The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. “Lawrence Hooke.”
“Ah, so you do remember me.”
“What do you want?”
“Oh, we’ll get into that later. First, you need to come for a little drive with me.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening.”
His hand flew to his heart. “I apologize for the confusion. You see, it wasn’t a request.” Through the glass door, she saw three men standing by a black van with the sliding door open.
Leadership’s rules required her to run.
She knew too many of Neverland’s secrets.
Her skin tingled as her internal flame sparked to life, and she took a halting step toward the kitchen.
Lawrence moved closer. “Or we could ask your friend to join us instead. Megan, was it?”
Oh god . . . Megan. Vivienne couldn’t leave her. Couldn’t let her get taken . . . she was helpless.
Vivienne glanced toward the back room, then back at Lawrence Hooke.
Deacon’s mother had questioned her commitment to Neverland, and it was time to prove her wrong.
They found her.
How the hell had they found her?
Oh god . . . They could be doing anything to her. She could already be—
No. He couldn’t think about that.
But how the hell had they found her?
Deacon slammed his battered suitcase on top of the oak dresser and threw his belongings inside. He knew swearing at the luggage would serve no purpose, but he let a string of curses fly anyway.
“I’m so sorry.” Ethan’s apology crackled over the speaker on Deacon’s mobile.
Ethan had left her alone. What kind of fool left a new recruiter on her own? “Do we have any way of knowing if she’s all right?”
“All I know is what I saw on the CCTV footage—which isn’t much.”
“Who’s in charge of Vivienne’s recovery?”
“Owen.”
Owen was the best . . . But that didn’t matter. “I’ll be back tonight. We’ll talk then.”
“Do you have permission from Peter to leave London? The trial is—”
“Moved to next week. But none of that matters. Vivienne was taken by HOOK, and we have no idea how the hell they knew she was in Maryland. I’ll be useless here until she’s safe.”
“Actually…um…”
“Actually, what?” he snapped.
“There was a video—”
“What do you mean? What video? A video of Vivienne?”
“Vivienne’s foster mother offered a pretty hefty reward for information on her whereabouts. It was broadcast on the local news station in Columbus.”
Birds sang cheerful tunes in the trees outside the flat. He crossed to the open window and banged it closed. “I want to see it for myself.”
“I’ll send you the link.”
His mobile rumbled in his palm; he clicked the text that brought him to a clip on the WBNS website.
“Vivienne Dunn went missing from her home in Columbus, Ohio on September 25th, the day of her eighteenth birthday,” the female voiceover announced. A photo of Vivienne flashed on the screen, and his heart constricted. “Her foster mother Lynn Foley has been worried for her foster daughter’s wellbeing ever since.”
Standing in front of a barrage of logo-covered microphones, Vivienne’s foster mother and two foster siblings looked appropriately worried. But the moment Lynn started speaking, Lyle started shaking his head in the background. And Maren’s worried expression turned to one of boredom about halfway through.
“We’ve done everything we can to find Vivienne,” Lynn said, her voice catching. “If you’re watching this, honey, please let us know you’re okay.”
“Two additional teens in similar situations have gone missing since last year, all before their eighteenth birthdays. Max Burner, pictured here, disappeared from his apartment in Indiana three days before Vivienne Dunn…”
How the hell did they know about Max?
“…and Molly White, seventeen, from West Virginia, went missing from her foster home in early August.”
Molly White? Who was that?
“Anyone who has information on Vivienne Dunn’s whereabouts, or any of the other missing teens, is asked to contact the number on the screen. A reward of five hundred thousand dollars is being offered for information that leads to locating Vivienne. This is Marilyn Jackson for WBNS, reporting.”
There was only one place Lynn could have gotten that kind of money . . . He pressed play again. And again. It wasn’t helping, but what else could he do?
He turned it off and rang Ethan. “When did they find this?”
“It was released a few hours before she was taken, but it went viral online.”
“There’s no way Vivienne’s foster family has that kind of money to offer as a reward. It had to be HOOK.”
“That’s what everyone on this side is thinking.”
“They’ve never done something like this before.”
“I know.” Ethan’s response was hollow.
This shouldn’t have happened. There was an entire department dedicated to risk assessment. “What the hell has RISK been doing? How did this slip below their radar?”
“I don’t have any answers for you, Dash. But if RISK had the video earlier, they would’ve gotten to her before it was—”
Deacon didn’t need him to finish to understand what he meant.
Before it was too late.
Bile rose in his throat and he swallowed against the rising panic. Why didn’t she run?
“I know you’re freaking out, man. We’re all freaking out. But she’ll survive whatever happens in there. You know that’s the reason we send new recruits into the field.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” he muttered before ending the call.
Vivienne may survive what was coming . . . but Deacon wasn’t sure he would.
Deacon cursed his mother for sending him to London.
He cursed himself for pushing Vivienne into the field so early.
He cursed the seat for being uncomfortable and his seatbelt for being too restrictive.
He also cursed the damned sluggish plane for the entire seven-hour journey back to the States.
Once the plane landed outside of DC, he abandoned his bag and headed straight for the airport’s exit. He pressed the button on the side of his ear, and his helmet appeared. When he was clear of an audience, he took off. “Hey, TINK. Call Ethan for me.”
“Sure thing, Deacon.”
His phone only rang once before Ethan answered. “Hey, Dash.”
“Have you heard anything?”
“No.”
“Do we know if she…is she all right?”
“We don’t know.”
Dammit. “Do you know anything?”
“I know lots of stuff, but it’s all shitty.” A curse. “They’re having trouble finding a way in. Owen thinks we need to stay back and wait for an opening.”
“I don’t care if you have to bust down the front doors. We are not leaving Vivienne there a minute longer than we have to.”
“You gotta let extraction do their job. Nicola thinks you should go to Kensington—”