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His eyes close briefly, and it hits me fast. I know this isn’t a man hearing bad news for the first time. This is a man who has been afraid of hearing it for years. He knows something. “I don’t know,” he says.

I take another step forward. “Don’t—” I’m going to kill him. “Don’t do that.”

His expression crumples and I fucking hate that. I hate that he looks like he’s about to cry. I hate that he’s wasting time. I hate that every second we’re standing here talking is another second she is somewhere else. Somewhere scared, somewhere hurt, somewhere waiting. He was never a good father to her. He fucking abused her for years.

Why is he sad all of a sudden? He doesn’t have the right to feel that way.

“Tell me where she is.”

His lower lip trembles as he looks away. And at that exact moment, my fear finally turns into anger. Real anger. Because she trusted him. Despite everything, she trusted him. And now she’s gone and he’s still fucking silent.

I grab the front of his shirt before I can stop myself, his back hits the wall, hard. “I am done being patient.” My voice breaks on the last word. “Where the fuck is your daughter?!”

He starts crying, and suddenly I’m terrified. Because people don’t cry like that unless something is already lost. Unless they’ve already accepted something terrible.

“I couldn’t stop him.” For a second I don’t understand what he’s saying. The words enter my ears but don’t connect to my brain. “I–I couldn’t stop him.”

I loosen my grip slightly. “What are you talking about?”

His entire face folds inward. Years of guilt written all over it. Years. “I tried.” His voice is shaking enough that I can barely hear him. “I tried to keep him away from Asma.”

A pulse of ice runs through my body. Him. The killer. He fucking knows the killer.

My mind immediately begins reaching backward, toward old conversations, toward nightmares and stories she told me in pieces because saying them all at once hurt too much.

The scars, the day she called me panicked to pick her up. The pain.

“No.” The word leaves my mouth automatically. I don’t even know who I’m arguing with. Him, myself, god. Everyone. “No.”

“He took the mother of my child.” Everything inside me stops, every thought, every breath, every heartbeat. For a second, the world disappears. “He took her,” her father says, his voice breaking. “And now he took my daughter. And I let him…”

All the pieces I’ve been refusing to connect suddenly lock into place. The missed calls. The empty car. Milo waiting. The fear that hit me the second that phone rang.

I know. I know. I know.

“Who?” I ask. He shakes his head and I grab him again harder this time. “Who?”

His eyes squeeze shut, as if saying the name hurts, as if he’s spent years avoiding it. Then finally, he says it. “Cole Bennett.”

And the moment I hear it, I let go.

Cole fucking Bennett. Ethan’s father.

The killer I spent years trying to find, the man who killed my second father. He has her. He’s the shadow. He’s the man who almost killed her once.

I walk back to the car and my hands go to my phone. It’s already by my ear when Kyle picks up.

“Boss.”

“Tell me every single address that’s linked to the Bennett’s.”

“Let me see,” he says and I hear fingers typing frantically on the keyboard. “There’s a house in Mireya’s neighborhood.”

No… He wouldn’t take her there.

“Anything else, Kyle?”

“Yes. Sorry I must’ve missed this before. He owns another property just outside the area. I’m sending the coordinates to your phone now.”