Page 111 of Silent Betrayal

“We’re coming,” he answers before hanging up.

We continue to follow Ben down the street until he slows and looks up. I don’t see her or Paul anywhere. After a few more steps, Ben stops and turns around, looking at his phone, then back around him again in confusion.

“Fuck,” he whispers before bending down and picking something up off the ground.

When he turns and shows it to us, I suck in a sharp breath. “No,” I whisper, seeing her smart watch in his hand.

We turn at the sound of pounding footsteps and see our four brothers running towards us.

“Where is she?” Max yells.

I turn to Ben, who holds out the watch, staring down at it with pain in his eyes.

“He took her,” Ben says in a tone that says he can’t believe it.

I grab his shoulders and give them a little shake, making him look up at me.

“Ben. Listen, we will get her back. Do you hear me? There is nothing that will stop the seven of us from getting to her. And we need your tracking skills to help us find her. So I need you to snap out of it and help us get our girl. You hear me, brother?”

He looks at me for a moment, then nods slowly, followed by another sharper nod. “Yes, thanks, I can do this. Let’s go back to the police station, I’m sure we can use their help.”

We quickly head back to the station and let the chief know what’s happened. He puts an APB out for both of them and helps us get set up in a large room with several of his best detectives and tech guys.

“Okay boys, we need to find everything we can on Paul Stevens,” the chief tells his men.

Ben tries to track Mina’s phone, and when we find the signal stopped only a street away, Atlas and Jasper go with a couple cops to check it out. They return quickly with the phone and no Mina. Apparently, Paul was throwing her stuff out the window, knowing we could track her with it.

“When we get her back, I’m implanting a tracker in her arm,” Ben grumbles as he clicks away on his laptop he retrieved from the SUV. My wide eyes meet Gideon’s. I’m not sure if Ben is serious or not, but I’m kind of okay with that.

I pace the room, unsure how to help right now. I can’t stop thinking about how scared she must be right now. And even worse, what does Paul want with her? All signs point to her being his biological daughter, so what was his plan here?

“Hey!” I say, an idea coming to me. “He kept talking about wanting her to go back to California with him, maybe he’s planning on driving there?”

“Good point,” Dom says with a nod.

“Why would Mina go with him?” Max asks, immediately shaking his head as he realizes what a stupid question that is. “Dumb question, sorry. I’m just stressed. She obviously didn’t go willingly, he threw her phone and watch out the window, she never would have allowed that.”

“Got it!” one of the police techs, Jordan says excitedly.

“You got the footage?” Ben asks, rolling his chair beside him to look at his screen.

“Yes, the outside cameras are pointing at the street outside. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

I join the others, standing behind him as he rewinds the footage, pressing play when we see Atlas walking across the street to the station.

He fast forwards slowly until we see the two of them exit the coffee shop. “There!” Several of us all yell at once and he slows it down to normal speed.

We all watch as Paul puts his arm around her. Even through the grainy security footage, I can see her tensing. Paul doesn’t seem to notice, though. Or he does, but he doesn’t care. They move to a car parked a few spots down and when he opens the trunk, I find myself gripping Ben’s shoulder, knowing we’re not going to like what we see.

We watch his hand move to her neck, then she starts to crumble, and within seconds he throws her in the trunk and slams it shut.

“Fuck, I can’t believe he did that right in front of my station,” the chief says, running his hand through his hair.

“Chief, I’m not finding anything on Stevens since his stint in rehab. It’s like he’s been a ghost for the past fifteen years. I found the police report he filled with Mina went missing and then… nothing.”

“That’s not good news,” the chief says, his eyes scanning us like he’s afraid we’re going to tear his station apart.

“I had the same problem finding him originally. The only thing I had to locate him in the first place was his phone number on the missing persons report for Mina. It was still active even after all this time,” Ben tells the chief.

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