Page 5 of Twisted Empire

My jaw clenched, but I forced my voice to stay even when my main tech guy on staff picked up. “I have a phone number I need you to trace,” I said. “And I also need you to check the traffic cams around that address you sent me to earlier today for a black SUV. Follow its route as well as you can and figure out where it’s gone.”

“No problem, boss,” Luis replied without hesitation.

I set the phone on my lap, my fingers curling tight around it as I looked around at the other guys. Until recently, they’d seen my criminal connections as reason to distrust me. Would they blame me for how the violence we were facing had escalated—claim it wasmyfault that Maddie had ended up at the wrong end of a gun?

My stomach twisted at the thought. I didn’t know how this would work if we ended up divided again, whether I could ensure her safety alone.

The best thing I could do was show that I was working as hard as possible to get Maddie out of danger right now.

I focused on Logan. “Do you know any places around here where your mom could have gone to hide out—old properties, family friends, favorite spots to visit…?”

Logan shook his head and then pressed the heels of his hands against his temples. “Not that I can think of. But, I mean, I obviously don’t know anything about this woman at all.”

“Did she have any close friends who faded out of your family’s life after she supposedly died?”

He paused and then groaned. “I don’t know. I didn’t pay that much attention to my parents’ social lives.”

Dexter frowned, his dark curls tumbling across his forehead as he tilted his head. “We could try searching property and rental listings for her name—but she must have been using a fake name and IDs once her death was registered.”

“Yeah, that won’t get us anywhere.” Slade swiped his hand across his mouth and then looked at me. “Can you talk to Doom’s Seed? Take him to task for this war he—or Lindell—started against you and find out if he knows anything about Maddie getting kidnapped? Everything seems to lead back to him.”

It did, which didn’t reassure me at all. I gritted my teeth as I considered my options.

“There are specific channels of communication I have to use to reach out to him,” I admitted. “I can’t just call him up—I wouldn’t know how. And he could take hours or even days to respond if he decides to. He wasn’t very cooperative before. We don’t have that kind of time. And even if we did, the chances that he’d tell me anything helpful are next to none.” I paused. “I’m not sure it’d be a good thing for him to realize how much Maddie’s disappearance matters to me.”

“Okay, you have a point there.” Slade sighed and sagged back in the chair. The color had leached from his normally warm brown skin.

I swallowed hard, my throat constricting with my expanding sense of failure, and my phone pinged with an incoming text from Luis. I lifted the device and immediately grimaced.

“My main tech guy can’t trace Maddie’s phone,” I said. “At best, it’s shut off. At worst, it’s been destroyed. And there were no traffic cams near the medical facility. He’s running a wider search for a black SUV in the right timeframe, but it’s hard to pick up when we don’t even have the license plate.”

Logan swore. “My mom must know what she’s doing—or someone helping her does. How could she…?” He let out a strangled sound of frustration.

“Hold on,” I said, flicking through my contacts. “My tech people are good, but they’re not the absolute best out there. If there are any new tricks or techniques, I know at least one guy who might be a bit more in the know.”

I dialed Gideon’s number, but the call went straight to voicemail, not even ringing once. My muscles tensed further as I tried the rest of the Paradise Bend crew: Rowan and Wylder, Kaige and even Mercy. The result was the same.

They must have been in the middle of a deal or some other work where they couldn’t be disturbed. There was no telling when they’d be available again either.

And it’d been a long shot anyway. Gideon was brilliant, but his actual experience was mainly on his home turf, not on the level of groups like the Devil’s Dozen. I wasn’t totally sure he’d have been able to outdo my own people when searching territory he wasn’t familiar with.

As that thought passed through my mind, inspiration hit me with a jolt. The possibility felt even more tenuous than my connection to Gideon, but if it worked out…

I sat up straighter, and the other guys immediately focused on me even more intently.

“What?” Logan demanded.

I wet my lips. “There’s another member of the Devil’s Dozen I could reach out to who I think is more likely to get back to me quickly if I say it’s urgent. Our newest member—she took out the man who used to hold the spot, and since then she’s been disbanding a lot of his more unsavory business as if she doesn’t agree with them. It seems like she has a more solid moral compass than most of my colleagues.”

Slade perked up, flicking his dark brown hair away from his eyes as he peered at me. “And she’d know how to track down Logan’s mom and Maddie?”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “But I’ve heard murmurs that her closest associates are highly skilled mercenaries, sotheyshould be the kind of people who know how to locate a target… It’s far from a guarantee, but I can’t think of anyone else to call on.”

I braced myself for them to hesitate or even berate me for suggesting this course of action—for wanting to draw another high-level criminal into our problems with unknown consequences. How much did they even trust my judgment about who we could rely on?

But in a matter of seconds, all three of the Vigil guys were nodding.

“We have to take every available option,” Dexter said.

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