is switched off too and it would serve my ass right for acting like a juvenile prick. I shut down my computer, grab my jacket and take one step to go to the door, but stop when my phone starts ringing.
Thinking it’s Lilly I retrieve it from my back pocket, but I narrow my eyes when I see it’s Vera calling me. She never calls me for anything.
“Hey Vera, everything okay?” I ask.
“No,” she cries, her voice is choked with sobs. “Christian I’m so sorry. I’ve looked everywhere but I can’t find Rosie.”
A tremor of shock bolts through me and everything in my body freezes.
“Vera, what do you mean? Tell me what happened,” I say trying to keep the panic from consuming me.
“We were in the park with the playgroup. She was playing with the kids. I took my off her for one minute then she was gone. My God. Oh Jesus. She’s gone. We’ve been looking for her for over two hours. I can’t find Rosie. Christian, I think someone took her. And Lilly isn’t answering her phone.”
That’s all I hear. Someone took her and the icy tendrils of something I never truly feel seeps into my soul. It’s fear.
Vera thinks someone took Rosie and Lilly’s not answering her phone.
In my world that can only mean exactly what it sounds like.
Trouble…
Trouble has knocked on the door.
My girl and my kid are in trouble.
“Tell us again what happened,” Vincent says.
Vera has been sitting in her chair sobbing for the last two hours. I rushed home to check the place out and everyone met me here.
Me, Vincent and Georgiou are in the living room with Vera trying to go over what happened. Salvatore is in the other room on the phone. Nick and Gabe are rallying the men to search. Gibbs is doing what he can.
So far all we’ve managed to find is Lilly’s phone in a dumpster by the subway in town. And Lilly’s abandoned car about a mile away from where the phone was found.
That’s all I was able to find out. Nothing more, just a confirmation of trouble.
I’m just not sure what kind yet.
We think Rosie was taken and it’s looking the same way for Lilly.
Lilly is the kind of woman who knows where her child is twenty four-seven. She wouldn’t just go anywhere without telling anyone and all the evidence points to something sinister.
“Maybe we missed something,” Vincent adds with a nod, cutting into my thoughts.
“Vincent, I told you everything,” Vera stutters, wiping away fresh tears with the heel of her hand. “We went to the park with the playgroup and the kids were playing. Rosie couldn’t have just wondered off. There were three of us watching the kids from the group. I just don’t know … I don’t know what happened, or how.”
Vincent sighs. I can see the worry rippling off him in waves. It’s a taste of what I feel. I glance at Georgiou who hasn’t said much since he got here. That means he feels bad for me. I’m looking at him and he’s giving me another secret message. This one though was one I saw one time only.
It was just before Amelia died. We were looking for her and he knew to prepare for the worse. My brother was the only person I confided in at the time because I needed him to help me find Amelia. The look he’s giving me now is the very same, telling me to prep for the worse and be careful. He looks away and I bite the inside of my lip.
“I’m so sorry, I blame myself,” Vera states focusing on me.
I force myself to calm the fuck down. I know she feels terrible. Vera looks like she’s added another hundred years to her sixty. Guilt has consumed her but I’m still enraged. I’m pissed. There were guards who would have been with her who didn’t see shit, and she didn’t see shit either.
Fuck. I’m fucking pissed at myself. When I got in and saw the guards I’m had to restrain myself from popping a fucking bullet in someone. The three guards looked on at me in fear knowing messing up like this could only mean death. I would have doled out death too but their saving grace was that the three of them had worked for me for years, and I might need them .
“We’ll keep looking,” I say to her. My voice sounds nothing like it usually does. I’m nothing close to the controlled man