14 Weeks (Investigators Book 2), page 11
Cassie.
My poor, poor Cassie.
Every little bit of food I had finally gotten into my stomach churned and sloshed around ominously, threatening to lurch upward and make me sick all over the pavement.
"Hi," she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.
"Tell Kenzi and her friends what I told you to tell them. Be a good girl, or you get the punishment again."
Whatever 'the punishment' was must have been awful because her entire face twisted, everything in her recoiled.
Poor Cassie.
She visibly swallowed before taking a breath, looking right at the camera and seeming to recite something, like she had been forced to learn it and repeat it over and over before she was deemed ready to say it to the camera.
"If you want to see me again, you need to deposit seventy-five thousand dollars of Bitcoin into the account listed in the email. If you don't." She swallowed hard again. "If you don't do this by midnight two days from now, I will be disposed of." That was obviously the end of the video, but my strong-spirited Cassie wasn't done. She rushed on, voice so steeped in desperation that it actually made tears sting my eyes. "Kenzi, please, please, you don't know what he..."
The rest of her sentence was cut off because a black-clad midsection of a man moved forward, blocking her image from the camera.
The last thing the video had to offer was the high, loud, dragged out scream from Cassie.
"Got that?" Tig asked, voice clipped, obviously speaking to Barrett. As for me, I was hearing him as through from the other end of a very long tunnel, everything suddenly far away and muffled as I stared down at the phone that Tig removed from my numb fingers. He took screenshots of the video URL and then the information about the Bitcoin account. "I know Bitcoin is locked the fuck down tight, but figure this the fuck out."
That was all he said, ending the call, tucking both the phones away, then turning his full attention to me.
Now, I definitely liked having his full attention, but at that moment, all I could focus on was her broken face, her desperate pleas, her scream.
His hands moved out, framing my face and forcing it upward, looking to gauge my reaction, it seemed. When he saw the tears clouding my vision, there wasn't any hesitation. His arms left my face and wrapped around me, hauling me into his chest, and wrapping me up tight.
Crushed, completely and utterly just shattered, I sank into him and trusted him to try to hold me together.
"Let it out," he murmured against my hair where the side of his face was resting.
My lips had been pressed together, trying to keep any sounds inside as I kept my eyes shut so hard they hurt to keep the tears from streaming.
But the second I was given permission not to have to be so strong, I did as he said; I let it out.
I had no idea how long we stayed there. Tig's phone went off half a dozen times, all of them ignored, as his hands just continued to hold me, stroke up my spine, as he whispered words of comfort in my ear. As for me, I just... purged it all. There was an almost scary helplessness about the way the tears wouldn't stop; the sobs wouldn't quiet; my body completely convulsing with the power with which they came out of me.
It could have been minutes or hours.
By the time I completely tapped out the deep well inside, my feet were hurting, my face felt sore from the saltwater, and I knew my nose was puffy and red and that I looked a complete and utter mess.
Feeling the change, one of his arms stayed around my lower back as an anchor, but allowed enough room for me to move backward. As soon as I did so, his other hand reached up toward my cheeks, swiping away the traces of tears and likely a goodly amount of eye-makeup as well.
"I know that was hard, honey," he said, voice a low rumble, a secret between the two of us even though there was no one else around. "But I need you to look at this how me and everyone else involved is looking at this. Contact is good. Proof of life is good. It is easy to focus on the bruises and cuts and how she begged for help. That's normal. But you need to move past that. The video came from somewhere. It was filmed somewhere. It was uploaded somewhere. There will be traces somewhere- email addresses lead to IP addresses. If that doesn't work, the account on Bitcoin, while really hard to get into, is not impossible. Bitcoin connects to Paypal which turns it into actual money. And to have a Paypal, you need to have a bank account. Nothing done online is completely anonymous. That was horrible. That sucked. But it is the first solid lead we have had in a week. Now you got that shit out, it is time to focus. Yeah?"
Okay.
I know my friend who was kidnapped and tortured had just begged me for help, and that was supposed to be the only thing I could focus on.
And there was a lot of that fogging my brain.
But one other thing was getting through.
Tig might genuinely have been the most impressive man I had ever met.
Because he reacted in multiple ways at once. He jumped into action and got Barrett on the case. But once he had that handled, he put all distractions away and reached for me and held me and reassured me. Once he finished with that, he gave me a firm reality check, knowing I could handle it. While I was human and had moments where I needed to be able to emote, to break down, I wasn't the type of woman who needed to be handled with kid gloves. I liked that he simply got that about me. I liked how he gave me what I needed, be it comfort or a slap upside the head.
That really said something about a man, that he understood you. Especially so early on.
So I took a breath so deep that my lungs burned; I pushed my shoulders back, and lifted my chin. Then I nodded. "I'll drive. You have calls to answer," I reasoned.
He surprised me when he didn't do the typical 'your ass in my ride, I'm driving' macho bullshit I maybe had been expecting. He simply reached into his pocket, produced the keys, and pressed them into my hand.
"Let's move," he said, moving toward the car, stopping to open the door for me before getting in the passenger side. He immediately brought his phone up and called back whoever had called him as I struggled to readjust the seat in his car so a mortal-sized person could both simultaneously reach the pedals and see over the steering column. "Barrett's," he told me as I reversed out.
And while I had never actually been there, I knew Barrett had set up shop almost directly across from the police station, so that was where I went.
When we pulled up, Tig jumped out as I cut the engine. My door opened before I could even reach for it.
"Got those stilts on," he said when he reached up toward me, and I raised a brow in question. "Let me help you down."
Then he did, and in we walked.
Barrett's office was a lot like the man himself- a bit haphazard, messy, all over the place. He hadn't exactly gone all out with his decor. There was a desk with two chairs and a cabinet that ran all along one wall covered in mostly stacks of paper, some of them old enough to have browning edges. The walls had boards covered in more paper in some other language I wouldn't even pretend to know the origins of. There were no fewer than seven, yes, seven, coffee cups stacked all over his desk, some almost tipping over.
Sawyer and Barrett were different in almost all ways. Where Sawyer had always been a bit of a shit-starter, but otherwise calm, organized, intimidating, action-oriented, and fearsome, Barrett had always been quiet, studious, more into computers than people, never seeming to put any effort at all into forging friendships, and showing no signs of any visible aggressive tendencies.
Sawyer went off into the military, and none of us ever real saw Barrett anymore once he finished school. I had no idea what he did from the time his brother left until he showed back up, and hired him to work in his office. But Barrett, being a bit particular and difficult to work with, had chafed against Sawyer's rule to eventually strike out on his own.
But, apparently, that didn't stop Sawyer Investigations from using him on a contract-basis because of his very specific set of skills.
It was a small space, made more minuscule still by the people inside of it. Sawyer and Brock were on either side of Barrett at his desk. A small, slight, dark-haired, tattoo-covered woman was sitting on the floor next to two energy drinks with a laptop on her outstretched legs. Directly beside her was none other than Alex.
Alex I knew because her man was Breaker, a huge guy with blond hair and a long blond beard who was fiercely alpha in all the best ways, who was best friends with Paine. Alex was a bit blunt, sarcastic, hilarious, and a deplorable cook.
She had become like extended family to me thanks to the fact that Breaker and Shooter were close with Paine since forever and, therefore, always invited to dinner at my mom's. When they eventually settled down with their women, the women came too. Breaker brought Alex. Shooter brought Amelia. One big, happy family of ex-gangbangers, hackers, snipers, and contract muscle.
What a strange life I led.
It became easy, at times, to forget all that.
There was another guy, sitting in one of the guest chairs with his own laptop and what could only be called a Big Gulp of coffee that I didn't know but he was somewhat young, dark-haired, and attractive but with an almost intimidating aura of intelligence around him.
Tig pretty much had to press me into the spare chair as he moved to stand with his business partners, all of them watching the screen as Barrett worked.
No one said a word.
Not a single word.
The only sound in the room was the tapping of keyboards from four individual sources.
As such, my mind had absolutely nothing to do but race.
Seventy-five thousand.
It was such a specific bit of money.
I had it. Sort of.
When we started, Cassie and I both decided the smartest way to go about it was to pay us each a set salary and set aside any overhead for rainy days, for slow months, for any just in case situation. So even though my business kept growing, my salary had almost been static, just a couple cent raises here and there. Truly modest by any account. But my business nest egg was healthy. I had managed to clear almost one-hundred thousand.
Actually, it was enough of a reassurance that I had finally decided that it was time for Cass and me to get a healthy raise from that point on. Three more an hour. It didn't sound like a whole hell of a lot, but it added up since we worked so much.
There was no second thought about it. I would give him every cent of the money I had to my name if he demanded it. I would sell my designer shoes and handbags and my damn car if he wanted more.
But I would be lying if I said the ramifications didn't cross my mind for a short while as I sat there with nothing to do but think.
A thirty-thousand surplus put me back where I had been my first year after opening. It would mean another lean couple of years, more nickel-and-diming fabric suppliers and the cable company.
But none of that mattered.
Because I could have Cass back.
My heart constricted as my stomach lurched again, the image of her flashing across my brain.
"If you're gonna puke," the guy next to me said, interrupting my focus, "give me a two-second warning, so I don't get vomit on my shoes."
"Real fucking sensitive, L," the dark-haired woman called, but didn't sound all that chastening.
"There's a bathroom," Barrett chimed in, he and the L guy seeming to have the same manners, meaning none at all.
That being said, a bathroom meant a little privacy, a chance to literally and figuratively pull myself together. I rose slowly, and walked across the floor to the bathroom, finding it cleaner than I expected, and closing myself in.
I took a slow, deep breath and moved in front of the mirror, taking in the view. It wasn't pretty. I wasn't expecting it to be. Considering what I had seen, it sure as shit shouldn't have been pretty. I ran the water and wet a bunch of tissues, wiping as much of the mess as I could without proper tools, finding a sort of soothing in the familiar actions.
I didn't immediately go back out, deciding I was useless out there and that their frenzied work was only going to make me feel all the more inept.
It was the sound of raised voices that eventually did pull me out- voices that seemed agitated and bored in equal terms, depending on who was speaking.
I walked out to find not only the people who had been there when I left, but also two detectives. One was Lloyd who I knew; the other was unknown to me. He looked maybe a few years older than Lloyd, and unlike him, his suit was not only cheap but fit like it was bought for a man a size and a half bigger than him, hanging like a boy in hand-me-downs at church.
"Is that my phone?" I heard myself accuse when I saw the familiar golden case in Lloyd's fellow detective's hands.
"It's evidence, Miss Washington," Lloyd said, giving me what I felt was an apologetic shrug.
"Seeing as your cohorts here," the other detective said, pure malice spitting from his tongue as he waved my cell phone around carelessly, "already wasted valuable time not telling us about the call when we were right across the street, we need to play catch-up now. And for that, we need your phone."
My gaze immediately sought Tig's, looking for and finding the answers I hadn't actually asked. There was nothing we could do.
"Don't mind him," Alex cut into the tense silence, looking up at me from her glowing laptop. "Detective Jones here is all surly because his wife cheated with his old poker buddy and ran off with him. Took his dog too. It was practically country song worthy."
And that was Alex for you. I felt my lips twitch and pressed them hard together to keep myself from making the situation any worse.
"Oh, and he is into domme porn with an emphasis on male butt plugs. In case anyone was wondering."
Really, there was no way any of us had the strength to hold it in. The roar of laughter in the small space was almost deafening. And because I was looking in that direction, I noticed Lloyd having to turn away to hide the smirk that made his severe face seem much less so.
"I could have you locked up!" Detective Jones sputtered, face almost purple it was so red.
"For what? Knowing shit? Try to find some fucking proof I did anything... felonious and then we can talk about your wounded pride."
"Alright, alright," Lloyd said when Jones went to open his mouth again. Really, someone needed to check his blood pressure; he looked as though he was about to pass out. "Let's get under control here. Miss Washington, I know this is inconvenient. If there is anything... delicate that you would like to..." he trailed off for a second, giving me a knowing look, "delete, we can work that out."
Delicate.
Like nudes or some incriminating texts.
I wiped my texts every week and it was always bullshit anyway.
And I had never taken a nude in my life.
In my personal opinion, sexting and cybering and all that other crap were sterile and impersonal. Real sex was anything but and it was screwing an entire generation to not make that distinction clear.
"There's nothing on there that I would be embarrassed for my mother to find, so I think they should be fine for your virgin eyes, Detective."
He gave me a look, one that wasn't perfectly clear since I didn't know him, but it seemed to say he appreciated my attitude. Who didn't like that in a man? One who didn't get intimidated by a strong woman since his identity wasn't wrapped up in oppressing them. Sexy. He was going to make a badass woman very happy some day. And while he and I were wrapped up on other sides of the law with him being a cop, and me having a bunch of less-than-legal associates and family members, that didn't mean I couldn't respect him.
"Alright. This is probably too much to ask, but if you all have something..." he trailed off, jerking his head to the door as his partner yanked at his tie. "Keep that head up, Kenzi," he added as he was half-out the door. "You are going to get her back."
With that, he was gone.
And it struck me as odd... that wording.
Not we will get her back, but you will get her back.
It almost implied he understood that there was a good chance my ragtag team of various experts had just as good, or better, a chance of bringing her back, and that he didn't particularly care either way so long as an innocent, tortured woman was found safe and sound.
"Okay, here's the situation," Sawyer said, turning fully to me, all business. "Barrett, Alex, and Jstorm," he said, motioning to the small woman with black hair and tattoos, "are on the Bitcoin and IP angle. It is not something that will have answers immediately. I don't understand that shit at all, but it's complicated, and they will likely be working for the next twenty-four hours straight on it. Wait," he said, holding up a hand when I opened my mouth to object to that timeline. "We have two days. I know you don't want to hear that and believe me, none of us likes this either, but the fact of the matter is, we need to stop thinking about what might be happening to her and focus on finding this fuckwad. I think we can all agree that just getting Cassie back isn't good enough at this point. He needs to pay for this."
Maybe it was vengeful of me, cruel, inhuman, but I wanted that. I wanted him choking on his own blood. I wanted him skinned. I wanted him roasted over a mother fucking spit.
"Right," I agreed with a firm nod.
He gave me one back, both of us agreeing to the eventual and inevitable outcome. "So, we are going to take this twenty-four hours and see what we can find, see if we can locate him before you drain your goddamn savings."
"How did you..." I started, to which he gave me a brow raise.
"Babe..." he said, shaking his head.
"Right," I agreed, looking around. And it struck me right that moment that literally everyone in that room not only knew how much money I made, how much I saved, how much I spent on shoes and chocolate milk shakes on my shark week every month when I was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster and did shit like that, a pattern I knew they would have all picked up on and knew for what it was, but they also knew the names of every man I had slept with and kissed. Hell, they likely even knew that I got my Pill refilled at the pharmacy one town over because the pharmacist in Navesink Bank was a friend of my mother's and when I was young, that felt weird to pick them up there. They knew more about me than I probably ever told anyone, least of all in such a short period of time.
