Page 51 of Summer's Edge

“What are you talking about?”

“Who was watching her?” I ask. “She’s not at her apartment. Someone was here, waiting for her. They took her.”

His shocked gasp and the silence that follows holds a million questions.

“I’ll be right there,” he says. “Trench was on her detail tonight.”

I call Trench as soon as Ice hangs up, but the call goes straight to an automated voicemail.

A couple of minutes later the sound of many bikes riding up to the building rents the night’s silence. It continues to echo as boots thud up the stairs.

Ice rushes in first and checks the apartment himself, calling for his daughter.

Cross stops in front of me, piercing me with his hard gaze. “What are you doing here?”

There’s suspicion in his tone bordering on accusation.

I look at Ice who’s standing by the kitchen table, also waiting for my answer.

“I fell in love with your daughter at the cabin,” I tell him. And almost add,I’m sorry, to the end of it.

But I’m not sorry. Not at all. So, I won’t say it. I’m just sorry I didn’t have the guts to tell her all this.

Ice doesn’t say anything, his face an immovable, unreadable mask.

My phone chimes from a text, the sound defining in the silence.

It’s just a bunch of letters strung together incoherently. But I think I can make outBroandMexamong them.

“It’s from Summer,” I say and hold up my phone.

“I think it’s the same assholes who tried to take her in Mexico,” I add while Ice is puzzling out the letters.

“We dumped those guys in the river before we crossed the border. They couldn’t’ve survived. They didn’t even know her name.”

“Seems they found out,” Cross says. “We gotta trace them. Now.”

“Already on it,” Hawk says as rushes over and places his laptop on the kitchen table. “But I’m just gonna trace her phone first. Good thing the idiots didn’t take it from her.”

The minutes while he does that drag by slower than decades.

“Got it,” Hawk finally announces. “It was on the move a moment ago, but now it’s just sitting there in the middle of the woods. Here…”

He turns the screen so we can see it on the map. And he’s right, the yellow dot that is her phone’s signal is just flashing alone amid a sea of green.

“They must’ve taken her phone and tossed it,” Hawk says. “Sorry.”

“I’m going there to check,” I say already heading to the door.

“Wait, Edge, we gotta be smart about this,” Ice says but there’s nothing in the world smarter than going after Summer and saving her. And nothing he can say that will stop me.

“I’m going,” I say and exit the apartment then run down the stairs to my bike.

Ice is right behind me when I reach it.

“You can’t talk me out of it,” I tell him.

“And I won’t try,” he says and mounts his bike. “Let’s go.”

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