Give Me War - Kate McCarthy Page 0,17
together. “Speed it up.”
Mitch speeds the video back up, slowing it down again when Casey and Evie appear in the parking lot again. Just like Casey says, he leaves before she does. Evie goes to her car. Unlocking it, she reaches inside and comes out with her phone pressed to her ear.
Four sets of eyes are peeled to the screen as we watch her talk for a minute before two bikes rumble in right beside her, one man on the bike closest, two on the other. “There they are. Can we zoom in?”
Mitch hits pause and zooms in.
“Sonofabitch,” Coby breathes in horror.
“I was right,” Kelly says, arms folded, eyes flat as he stares at the screen, looking unhappy as fuck that he was right. “It’s the Black Vipers.”
My hands white-knuckle the empty office chair next to Mitch as the small seed of hope inside me, the one that was begging for Kelly to be wrong, shrivels up and dies. “Fuck,” I mutter. Then I roar the word, flinging the chair across the room in a fit of rage. It hits the wall hard, scratching through paint and denting plasterboard. “Fuck!”
“Hey!” the arts business owner cries, appearing around the corner at the noise.
Mitch glares at me. I roll my shoulders, offering an apology before righting the chair. “I’ll pay for damages, okay?”
The man simply shakes his head and leaves us to it.
“Hold it together,” Mitch orders as if it’s just that easy.
He hits play again and we watch the scene unfold, the man closest to Evie climbing from his bike. They start talking. Evie appears to be arguing with him. My brows draw together and I bend down, leaning closer to the screen. It’s as if she knows him. I look at the man but the angle and the pixels make it hard. He turns his head briefly, looking to his biker brethren. “Pause it there.”
Mitch halts the footage and zooms in on his face, then he frowns. I inspect the biker, rage a hot twisted mass in my gut as I take in the features of the person who abducted my wife. Tall, dark hair, muscular but lean, tattooed, appears to be half-Japanese, standing beside a Harley with a viper gleaming on its paintwork.
“This guy.” Mitch shakes his head. “I know him.”
Kelly leans in closer, taking a better look. “Can you take an image and run this fucker on your database for facial recognition? See if you get a match?”
“No, he’s not a criminal.” Mitch leans back and I can see his mind ticking over at a rapid pace as he rubs his jaw. After a moment his expression changes, recollection dawning, which only causes his frown to burrow deeper. “That’s Lorenzo Rossi.”
“Who the fuck is Lorenzo Rossi?” Kelly asks as I glare down at the screen, hands fisting by my sides. Whoever the hell he is, he’s a dead man.
Mitch turns and looks at me, and the apprehension in his eyes sends dread curling down my spine. “Lorenzo is Ren.” His voice lowers. “He’s AFP.”
“He’s a cop?”
Coby steps in, shaking his head as he looks at the footage with squinty eyes. “No fucking way.” He steps back, visibly reeling, and looks at Mitch. “You’re wrong. That’s no cop. That’s Renny.”
Renny? “What the fuck is going on here?” I yell, pushing away from the desk and rounding on Evie’s brother. “Who the hell is Renny?”
“Her ex, Wild Renny. The one who almost got her killed in that bike accident and walked away. That’s Renny,” Coby says, jabbing his finger at the video with fury. “That sonofabitch is a Viper now?”
I close my eyes, my mind going back years, to when Evie told me about her past, trying to explain to me why she wouldn’t risk her heart on another man again.
“I was lucky, Jared, that I actually woke up in a hospital. Lucky to be alive. Renny managed to walk away, and he did it so well that he checked out of the hospital the next day without a backward glance.”
Mitch’s phone chooses that moment to ring. It’s sitting on the desk of the art shop, right beside the computer we’re all hovering around. All eyes look down at Alan Rossiter’s name lighting up the screen.
My brother snatches it up, answering, “Rossiter.”
We can hear Alan talking but I can’t make out the words. It’s not good. Mitch is swiping a hand through his hair, pulling at the strands as he listens for endless minutes. “Fuck,” he eventually mutters.
Hanging up, he