Page 21 of Rescued By the SEAL

Fuck, it’s all coming out and none of it from me. Officer Buchan seems to be filling Max in on my father’s murder and Heather’s vanishing trick too. Hell, this is going to become a fucking nightmare. I huff and storm away so I can pace up and down while Max gets that asshole off the phone. Officer Buchan will think that this is my fault, but I blame him. If he hadn’t taken Heather away from me and locked her up in his goddamn house, then everything would be fine.

I’ll make Max know that too. I’ll make him see that I’m not the bad guy here. All I’ve wanted is the best for Heather. Sure, I know that he’s mad because of the link that we’ve shared in the past, but he’ll listen. He has to.

“Landon, you need to get in here now,” Max yells as soon as he hangs up the phone. “Fucking hell. This is a mess.”

“Yeah, I know, tell me about it,” I growl back. “I saw it happen. I saw Heather be pulled into a van. Here, let me write down the numbers that I can remember from the license plate.” I grab a piece of paper and I scribble it down. “It was a big, black, dirty looking van and some guys just dragged her into it and drove off so fast that I didn’t stand a chance to catch it up.”

“Fucking hell, so the guys linked to your father now have her.” He narrows his eyes at me. “And your dad is…?”

“Dead? Yeah, I haven’t seen you since it happened.” I roll my eyes, not because I’m being dismissive, but because it’s all so much drama in one go. “He was shot in the head. Probably when the gang came to get Heather and she wasn’t there. I can only assume that they have been trying to track her down ever since and they finally found her. Fuck, now they might kill her too.”

“We aren’t going to let that happen, Landon, but youcannotbe a part of the search for her. Youknowit’ll wind Officer Buchan up if you’re involved, and we really need to do what we can to calm him down. We need to do this job right.”

“I’m not being pushed out of this, Max,” I warn my boss angrily. “I don’t care about Heather’s father right now. I don’t give a shit about his opinion. I need to be out there looking for her. I feel like I’m the only one who can find her.”

“Landon, Iknowyou feel that way, but youhaveto trust me. You have to know that I can do this. You have seen what I can do with this company, so you need to sit back and let it happen. Youneedto give me the time to make this work.”

I can practically see the cogs ticking in Max’s brain. He’s coming up with a plan already, but I won’t be pushed out. I’m going to be involved with this no matter what. Heather ismyresponsibility because I was the one assigned to work with her, but also because I love her. I’m so in love with her that I can’t let her die. Max will have to let me have some leeway.

“Max, I’m going to help with this, you know I am. You have to let me assist because I’m in the middle of it all.”

“Yes, and your emotions are the problem.” Max nods. “Your emotions are what will ruin this. If I let you out there with that look on your face, then everything will explode. I have to do this in a calm and collected way. I can keep you here in the office. You can assist me here. You can work on helping me to track this gang and this van down. We need to do it fast, okay?”

I’m not happy about it, but it’s better than nothing. At least right now, I’m in the middle of it. He’s allowing me to keep tabs on things. I nod, despite the fact that Iknowif the time comes for me to go out, then I will. It doesn’t matter what Max says about it. This is more important than anything going on in my life. Max can lose his shit if he wants, but we’ll deal with it later.

“Right, so I’m going to take what I have with these numbers and see if I can find the license plate and track it down.”

“Yes, Landon, that’s great, and I’ll get some other guys in early. Get some people out on the road to hunt for them.”

My fists ball up by my sides. Is he trying to irritate me about this? Suggesting that some other guys can get out there to find Heather while I’m sitting here like some chump, not being a hero at all, is just annoying. But fine, whatever. I won’t react. I won’tgive him any reason to push me even further out of this. Instead, I move over to my desk and grit my teeth.

“Ignore him,” I whisper to myself as Max gets on the phone to other members of staff. “It’s fine. It’s okay. Itwillbe fine.”

But it isn’t fine. It’s not fucking fine at all. I couldn’t be more pissed off if I tried. I’m even slamming on the keyboard hard as I search. My fingers are going to freaking ache at the end of this… if I even find anything. I mean, if these guys are as smart as they seem, then I’m going to have all kinds of challenges in finding them. They could be really well hidden, for all I know. They could have some goddamn hideout somewhere that none of us know about, a base where they do… God, anything. I’ve no real idea of the sort of crimes my father might have really been involved in. Enough to make him kidnap a woman, that much is true. For him to go to such extremes is terrifying. I should have asked him more when he was still alive. Or perhaps I should have tried to contact my mother already… and I will soon. I’m just trying to prepare myself for it now. So much has happened in the last few hours that I’m a little bewildered by it all. Hopefully, by the time I’m allowed to call the jail, I’ll be in a better headspace.

I shouldn’t have come here, I think that’s my main issue. I should have continued to do this search myself. At least then, I wouldn’t be stuck here, controlled by Max. I could be out there on the streets finding them, putting an end to this.

“No, don’t get lost in that,” I hiss to myself. “Don’t worry about what youcoulddo, worry about what youcando.”

I try to zone in on the computer screen, but it’s making my head spin. I’m struggling to think about anything other than what might be happening to Heather right now. The love of my life hasbeen captured by a group of horrible men, and while they have control of her, I can’t let anything bad happen to her. Somehow, I have to put a stop to this.

19

HEATHER

“Fucking Bill.” The voices from the front of the van keep going on about Bill Ross and what they did to him, which is horrifying to say the least. I’m definitely in the middle of a nightmare here and I can’t wake up no matter what I try. “What a little asshole. I’ll tell you what, it felt so fucking good to put that bullet in his goddamn brain. I needed that shit. He has been yanking us around for much too long, getting into deeper and deeper debt. There was no way he was getting out. Especially with his bitch in jail.”

“Thank fuck Sticks told us abouther.” I just know that they’re talking about me. “Now we have a lot of options to get our cash back. Maybe not all of it because fuck me, Bill owed us a goddamn fortune, but something. Better than nothing.”

“You thinking we should whore her out?” a third, more awful, voice rings out, sending a horrible chill down my spine. “We keep doing that for years and we’ll recuperate a lot. Could even be good for getting us more trade for the stash, you know.”

“Nah, it’ll take too long,” the first voice replies. “I don’t want to wait for my money. I would rather sell her. Those sketchy guyswho spend half their life down by the port would be good for it. Since she’s clean, we’d get something good.ButI think it’s very important to remember what Bill told Sticks. This bitch has a cop for a father. Buchan, of all people. So, we could slice her to pieces and send him bits of her. It wouldn’t get us any money or anything, but it would certainly give us some laughs. Ain’t that it?”

“True, that’s very true. Since it’s taken us forever to get ahold of this bitch, we should make the most of it. Finger by finger.”

As the men discuss the different ways in which they could rip me apart to torture my father whom they obviously despise, I force my eyes closed and try to block my ears. I don’t know if this is what they actually intend to do to me or they just want to upset me, but I don’t care either way. I don’t want to hear it. By this point, I would rather not know. They fucking killed Bill. Much as what he did to me was awful and I hate him for it, I don’t like the idea of his being dead. It’s just a lot. He’s still the man I knew growing up. He’s still Landon’s father. Sure, he’s a lot more too, but those thoughts are there. Killed by these animals because that’s what they are. They’re way worse than anything I’ve ever encountered before. Roger Caine and Bill Ross are clearly small-time criminals, and these people are completely ridiculous. I can’t get my head around their actually existing.

There is a brief moment where my eyes pop open and the first thing I see is a gun waving around in front of me. It could even be the gun which was used to kill Bill. I snap them closed once more and block the world out. It’s better here in the blackness.

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