Liv’s grip on his hand became crushing.
“He ordered her to drive to a nearby park,” Lawson continued, “where he spent the next two hours crying out his sob story in order to make Miss Wright understand why she shouldn’t ignore her fans. Or some stupid shit like that.” Phone still at his ear, Lawson seemed to be speaking and listening at the same time. “Anyway, Miss Wright is shaken up, but safe and with her family. Jackson is in custody.”
“Reason five million and one why not to be on social media,” Ash said, shaking his head.
Liv dropped Zeke’s hand and stood. “What about Callie?”
Lawson’s harsh expression softened, though he said nothing. He gave her the few seconds it would take to make the connection that everyone else in the room, whose sister wasn’t missing, already had.
If Jackson had been with Ivy for the past two hours, he couldn’t have kidnapped Callie.
As understanding dawned, Liv’s shoulders drooped and her body sagged back into her chair.
Lawson’s face hardened again. “We’ll find her.” Then the RSA left as abruptly as he’d entered.
“Got any coffee or tea in this fancy office?” Zeke asked his brother with a slight nod toward the door.
Without a word, his brother pushed his chair back and rose. “I’ll make a fresh pot and check on the team’s progress.”
Once they were alone, Zeke turned to her fully and did his best to massage warmth back into her hands. “We’ll find her,” he reiterated.
She swallowed several times before words emerged. “I can’t stop thinking about the terrified look on Callie’s face.”
Nor could he. Silver tape had covered her mouth and encircled her head, black mascara ringed her eyes, snot dripped from her nose, and strands of brown hair hung in frazzled disarray around her red-blotched face.
What drew his attention more than all of that was her eyes. They held something more than terror.
Something like—
“About what her kidnapper might be doing to her right now,” Liv continued, interrupting his thoughts. “While I’m sitting here doing nothing.”
“You’ve done everything you can for the moment. But I think you should tell Lawson about O’Fallon and Rogers. They might be a long shot, but they’re leads the agency can follow up on, and we can take them off the table if they prove fruitless.”
She nodded, but her mind was firmly in sister country, not special agent. “Even if we get to her in time, if he—” She squeezed her eyes shut. “She might not recover from this. If only I had—”
“No.” He shook her hands until her eyes opened. Tears crowded in their corners. “This is not on you. You couldn’t have foreseen this. None of us could.”
“Something I did caused this, Zeke. Made my family a target.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” He gentled his voice. “But turning your back on someone in need—that’s not you. Your calling, your gift, is to help those in need, to right injustices. That’s who you are, that’s who you’ll always be.”
One of the many reasons why I love you.
“But at what cost to my family?”
He cradled the side of her face. “We will get through this, Liv. No matter what happens. We will get through this together.”
She burrowed her face into the crook of his shoulder and inhaled, as if his scent bolstered her strength. Rocking her gently, he rubbed his palm in large circles over her back.
In the quiet moment that followed, Zeke thought again about the kidnapper’s picture of Callie, about the young woman’s eyes, and that something else besides terror lurked along their edges.
His heart thunked against his chest once, twice, three times before the answer finally surfaced.
Fury.