Suddenly, an ominous ring had me looking towards the secure line on the large desk Yates worked behind. King, who had been staring at the clock silently, walked over to the phone and answered, throwing it on speaker. I had no idea if he even had the capability to talk right now, if we were being honest.
“What is going on?” Mr. Ross’s voice was so unlike normal that it took me a moment to recognize it.
“Someone took Dahlia.” King barely got the words out, staring at the phone as if it would fix shit.
Silence reigned through the line before Mr. Ross spoke. “What do you mean someone took her?”
Yeah, I was starting to remember how the Ross family could get and why they authentically scared me, which was a feat in its own right after everything I’d been through.
“He means that someone took her,” Sterling hissed, knowing that he was going to have to explain. “She was with Yates and Stratton. Someone knocked them out and took her. They managed to shut down our security system and cameras for two full minutes while dragging her out of here. She’s been gone for thirty-five minutes.”
“Who took her?” Mr. Aldridge’s voice came onto the line, causing me to wince as I fell further out of the daze. It was possible I had a concussion, especially with how I wanted to close my eyes and possibly throw up, but Jason Aldridge was objectively terrifying, so if anything was going to shock me out of it, it was that. Honestly though, if we didn’t find Dahlia, we deserved to die.
King’s tone was clipped. “If I knew, they would be dead.”
“Got into the system,” Yates announced.
“What system?”
Yates inhaled sharply. “I have a system back home that tracks Dahlia.”
Silence greeted the announcement as Lincoln murmured ‘thank fuck.’
“How?” Mr. Ross asked.
“Mr. Aldridge,” Yates spoke directly to him, “I’m going to ask that you don’t kill me until we find Dahlia.”
There was no joking in his tone, and silence met it, void of promises.
“After the security attack in Wildberry, I implanted a microchip GPS tracker under her skin.”
Well, fuck. I’d expected a lot of shit from Yates, but that…
Those things weren’t even available to the public. God only knew what strings he’d had to pull to get a hold of the thing.
Mr. Aldridge spoke immediately. “Find her. Now. We are getting on the jet.”
The call ended as I felt surprise at Mr. Aldridge’s reaction radiate through me. Although I shouldn’t have been surprised, because Yates’s crazy was nothing compared to the panic of locating Dahlia.
Yates grew more pissed as he looked over the screen. “Stupid bastards.”
“What?” Lincoln demanded.
“They took her to the warehouse downtown.”
King stormed from the room and I stood, managing to find my footing, feeling clearer by the moment, as Sterling offered me a frustrated look.
“I’m coming,” I insisted. “I can focus on at least getting her out of there.”
No one argued with that.
As we strode through the compound, I realized fairly quickly that almost the entire ‘family’ was here, and not the ones that you saw on the holidays. No, outside of the normal ‘security’ that the Rosses hired, who were essentially mercenaries, here in Ardara they had an entire militia of people who were part of this bullshit. All of it should have bothered me, but instead I got into the car with both Yates and Dermot, who appeared out of nowhere, the other three taking a second car as we began to speed off of the property. A motorcade of nearly ten cars followed behind us, no doubt planning to surround the building on all sides once we arrived.
“It’s been nearly forty minutes,” Dermot murmured, looking down at his watch. I would have expected him to be furious or angry, but instead he seemed almost clinical and calm. Much like Yates, I had a feeling that he felt more in his element handling this shit. I knew I felt more comfortable when I was fighting rather than trying to explain to my angel how I felt about her. Although, the second was far more rewarding.
“It takes seven minutes to get there,” Dermot added.
“Dahlia is fine,” Yates bit out, his eyes narrowing on the screen he held. “I can’t believe anything else or I’ll lose it.”