Chapter 228: Reid
Something rips loose inside me that I didn’t know could tear. My body stops belonging to me. Hands shaking, vision smeared, a high, thin ringing floods my ears until the harbor is just moving mouths and bright smears of color. One thought hammers and hammers:
she’s gone she’s gone she’s gone
he took her he took her he took her
My knees hit the dock. Wood bites bone. I taste copper. Jake is still bent over the water, retching; every sound coming out of him is a knife.
Charlie—God, Charlie—forces air through a throat made of sobs and tells Finn and Liam what’s happening. I hear “Madeline,” “stalker,” “not here,” “hurt,” in the broken pieces she can get out. When she’s done, both boys go statue-white, faces carved out of shock, eyes glassed and unseeing. People on the pier start to notice—voices asking “hey, what’s—” and “you okay?” and “what’s wrong?” like the words could matter.
Cruz grabs my shoulders and shakes me hard enough to rattle the bones back into place; then he hauls Jake upright by the back of his shirt. “Listen to me,” he snaps, voice cutting clean through the ringing. “I know this is bad. I know this is scary. Right now we need to find her.” He looks from one to the other, pinning us to the moment. “You already know this, but hear it out loud: this guy has no captain’s license. He took her on the Atlantic and he intends harm. There is no time.”
He turns, loud enough for half the dock to hear. “A girl—Madeline Quinn—has been kidnapped. The Vigil has been stolen. She is in grave danger.” The words slap the air. Heads whip toward us; mouths harden. A few men don’t wait to be asked—hands up, voices saying “I’ve got fuel,” “I can run my skiff,” “We’ll sweep the inlet.” They break for their boats at a run.
Cruz is already tasking. “Finn, Liam, Charlie—stay onshore. Sweep everything from here to the bait shack and back. Eyes under the docks, behind the shacks, in the lot—if she got loose she may be hiding. It’s possible he’s aboard alone and she’s not. You find anything, you call me first.” He cuts a look at Charlie. “And someone stays with Sloane. If she bolts, I want to know.”
We whip around in a circle of faces and water and absence. The space where the Vigil should be is a hole I could fall into forever.
Cruz turns back to us. “You have another vessel?”
“Yes,” I hear myself say. Jake says it too.
“Then we’re going after her.” He’s already moving. “Now.”
The shake snaps into focus because Cruz is right—there’s no time for anything but motion. I don’t know how this bastard even figured out our start-up sequence, or where he found the spare keys, but he sure as hell doesn’t have a license, and the sky’s already a low slate lid spitting rain. If the swell stacks at the mouth and he doesn’t read it right, he’ll roll the Vigil. He’ll sink her. He'll sink them all.
And Madeline is alone. Alone and probably terrified. Probably thinking no one will find her.
I move. Jake wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and moves too. We’re off the dock in a blur—lines off, breaker on, fuel, ignition. The engines catch with a hungry shudder and we throw our lines to Finn, who barely has time to vault back to the planks before we kick off. We nose into the fairway and push for the channel, rain needling our faces, wipers squealing. My knuckles go white on the wheel.
The VHF crackles alive—Coast Guard issuing the alert, the cadence flat and official—and then a half-dozen voices cut in, fishermen calling their GPS spots. “South lump—negative sighting.” “By the bell off Haddock—no Vigil.” “Outer moorings clear—she’s not here.”
My heartbeat lives in my throat.
Madeline, I realize, is as much a part of me as Jake is. The thought hits clean and absolute. She’s the hand on the ripcord that keeps the darkness out. She’s it. The love of my life and I’m sure of it like I’m sure of my own name. The idea of losing her—
“Fuck!” I slam my palm into the wheel hard enough the spokes sing. “We should’ve kept her with us—we should’ve found her phone earlier, we would’ve seen the texts, we would’ve gone—why didn’t we move faster, why didn’t we—”
“Reid,” Cruz snaps, hard enough to cut the spiral. “Stop. No point. Let's just focus on finding her, okay?.”
I swallow glass and stare into rain. The channel markers slide by like teeth.
Jake’s voice comes low and ragged from my side. “Cruz… how many cases like this end with the victim unharmed?”
Cruz looks between us, rain slicking his lashes into sharp lines. For once, there's grief and pity flashing in his eyes. He doesn’t give us an answer, or odds, or statistics. He won’t. “Let’s just find her,” he says.