And then, there was nothing.
Chapter Fifteen
“Style is something that each of us already has. All we need to do is find it.”
—Diane Von Furstenberg
Mika’s digital trail on Carlos’s phone had ended on the edge of the Battle Ultimate borderlands, but she wasn’t there. He scanned the perimeter. Over the hill, there was a jogging path and a playground, but no Mika. Turning his back on the mundane part of the park, he surveyed the woods. Nothing. Not a flash of white or a glimmer of silver or a single trace of her.
Unease creeped up his spine and he checked his cell phone again. The single white dot blinked on the screen, the coordinates a few feet from where he stood. The camera had logged her in at this spot. After that, she’d disappeared.
Fear—true fear—jacked up his heart rate and twisted his guts into knots. He’d been so sure. So fucking confident that he could protect Mika from a distance—that he could keep her at arm’s length just like he had everyone and everything else since he’d shot Ivy. But he couldn’t. Love didn’t work that way—and he didn’t work without her.
Possibilities—each one worse than the one before—crowded his mind as he pulled up the log for the camera trained on this spot. There hadn’t been time to set up a recording option, so all he had was the documentation of the motion-activated facial recognition software.
It would be enough.
It had to be.
Mika showed up.
A few minutes later, it logged in another person. Josh Cloak. After that the log was blank. He wracked his brain, recalling everything he could remember about Josh. He was one of Mika’s royal guard. so it could have been a strategy meeting. The guy had been one of the first people in the group to be attacked by Roger, and his background check had been lily white. Maybe Mika had enlisted him to help? Josh had been injured, his ankle—
Carlos’s world jerked to a stop. The limp. The strange whispering like he was afraid of his voice being recognized. The scar. Carlos pulled up a close-up of Josh’s driver’s license photo. It was faint, but the scar at the base of his throat was there. Everything clicked into place. In the beginning, they’d figured it had been an inside job, but had abandoned the theory after drugs came into play. A stupid mistake. The last one he’d make on this case.
Fighting the instinctual urge to run through the park and track that bastard down like a rat on a sinking ship, Carlos entered the code in the facial recognition program to narrow down the search parameter. It would take a few minutes, but it would give Josh’s last known location—with any luck it wasn’t the spot where Carlos stood.
While the program ran, he dialed up Alex.
“Tell me you have eyes on her,” Alex answered.
“He’s got her.” He fought against the dread those words inspired. His feelings didn’t matter right now. Nothing mattered if he didn’t find Mika and fast.
“Fuck me running. What’s your twenty?”
“I’m at the eastern edge of the battlefield, but don’t come here.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Josh Cloak has her.” And he was going to pay for it. Soon.
“The doofus with the big-ass fake sword?”
“I sure as hell hope it’s fake.”
The asshole was toast. He just didn’t realize it yet. Carlos couldn’t wait to inform him. “I set up cameras around the park last night. I just reprogrammed the facial recognition software program I’m running to pinpoint his location.”
“What do you need from us?” Alex asked.
His smart watch buzzed. A green dot showed Josh’s last known location as about half a mile northwest. “Got him. I’m texting you the coordinates now. Get there as fast as you can.”
A plan gelling into place with each breath, he hung up on Alex and speed-dialed Ryan.
“Yo man, where are you?” Ryan asked. “Are you with Mika? No one can find her.”
He brought his former battle buddy up to speed as fast as possible and got to the point. “I need a distraction—an epic battle sort of distraction.”
“Then that’s just what you’ll get,” Ryan said.