Page 112 of Rex

The chair tips sideways, and I crash to the cement. Shaking my head, I try to clear my vision.

“Geek that kicked your asses,” I say in the same tone as before.

“Set him up. I’m not done with him yet,” Dave orders.

I jerk my body as much as I can just to make it harder on Gary, who’s trying to get the chair and me upright. I do well enough that Dave has to help because Gary’s out of breath already. Hmmm. Someone must have ribs that hurt as bad as mine. I give myself a mental fist-bump, then wait for the next blow. It doesn’t take long, and I’m tipped over backward on the chair. This becomes our pattern until I blissfully sink into the blackness of oblivion.

Chapter 19

Aria

I’m running on fumes, and I’m staring at the laptop with permanently blurry eyes. I’m also starting to feel the helplessness that’s been trying to set in from the beginning. I push back from the table, walk to Rex’s room, and use the bathroom. When I’m done, I splash my face with cool water and look at myself in the mirror. My eyes are bloodshot, and my coloring is off. I look like I haven’t seen the sun in a year instead of a couple of days. Running my damp hands through my hair, I pull it up and wrap a scrunchie around it.

“Aria! Come here!” I hear Pigeon shout, and I take off at a run.

Sliding to a stop next to him, I look at his monitor. What the fuck?

“It was in my email. Just got a notification, and the subject line read Gary and Dave. That’s the first names of the kidnappers,” Pigeon explains in excitement.

“Rex has gotten his hands on a computer, maybe?” I question, still not sure what a folder full of pictures means.

“Call Gunner and let him know. I know there’s a way to trace this backward, but I have to figure it out,” Pigeon says with a grin.

I call Gunner and almost smile at his woop woop. It is great news if for no other reason than it tells us Rex is still breathing. I’m so exhausted, though, that the possibilities this may open up don’t excite me as much as they should. Rex isn’t standing in front ofme, and I don’t think I’ll feel the same excitement the guys are until that happens.

“At least we have pictures of the victims for identification purposes now,” Gunner says. “Tell Pigeon to stay on it and to watch his email. Rex would have sent a way to find him, I’m sure. While he’s working on that, can you pull up the Denver P.D.’s website, go to their missing persons page, and compare photos? Check surrounding towns too.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that now,” I reply and disconnect.

My state of mind is so bad right now I didn’t even think about the other reasons those pictures are important. Opening a new tab, I type the web address for Denver P.D.’s website. Pigeon forwards the folder to me, and I get busy. Now that I’m really looking at the faces of these women, I know I’ll see their faces in my sleep for a very long time.

“I think I may have found a way to find his location or at least within a couple of blocks,” Pigeon shouts.

I watch, feeling a shot of hope for the first time today, as he calls Gunner. Relaying the information, Pigeon disconnects, then grins broadly at me.

“They’re only a few blocks away. Everyone is converging to an old warehouse parking lot, and they’re going to send the drones up. Please let this work,” Pigeon says with feeling.

Axel walks into the room and asks what’s been happening, and Pigeon fills him in. Axel grins and gives Pigeon a hard slap on the back.

“Fuck, brother! You’re not as useless as we’ve always thought,” Axel says in a joking manner.

“Let’s see if they find him off of my intel before we go that far,” Pigeon replies. “Gunner should’ve taken Mac instead of the drones.”

“That would only work if Rex had cashews on him. Though Mac would talk their ears off and make them wish they were dead,” Axel states with a snort.

“Wait! Why not use the dogs? Didn’t Reno and Ava work with them on tracking?” Pigeon asks suddenly.

“Fuck yeah, they did. Let me call Ava,” Axel says and walks off a few steps.

Pigeon walks over and watches what I’m doing, and I notice his good mood evaporates quickly when he sees the pictures again. He pulls a chair close and points out another match to a reported missing woman here in Denver. We work silently for a few minutes, then find another match.

“Ava called Gunner. He has Reno on the way here to get the dogs. The drones are up, but if they have the SUV in a garage, the drones won’t help much. Hopefully, one of the guys will step outside at the wrong time, and the drones will get a lock on his position,” Axel says. “Pigeon, you keep an eye on your computer in case Rex sends something else. I’ll help Aria.”

I pull up the surrounding towns’ websites and start going through them one by one. Some of the pictures on the websites don’t match well, but are a possibility due to changes in aging. The pictures we have are current, and the websites usuallyaren’t. The possible ones, we make a note about and move to the next.

“If Rex were here, this would be done in minutes. He’d use facial recognition and run all of them through the national database,” Axel muses, and I nod.

“I’m no Rex,” I say in an almost apologetic tone.

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