Page 60 of Saved from Obsession

“No.” Panic swells in my chest, compressing my lungs. “I’ve used them dozens of times. If one stopped working, I’d get a notification. If it was tampered with, I’d get an alert. It’s still working.”

“Okay, let’s go through here again.” Rylan gestures toward the back of the store. “We’ll start in the storage area and look for signs of any kind of disturbance.”

We file back to the rear of the store, all still with our tranq guns out and ready. With each step my chest gets tighter and my brain is more certain that things are about to get so much worse. As we enter the storage room, we split in three directions, scanning every inch of the floor and walls.

“Leo.“ Cole is in the far right corner, staring down at one of the cardboard boxes. His features are rigid, his jaw working. There’s an odd note to his voice. “Are these Georgia’s?”

I don’t want to look, but I have to. So I walk over to him, each step like walking through quicksand. And I look in the box.

It’s a punch to my gut. A hammer slamming into me. My lungs expel all the air in them, and I’m gasping for breath. Georgia’s clothes—I’m sure of it, I saw her put them on this morning—are in a pile inside the box.

He took off her clothes. If I find him,whenI find him, I willkillhim. Sinking to my knees, I pull her clothes out, my hands shaking with anger.

Then I see the earrings on the floor, neatly set together, the silver glinting under the fluorescent light.

“NO!” The word tears out of me. I snatch up the earrings, holding them so tightly they cut into my palm.

“NO,” I roar, slamming my fist against the wall. A maelstrom of emotions swirl around me. Rage. Despair. Guilt. Agony. “Where is she?”

No! NO! This can’t be happening.How can I find her? Rational thought is gone and all my control is slipping away from me. I can’t think about anything other than my Georgia being taken. Being stripped naked. At the mercy of some psychopath and I failed heragain.

My fist is flying toward the wall again without thinking. But it’s stopped in its path and I spin to lash out at whoever is blocking me. Then arms are wrapped around me, hard and unyielding, dragging me against the wall and holding me there.

“Let mego,“ I growl. Anger and frustration are rampaging through me, too big to contain in my body.

“Leo,no.“ Cole’s dark gaze appears in front of me. “Thisisn’tgoing to help her. We need to make a plan, get on the computer, figure out who’s behind this. If we find a name, we can findGeorgia. You said we could do it.Youcan do it. But not like this.”

Rylan stands behind Cole, somber and pained. Cole stares at me, brow pulled down and jaw set. “I know, Leo. Iknow. But get it together. She needs you.”

I stare back at him, balanced on a precipice—let the rage overtake me or rein it in.

Shit. He’s right. Icanhelp find Georgia. But not if I let my emotions get the best of me.

Taking a deep breath, I gather all my rampaging feelings and jam them into a corner of my brain to deal with later. Then I pull out my phone and say, “We need to get back to B and A. Work on a plan. And I’m calling Beth and Tex. I need them on thisright now.”

* * *

“Dammit!”My hand thunks onto the conference table, rattling the coffee cups strewn all along it. “I still haven’t found anything. I’ve been checking all the security cameras around the liquor store, CCTV in the area, but it’s like a dead zone there. Half of the cameras are broken.”

“Beth has been scouring the satellite images.” Cole looks across the table at me. “She’s checking every identifiable vehicle within a mile radius of the store. There has to be something.”

“It’s been four hours since we got back here,” I grit out through clenched teeth. “We should have had his name already.”

“You found the URL,” Rylan reminds me, his gaze steady from across the room. “That’s the key. Tex will come through with a name soon.”

When I called Tex on the way back from Port Chester, he immediately agreed to help. Between myself, Beth, and Tex, weshouldbe able to locate Georgia, but as the hours tick by, I’m having a harder time believing it.

We had a good strategy when we started. First, we’d all run a program simultaneously to locate the URL on the dark web. Then, Tex would work on hacking the VPN and ISP companies, Beth would go through the satellite images, and I would check all the surveillance cameras near the liquor store—everything from traffic cameras, commercial security systems, even private Ring systems and smart doorbells.

It seemed like a sound plan, except we still haven’t found anything solid to go on. So I’m stuck here in the conference room at Blade and Arrow with Cole and Rylan, feeling useless and worried and desperate. Hacking into security cameras and finding nothing. And imagining Georgia scared, hurt, and hopeless.

How terrified must she have been when she was forced to take off those earrings? Knowing that it meant her lifeline was gone?

“I should have insisted she get an implant.” Dragging my hand down my face, I close my eyes for a second. “The jewelry is too unreliable. If she had an implant, I would have found her already.”

“Or it could have been cut out of her.” Rylan grimaces when he sees my face, his eyes going dark and apologetic. “I’m sorry, Leo. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Cole soothes, his voice low and placating. “What matters is finding the name of whoever took Georgia and bringing her home.”

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