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“For her,” I agree. “But I can still do this for a bit. Are you having fun with the girls?”
“Yeah. Sabrina blows bubbles and drools a lot.”
I grin at him, even though my stomach is sick with worry. “Babies do that. I’m back with the guys doing some work, but if you need me just send Mildred to get me.”
“Yeah.” He frowns. “I want to talk to Mommy.”
Mommy. I’ve noticed he calls her that when he’s sick or worried. Yeah, my boy sees everything.
“Me too,” I reply honestly and hear one of the girls sniff, but I don’t look away from Charlie’s eyes. “We’ll see her later. She’s doing something important right now.”
“Okay,” he whispers.
“I love you, buddy.”
Charlie nods. “I love you too. All the way to the moon.”
Christ. “And back,” I whisper because fuck me if my emotions aren’t raging and he should be saying that to his mom right now the way he always does.
“Charlie, would you please come stir this for me?” Mildred asks, giving Charlie something to do, so I set him down, and he walks over to the stove.
I turn to leave, but Lulu puts her hand on my arm, stopping me.
I lift an eyebrow. “Yes, little bartender?”
“We love you,” she says quietly. “And Rina. She’s going to be great. Don’t worry about Charlie. We’ve got him.”
I swallow hard because there’s nothing else to do, then nod and march away to the back of the house, where my brothers and their number twos are working.
Julian hangs up the phone and immediately begins typing into his laptop.
Since Rina was taken, it’s as though no one ever touched our interface or phones. Everything is normal.
And I fucking hate it.
Maybe not as much as Julian, who’s still trying to find the source.
“Motherfucking weasel,” he mutters.
“I swear to Christ and everything we all care about, if we don’t get eyes on Rina in the next two minutes—”
“Got her,” Julian says, and I race around to look over his shoulder. “I finally tapped into the cameras. It wouldn’t normally take that long, but the fuckers put up blocks, likely to buy time. I’m putting this up on that screen.”
He points to the TV mounted on the wall, and we all move over to stand and watch. I cross my arms over my chest and watch as the screen comes to life. It’s in slow motion. My SUV is just pulling through the intersection when a big black truck runs the red light and slams into the right side of the SUV, sending it spinning. Then, a red truck comes from the other direction and hits my vehicle hard, making it roll onto its roof, and my stomach rolls with it.
My wife is in there.
MY FUCKING WIFE IS IN THERE.
Everything goes quiet for a second, but I see people running on the sidewalk, a few people trying to call for help, then a man steps out of the red truck, walks to the back of my SUV, and breaks the glass of the window. He reaches in, and there she is.
Rina.
Kicking and screaming and snarling.
Good girl.
If she’s hurt, it’s not bad enough that she was unconscious or unable to fight back, which is encouraging.