Page 2 of In My Heart
A video started to play, and instantly it was clear what we were seeing. My blood ran cold as my heartbeat thudded through my whole body.
“That’s not her!” Rafe snapped. “I can’t see her face. It’s not her!”
“It’s her, Rafe.” I had to force the words through my too tight throat. “Her leg…I’ve seen those scars before,” I added.
I think I had noticed everything about Cara in the time she had lived with us. I knew how she liked her coffee, that she liked bright, colourful socks, that she liked smaller, safe spaces when she was scared, and that she only ever really laughed, with her whole body, when she felt truly safe. I had seen the scars on her too, two on her face, one just below her left ear, which was newer than the others, and one on her forehead, just below her hairline on the right side. The one on her leg, made up of two jaggedlooking lines, I had noticed when she was in the gym the other week in short leggings. It was old and faded, but still noticeable.
And I saw it now, her bare leg laid on a concrete floor as some fucker lay over her, raping her. He was huge, with dark hair and a tattoo on his right forearm that I could clearly see and would never forget until the day I had gutted the bastard for what he was doing.
Cara’s body was bruised and bloodied, her arms held tautly at her sides with her fists clenched so tightly I could see how white her knuckles were. She was shaking, but she wasn’t making a sound, and her head was turned to the side, away from us.
“Who sent this?!” Rafe snapped as he ripped the phone from my hand and cut off the video to investigate the number. “We have to find her now, damn it! Call whoever you have to! I want to know where that message came from!”
Rafe slammed his phone down in the cup holder again and started the car, swinging it around violently until we were racing back the way we came, the teams behind us scrambling to catch up.
I hit the number for a hacker we had occasionally worked with and listened as it rang.
“Where are you going?” I asked Rafe.
“This is either the Russians or Adamian. I’m going to find them and kill them one by one, until someone tells me what I want to know!” he spat.
When my call rang out, I called again. Usually, Dante and Arran dealt with our hacking and computer crap, but since we had no idea where either of them were, we needed help.
“Get a hold of Killian. See if any of Adamian’s men are at his strip club again tonight.” Rafe demanded, so I ended the call and tried Killian instead.
The call had just started to connect, when Rafe’s ringtone rang out loudly in the car. Instantly I ended my call and grabbed Rafe’s phone.
“Who is it?” Rafe snapped.
I shrugged as I glanced at the number, then answered the call.
“Boss?” The word was gasped and breathless.
“It’s Dario. Who is this?”
“Brax. I…I managed to follow one of the c-cars,” he gasped.
I switched the call to speaker so Rafe would hear too.
“It’s Brax,” I told him.
“Brax? Do you know where Cara is?” Rafe asked urgently.
“Yeah…fuck. I…I followed the last car that left the airfield. They m-must have thought I was dead. I…I’m outside the city, in an industrial area. They took Arran, Callan, and your sister inside about an hour ago.”
“An hour ago? Why are you only calling me now!” Rafe raged.
“I…I got shot. Lost consciousness, then I had to get a phone from one of their cars. Sorry boss,” he breathed, his words barely audible.
“Can you drop a pin and send it to us?” I asked anxiously. We needed to get his location before he passed out, which he sounded on the brink of.
“Yeah. The building…it looks empty. Two men guarding front and back doors. I counted five go inside, but I….like I said, I passed out. Could be more,” he panted. “I n-need back up.”
“Just hold tight,” Rafe told him, after his phone pinged with the pin. “Cavalry is on the way. The Doc will meet us there too.”
“Appreciate that, boss.” The call ended with those words and I feared it would be too late for Brax by the time we got help to him.
Judging from what we saw back at the airfield, we were facing some major losses that night, and they would hit us hard. The men who worked for us were loyal, and like family for the most part. It had been a long time since we lost anyone, let alone the number of guys that had been taken down that night.
