Page 151 of GAF Factor

The entire room burst out in a roar of argument over who guessed correctly or who was wrong. “Fucking hell,” Lock grumbled. “Prick.”

“But that’s not the point!” I shouted, trying to regain control of the room.

“Sorry,” Lock said, whistling loudly to get everyone’s attention. “Continue.”

I licked my lips, nervous now that they were all staring at me. “Knox told me this morning that the men he works for…he hasn’t exactly been returning their phone calls and they’re sort of pissed about that.”

“Who does he work for?” FNG asked.

I shrugged uselessly. “I have no idea. Bad people. Basically, he was supposed to check in a while back, but he ran into a few issues—like being locked in the shipping container and then staying with me and getting wrapped up in catching Shawn. None of which I knew affected his life in any way,” I explained. “Until this morning when he said he had to go back. They’d been calling and if he didn’t go back, they’d come for him. And probably me. He said—” My eyes dropped as I tried to force out the words, but I just couldn’t do it.

Lock snagged my attention. “If you want us to help, we need to know everything.”

“He was going to leave without saying goodbye because he doesn’t think he’ll be coming back. He doesn’t think they’ll let him live,” I clarified.

Everyone was silent as I looked around the room. I expected them to jump up and shout at the very idea that IKE would just hand himself over like that. Or say they had a plan to get him back. But instead, they all sat there silently, none of them looking very optimistic about any of it.

“Well, say something,” I scoffed.

Lock sighed. “There’s not much we can do, Isla. We have no intel.”

“No idea who he works for,” Slider spoke up.

“Don’t know what state he’s in,” Nicholas added. “If we did, I could reach out to some old contacts with gang units, but…”

I turned to Rae. “You’re in tech. Don’t you have some way of tracking him?”

“He wasn’t part of the team. He never let us put a tracker in him.”

“But you had to have some idea of where he went. I could tell you where I first met him.”

“That doesn’t mean he worked there,” Johnny spoke up. “That’s just one of the places he had a job.”

I huffed out a laugh. I couldn’t believe it. In a room full of operatives, none of them were willing to do anything to help IKE. “He’s your friend.”

“I wouldn’t call him that,” Chase muttered under his breath.

“He’s worked with you on jobs before. He’s—he may not be part of the team, but he was here for you when you needed him, and now that he needs someone, you’re all just—just sitting around doing nothing? You’re not even willing to try?”

“Isla, it’s not that we don’t want to,” Lock said gently. “IKE was very private. He didn’t tell us anything. He didn’t share anything with us. We literally have nothing to go on.”

“But you can track his car. You do that. Rae, you told me that you do that.”

“In cities with cameras. This is a small town. We don’t have traffic cameras here.”

My chin quivered as they all stared at me with those hopeless expressions on their faces. They didn’t think there was anything to be done, and I was going to lose him.

I felt Riley’s hand in mine as she tugged me from the room, but the rest was just a blur of us walking to the car and leaving. My heart was breaking, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

37

LOCK

As soon asthe elevator doors closed, the room exploded into chaos.

“Rae, get on the phone with Duke. Tell him I need Bowie at Isla’s until we find these assholes and take them out. Round the clock protection. No one gets in or out.”

“On it.”

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