26
Tywin
Where are you, Patrena?
I didn’t believe in the supernatural, but in this case, I prayed that a sign, a voice, or a dream would manifest in my consciousness and show me where Patrena had been taken.Based on the ache in my heart and the burning need I had to destroy anyone who may have laid a hand on her, there was no longer any doubt about what she meant to me.
Patrena was a part of me now. An integral part that I needed in order to function properly. She was family, a loved one, my girlfriend, and my future. Without her, I could no longer breathe freely, my appetite no longer existed, and I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.
She was as important to me as my son, my father, and my cousins. I was losing my mind not knowing if she was hurt or injured. Images of her fighting an endless battle or worse, her being tortured for a past that I believe had been purposely hidden from her was constantly wreaking havoc on my mind.
Many times, I’d gotten lost inside my head and would come out of it snapping at the people who were working overtime to help find Patrena. Thankfully, no one held my attitude against me as we continued to put forth our collective efforts and input.
There were groups out scouring the city, searching in and around every place she had visited in the past few weeks. Where you’ve been often led to where you were going. Therefore, we went through the footage meticulously, studying every step she made. We investigated everyone she had talked to and come in contact with. We even digitally canvassed the areas surrounding her to see if she was being watched.
Our digital searches had eventually paid off when we had managed to track down the spot Patrena and the guards had been T-boned. A few eyewitnesses’ accounts and digital footage painted a scene of her last moments.
She’d had no chance of escape because three teams of men had swarmed her, taken her, and shoved her into the back of a stolen SUV. We tracked their movements for miles until they’d vanished. Every piece of equipment that would have given us clues to where they had gone was scrambled or the digital footage wiped.
The few times I had seen anything similar was during a failed government sting operation to gather evidence on my father, and each time my son touched down and departed Colorado.
It took major skills to make someone physically and digitally disappear. My instincts were pointing at the government or an underground organization large enough to contend with ours. How do you find someone hidden by a group that perfected the art of making someone disappear?
A wicked smile surfaced on my lips at the challenge. How do you keep someone hidden from a group who had perfected the art of solving mysteries?
Patrena
Had it been a day or an hour since my escape attempt? My eyes flipped open to stabbing bright emptiness before I made out white walls and clamped them shut again. Sound was no more than faint echoes and my focus zoomed in and out, unable to stay fixed.
“She’s coming around,” a familiar male voice sounded.
I took quick short breaths, summoning strength before I made a useless attempt to sit up. My arms and legs were snapped back into place several times before I gave up my quest to break free. The energy I had exerted already had me winded and beads of sweat had started to form on my forehead.
“She is definitely Parris’ daughter,” the taller man said, observing me like the science project they had turned me into.
When the door slid open and the second man strolled in and joined his team, my deep eye roll and the sigh of frustration I released wasn’t missed.
“How’s our little killer?” he asked with a wide and toothy grin, attempting to be funny, but no one laughed.
“Since being nice obviously isn’t working, we are going to try something a little different today,” the woman stated and her words confirmed that it was another day. The teasing smirk on her face hinted that play time was over. They were about to turn up the fire on their techniques.
“Since electricity seems to be the only thing to shut you up, I figure we’ll use it again today, just in a different way,” the woman announced and I could hear the joy in her voice at her suggestion.
Moments later, and after screaming my throat dry, I continued to twitch after going through their idea of a shock treatment. When I didn’t give them what they deemed viable information, another jolt seized me.
The sequence was repeated over and over again. At one point, my lack of cooperation caused them to turn up the volts to such a high level it caused me to pass out.
Because they didn’t want me dead, my little outage made them ditch that method and move on to something else—cutting.
“You can make this easy on yourself if you tell us what you know,” the man said.
“I don’t know anything. You said yourself that my mother didn’t want me to know anything for my own good.”
One of the men stepped out of the room, carefully glancing each way before he stepped into the hall and let the door close behind him.
“Do you remember a time that she took you to a doctor and he fixed something on you? Any minor surgeries, implants, anything you remember going to the doctor for?” the woman queried.
I gritted my teeth, bearing them at the bitch, praying I had the strength to break loose and bite her. “The answer was no the last five hundred times you asked me. Nothing was done to me. I’m not implanted with a billion dollars’ worth of information. Maybe it’s in her old office at the agency she used to work or a safe deposit box. I don’t know.”