“Don’t keep me out. It won’t end well for either of us, and it’s definitely not good for you.” I step forward, lacing our hands together, staring down at her. “There’s a time to be strong and brave, and there’s a time to be weak and vulnerable. What are you fighting, sweetheart?”
She shuts her eyes for only a few seconds but when she reopens them, after those seconds when I lose sight of her, a hefty dose of pain fills their depths. “I can’t help but wonder if Evan’s dead, regardless of what Alex and Ryder say. What if all of this is pointless, because in the end, all we’re doing is chasing a ghost.”
“I get why you’re worried about that, I do.” I cup her face, wishing with a snap of my fingers I could make this all better for her. “Evan has gotten himself into quite the bind, but here’s the thing, the men who took him weren’t careful.”
“What do you mean?”
I take her hand, leading her to the couch. Once she sits next to me, I add, “The truth is, and I know you’re not going to want to hear this, but if they had planned on killing him, they would have been less sloppy.”
She draws in a deep breath and exhales it before addressing me. “Alex said the same thing. She thought they seemed like professionals, and she said that if they wanted him dead they would have handled it better.”
I agree with a nod. “Exactly, they roughed him up, but only to a degree.” I pause, collecting my thoughts, wanting to say the right thing and not further upset her. “The manner in which they handled all this makes me believe that their intention was never to hurt your brother seriously, it was to send a message.”
“A message to whom?”
“Maybe to him,” I offer. “Perhaps our theory about him owing money is true, and they want that debt paid. So, they’ve beaten him enough to scare him into taking all this seriously. Perhaps they think a death threat will make him pay up.”
“All right,” she said after pondering that thought. “Maybe that’s true, but then where is he now?”
“The obvious assumption is that he doesn’t have the money to pay them.”
She frowns, tucks her legs underneath her, then shakes her head. “But then what will happen to him?”
“I wish I had the answer for you.” To reassure her, I quickly add, “Though I can only assume that if he doesn’t have the money, and if these people really are loan sharks, they’ll put him to work to pay off his debt.”
“So, is that what you think is going on then?” she asks, a spark of hope in her eyes. “That maybe they have him somewhere, and he’s working off his debt?”
I half-shrug. “It’s simply a guess. At this point, I’m afraid that’s all we can do. We need to find out what this is all about and why, and until we know who those men are, or Evan goes home, that won’t happen.”
“I never even thought of that, we should—”
I stop her as she rises. “Ryder has tapped into the video camera that’s across the street from Evan’s apartment. If Evan goes home, Ryder will know.”
She draws in a big deep breath, and when she’s settled back into her seat, I add, “To further reassure you, what I know is that without a doubt if they had intended to kill him then they wouldn’t have handled it in the way they did.”
“Unless they aren’t professionals, and Alex is wrong.”
I smile at her. “Alex works for Ryder and she is never wrong.”
“Ever?”
“Never.”
“You trust her wholeheartedly?”
“With my life.”
McKenna gives me a sweet smile. “Well, then, that’s good enough for me.”
I rise and kiss her forehead then move to the door, picking up her bag. When I don’t sense her following, I glance over my shoulder, and soft eyes greet me.
“I want to hate Evan for all this, you know,” she says, voice rough with emotion. “For all the stress and all the worry, and I want to hate him for all the things he did to you and your friends. I want to hate him for using the people in my life for financial gain, and yet . . .”
“He’s family,” I finish.
Her chin quivers. “He’s my brother.”
I drop her bag and move to her, wrapping her in my arms, holding her tight, protecting her from her thoughts. “We’ll find him, McKenna. I’m not giving up. If you trust in anything right now, trust in that.”