Page 100 of Keep This Promise
I can’t explain it, but I just feel like something is wrong.
Spencer’s phone goes to voice mail as well.
I slam my hand on the steering wheel, hating that I am at least fifteen minutes out. My mind is going in a million directions as I race to get to Sophie and Eden. Rationally, I know that they are probably just away from their phones, and I have no real reason for my heart to be beating as frantically as it is, but fear is a tricky emotion. It doesn’t care about logic or reason. There is just this pounding urgency to get home and make sure they are safe because I can’t handle anything happening to them. I love Eden with everything I am, and I am falling so hard for Sophie. I want to spend every damn day with her and build a life with our daughter.
If that is taken from me because of this fucking asshole, I’ll kill him myself.
My phone rings, and for a second I think it could be Sophie, but it’s Emmett.
“Emmett! I can’t reach Sophie or Spencer!”
“Where are you?”
“I’m turning on State Street, where are you?”
“I’m at your house now.”
“Are Sophie and Eden okay?” The panic is starting to take over, and I fist my hands around the steering wheel to keep them from shaking.
“Just get here safe, and we’ll figure everything out.”
My heart is pounding in my chest. “Fuck!” I yell, slamming my hand on the wheel. “Just tell me! Tell me if they’re okay!”
Emmett is quiet for a second and then sighs. “Holden, calm the fuck down. You’re not going to be of any use if you’re a maniac. Look, no one handles situations like this better than you, so put your damn doctor hat on when you approach this house.”
“I’m two minutes away.”
I don’t know how I’m going to hold on and do as he says, but I am going to try. I pull down my driveway, and there are police cars, an ambulance, and three men with rifles out front talking.
Throwing the car in park, I rush out, desperate to see my girls. When I get through the door, Sophie is there, her head in her hands as Blakely rubs her back.
“Sophie!” I yell, and her head snaps up.
Then she’s rushing toward me. My arms wrap around her, and she clings to me. “They took her! Oh, God, they took our baby.”
For the first time in my life, I know what true terror feels like.
* * *
“We have search teams out in the area, and Cole Security guys are already running the camera feeds through facial recognition, as well as any tracking options they have.”
Sophie and I are on the couch, holding each other’s hands as everyone moves around us. Sophie cries off and on as I try to come to terms with what happened.
Spencer described it as a full-scale military attack. The lights went out, and then two flash-bangs were deployed in the room, disabling him and Sophie. Within fifteen seconds, they’d breached the door and had taken Eden. He said it happened so fast it was impossible for him to react before the flash-bangs went off.
I want to scream, to rail at the world and everyone in it. “I should’ve been here,” I say to no one.
“It wouldn’t have mattered if you were here,” Spencer says.
“I should’ve . . . I should’ve hired Jackson’s company. I was going to call him today, but now it’s too fucking late.”
Emmett squeezes my shoulder. “Jackson’s companywashere, Holden. Unbeknownst to us, they’ve been watching Sophie since she arrived.”
“His team was here, and they did nothing?”
“They were incapacitated before the attack but were in the house within three minutes of Eden being taken. The guys who took her weren’t amateurs. They were well trained and executed their mission in under five minutes, start to finish.”
The two guys from Cole Security walk over. “I’m Miles Kent, and this is Makenna Dixon, both of us were here when it happened. One of our team members in San Diego is coming up with his K-9, Jackson is on the way, and so is Zach Barrett, who was previously on Sophie and Eden’s detail.” The guy looks to Sophie. “We were both knocked unconscious, so it’s clear they knew who we were. As soon as I came to, I saw Makenna already moving to the house. It was as though they were the equivalent of us.”
