“Fuck! Fucking hell!” he shouts, honking at a delivery van parked on the wrong side of the road.
There’s no time to think; it’s time to act. I dial Lukas, and he picks up after two rings.
“Lukas, can you come to Beast’s place immediately?”
“All fine?” he asks, but I can already hear him moving.
“We found out who hurt Beast’s wife and Rose.” I give him a short rundown of all the craziness I learned this morning. It felt like I was watching a movie when Sophia recited what led to her taking such drastic steps.
Roxanne. I can’t fucking believe it!
“I’ll be there.” Lukas’s response is clipped before he ends the call.
Zach eyes me, pulling his gaze away from the road for a moment.
“What?”
“Why Lukas?”
“Because we don’t know what we’re walking into. Roxanne hired someone to kidnap Sophia right under Beast’s nose. Someone is fucking sick to torture a baby with a hot hook. I’m not walking in blind here.” I run a hand through my hair as my mind jumps from Beast, to Rose, to Sophia.
* * *
We park outside Beast’s driveway, where Lukas is already waiting for us. When we reach the doorstep, the main door is wide open, and everything in the house is in total disarray. Beast has fucking ransacked the place.
“Beast!” I shout, but there’s no answer. “Ash?” I try again. When I try to enter the kitchen, Lukas steps in with his gun drawn.
“Is that necessary?” I grimace.
“This is why you called me, Zander.”
We follow Lukas into the kitchen, and it’s empty. But the door that opens to the backyard is wide open. We find Beast in the greenhouse, causing havoc as he goes, emptying the plant pots as if they hold answers to his numerous questions.
“Ash!” Lukas shouts, grabbing his attention.
“She’s not here.” Beast’s body shakes with anger. His wild gaze jumps around, scanning through his surroundings.
“Where could she go?” Lukas asks.
“I don’t know. She never leaves the house except for groceries, but now her room is empty. She fucking left. I cannot let that woman slip away, Lukas. She has to pay for what she did to my family.”
“Calm down, Ash. We’ll find her. Tell me when you last saw her.”
Beast pinches the bridge of his nose and releases a deep breath, taking a minute to straighten his thoughts. “This morning. I told her that Zander had asked me to visit him in Cherrywood.”
“That’s good. It hasn’t been long. She couldn’t have gone far.” Lukas squeezes Beast’s shoulder once before dialing someone. “I need you to locate Roxanne, Ashcroft Miller’s housekeeper. She has our tracker on her phone.”
A muffled voice sounds from Lukas’s speaker, but I can’t make out the exact words.
“She might have trashed it. Hold on,” Lukas says to the person on the other side before turning his attention to Beast. “Doesn’t she have some property on the outskirts of town?”
Beast scratches his chin, his gaze confused, before he replies slowly. “It’s her brother’s, I think.”
“Give me the current location of the phone and look for the property owned by her brother.”
Once the call ends, we walk back to the front of the house. Lukas and I jump into his Jeep, and Beast and Zach follow us.
I recognize the area as Lukas slows his Jeep close to my dad’s property.