He looked over to the monitor where he could watch her sleep off the drugs. She was so still that he wondered if she might actually be dead.

He wanted to stop drugging her, thinking her little body couldn’t handle so much of it, but his partner didn’t think it was worth the trouble.

“What’s the word?” Freddy asked, zipping up his pants as he emerged from the bathroom.

“We have to move, but he also gave the OK to take care of them if they come back.”

“What the fuck does that mean? We can’t kill them.”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Do you think we should go with Plan B? We don’t have much time left before they become suspicious.”

“I told Greg it was a bad idea taking two jobs. We can’t complete them all.”

“No, but they both pay,” Freddy grinned.

“He’s going to get us killed.”

“He’s going to get us paid. This family is as rich as they are fucked up. Just look at this house. All of this and no one even bothers to live here. If they are going to just waste money, why shouldn’t we help ourselves to it?”

“I don’t know, man—”

“Think big, Vick. Besides, with Greg in the hospital, we get a bigger cut.”

“I can’t believe he just bashed his head with a chair.”

The warnings we received about Keiran Masters did nothing to prepare us for seeing him in action. He secretly envied the younger man who was able to invoke so much fear with just his presence. When he spoke, everyone in the room tensed. Even his family and friends feared him. As he recalled the cold, dark eyes from the hospital that promised death, he wondered what it would be like to have that much power.

* * * * *

KEENAN

“Do you have anything on the house?” I asked as soon as we were through the door. Sheldon insisted on returning to her apartment, but I was having none of it. I dragged her back to my father’s house. Lake and Quentin were back from searching for Kennedy while Jesse still kept eyes on the house in Camden.

“It was so quick I’m not even sure if it happened, but the curtain there…” Jesse pointed to a window on the lower level of the house, “it moved just after you left. Could have been a draft or—”

“Or the people who took my daughter?”

“You really think it could have been your grandparents?”

“I don’t know, but I now know it wasn’t Mitch.”

“How?” Quentin asked.

“He’s dead,” I blurted. It was the only believable lie. If Q knew about Mitch, he wouldn’t hesitate to tell Keiran because that’s where his loyalty was.

I wanted to silently warn Sheldon from telling just in case, but Q watched me too closely as if trying to read me. “Fuck,” he barked. “Keiran isn’t going to like this.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s all Keiran would have wanted.”

“Only if it had been by his hands.”

I needed to change the subject and fast. I hadn’t had time to concoct a proper story to tell anyone about the impromptu trip. After Sheldon had told me about Kennedy’s condition, it was all I could think about. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s done.”

He hesitated only a second longer than necessary before asking, “So what makes you think your grandparents even know about her, and why would they take her?”

I struggled in my head with a reason for why they could be guilty but couldn’t find one no matter how hard I tried. I ran my fingers to the end of my hair and tugged with frustration.

“Are they even still alive?” Sheldon asked.

“I don’t know. I never suspected them, but I was hoping something or someone in that house could have told me something.”

“It would almost be too easy if it were someone you knew,” Jesse remarked.

A thought popped into my head that I couldn’t shake, and before I realized my feet had even moved, my hands were on Sheldon, pinning her against the wall. “I’m going to ask you this only once so have your brain advise your mouth not to lie to me.”

“Let me go,” she growled. If I weren’t very near to murdering her, I would find her pout cute.

“Keenan, have you lost your mind?” Lake yelled.

“Dude,” Q chimed in.

I blocked them all out. I couldn’t see anything but the fantasy of Sheldon’s life draining from her eyes as my brain began to form images one after the other.

“Have you had another motherfucker around my kid?”