Leo on it, too.”

Erik already has his phone to his ear. “On it.”

Turning to Rhiannon, I continue in a strained voice. “Call Niall. Tell him to pull up Sarah’s tracker and get on the road right away. Xavier, too. Wherever Sarah ends up, I might need backup.”

Scanning the room again, I spot the keys to the Blade and Arrow SUV over by the TV. I lunge for them, clutching them so tightly they dig into my hand. “I need to go.”

“We’re all going,” Erik says. “I’ll stay on the phone with Matt. Rhi can help navigate. You’re not alone in this. We’ve got your six.”

I keep reminding myself of it as we speed down the highway, rushing towards Sarah’s still moving dot.I have my team. And by extension, so does Sarah.

We’re going to get to her. Protect her. Bring her home. And if someone took her, if it’s not a terrible symptom of PTSD, they’re going to regret it.

“Niall’s on the road,” Rhiannon reports. She’s sitting in the passenger seat with the laptop balanced on her knees. Sarah’s blinking red dot is still moving, inching its way east across the map. “He has Xavier with him. They’re bringing extra guns, ammo, medical supplies…” She bites her lip. “Not that we’ll need them, but?—”

“I know,” I grit out. “Sarah’s going to be fine.”

I just wish I could believe it. But my gut isn’t just telling me something is horribly wrong, it’s shouting it.

Somehow, we missed something. Between my team, the guys in Sleepy Hollow, the SAPD, and the damn FBI, we missed something.

“How did we miss it?” I snap, my frustration and fear bubbling over. “There are dozens of people on Sarah’s case. How did we fucking miss this?”

“We don’t know someone took her,” Erik says. He meets my gaze in the rearview mirror. “It’s still possible she had?—”

“Do you really believe that?” I clutch the steering wheel hard enough to break it. “I don’t. Not Sarah. She’s too… she just wouldn’t.”

I glance at the speedometer, wondering how much faster we can go without running the risk of being pulled over. It’s Texas, so I know we can go faster than I used to in New York, but…

“Matt has something.” Erik leans forward. “A lead.”

My heart rockets to triple speed. “What is it?”

“He looked into Petrovic again. Actually, the girlfriend.”

“The server?”

“Yes. But when he did a deep dive into her background, it seemed… too perfect. He said…” Erik pauses, glancing at his phone. “Usually there are gaps somewhere. Or duplicates of previous addresses. Missing records. Something. But with this woman, Gwen, he said it was almost too easy.”

“Too easy? What does that mean?” Stepping on the gas, I blow by a sedan puttering along at sixty. “Do we have a suspect or not?”

“Yes. Sorry.” Erik frowns. “I don’t understand some of what Matt is texting me. Wait… another message just came in.” He pauses to read it, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from yelling at him to read faster. “It’s a fake. The identity of the girlfriend. It’s fake.”

“Shit,” Rhiannon hisses. “How did the FBI not?—”

I wave at her to be quiet. “Who is it?”

“Her name is Tamara Morris.” A pause, and then Erik bites out, “Shit.”

“Shit,what?”

“Tamara Morris is a security analyst in Boston. But she took a leave from her job six months ago. To move to Texas. San Antonio. She has a computer science degree from MIT, so she has the skills to…”

A tiny ding signals another text coming in. Seconds later, Erik continues, his tone even grimmer than before. “Tamara’s brother, Blake, passed away seven months ago. He went to Hunter College at the same time as Sarah. Matt hasn’t found a connection yet, but he’s looking.”

“So she has the skills to hack Sarah’s accounts,” Rhiannon says. “And she lies about her identity, meets Petrovic… Could she have been behind all of it?”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

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