Chapter 111

DOMINIC

It had been over twelve hours.

Twelve fucking hours since when the girls went missing.

Twelve hours since the worst thing that could have ever happened, happened.

Twelve hours of calling, searching, digging and even praying to a God I wasn’t even sure was still listening to people like me.

I ran my hand through my hair for the umpteenth time and I paced around in circles in the dirty airport security office. Every wall surrounding us felt like they were closing in on me, the bright light in the room was making my eyes ache and my head was banging. My throat was dry from all the shouting, questioning and screaming I had been doing. But with all my questions, no one was seeming or able to give me any tangible response.

Alex was sitting by the table, his head in his hand, the fingers of his other hand clenched so tight around his phone that his knuckles had turned white and his veins popped. His face was pale, drained off all blood and filled with nothing but worry.

His jaw was clenched and I could tell that the little strength he was using to hold himself together was about to snap.

We had both lost it already and we were barely hiding ourselves together and to the last strain of our sanity.

There was security footage, sure and they had been brought to us when we requested it. They had boarded the plane, we had seen them and the footage showed it.

Raina was smiling as she waved and Faith was laughing as they got comfortable in their seats.

But somehow, by the time the plane landed… they were nowhere to be found.

They were gone. There were no signs or traces of them.

It didn’t make any sense. None of it made any fucking sense.

We watched the footage over and over again. More times than I could count, slowing it down, watching each frame again and again as we searched for something, anything that could explain how any of it happened or how they vanished into thin air like they were some kind of invisible smoke.

The air in the room was thick with tension that could suffocate someone. Every so often, Alex would let out a series of curses under his breath and bang his fist against the table, but other than that, the room was creepy and silent except for the constant sound of the clicking of the footage that was being replayed.

I leaned in against the desk and rubbed my eyes that were burning from my lack of sleep and tiredness. We were watching the footage again and I tried to focus all my attention so I could catch something we had missed. Anything.

Then Alex went stiff as he straightened.

“Stop,” he said, his voice sharp as he got up and pointed his finger at the screen. “There, that guy. Zoom in.”

I leaned in even closer as the picture was zoomed into. A man was standing by the boarding gates, his hands were tucked deep into the pockets of his jacket and his head was not only lowered but also hooded. He wasn’t particularly doing anything but there was something that felt wrong about him and the way he was looking, it was like he was trying to act too casual and still. Like he was waiting for the forest opportunity to do something.

Alex and I exchanged a look and something akin to dread settled in the pit of my stomach as the air became charged with tension.

Without wasting another second, we called the airport’s security line.

At first, they didn’t want to answer us, giving us reasons and hiding behind protocols and regulations as they blatantly refused to release flight details or information about people that were present. Alex was angered by their answers and I could practically see the smoke that was coming out from his head as his face turned red.

I grabbed the phone from Alex, angered myself as I put the phone on the table and started barking into the speaker. “We will involve the police and you’ll have a full investigation crawling over this place. You’ll be tagged as an accomplice and your customers would see it all on the news which would lead to you losing your business. Think about it, the ball is in your court.”

The threat worked too well.

“We had an unscheduled landing,” they confessed.

“What?”

“One of the plane’s engines stopped working and we had to land in another state for repairs,” the man on the other side of the line begrudgingly replied, his voice cracking from fear. “We had touched down in Florida and immediately we had sorted the issue, the plane had taken off again.”

My heart fell into my stomach and I felt like retching, I couldn’t think, my head wasn’t even working.

We hadn’t thought of that. Hell! We hadn’t planned for a situation like that.

Anything could have happened during that stop. Anything had happened.

Within an hour, Alex, I and Carter were on a flight to Florida. On the journey there, we barely said anything, each of us tense and scared of the unknown. There was nothing to say and nothing but determination and the steady fear that was pulsing through us and slowly eating away at our gut.

When we landed in Florida, we didn’t wait a second. Carter was quick in bringing out his badge and flashing it in their faces, barking orders at the airport authorities while Alex and I demanded that they give us access to every single information that they had ranging from the passenger lists to the boarding passes to the crew member interviews.

When we went through the manifest, Raina and Faith’s names were on both flights.

Which meant they were supposed to be there on the private island we had booked for them but they weren’t and we were back to square one.

The realization washed over me and it burned like acid had been poured on my face.

We were led to the back office and even though we were impatient and tense, we sat around the battered conference table with papers, documents and laptops scattered in front of us. The tension in the air was thickening with each second that passed and I felt so hot that I felt that the room would explode with the brewing emotions.

We were still thinking of what to do next when my phone rang.

Thinking it was the security teams calling to tell us the girls had been found, I pulled out my phone from my pocket but to my disappointment it wasn’t them.

It was Anthony.

He was an old friend. Someone I hadn’t seen in months, hell, it was almost a year now. He had been away, working solo for a private company on a contract abroad.

But I knew he still had connections everywhere and they were very good ones. They were the kind that would be needed whenever there was a problem or they had to find someone or something fast.

“I heard about what happened,” he said almost immediately as I picked the call and put it to my ear, his voice low but filled with seriousness. “A police friend of mine told me about it. And I thought I should reach out to you to see if you might need some help because I’m willing to.”

“We’re at the Florida central airport,” I replied without any hesitation. “Get your ass over here. Now.”

Less than thirty minutes later, Anthony had arrived and he was sitting across from me as he leaned against the table, pointing to a place on the map of the airport and the surrounding area he had laid out.

“You’re looking at all of this wrong,” he finally spoke up, his voice slicing through the thick air. “You’re only focusing on the flight, but what you don’t know is that the flight was nothing more than a distraction. To set you guys off and make you start chasing shadows.”

He tapped against the map again, his fingers firm and his shoulders straight.

“They might have been taken when the plane landed for repairs,” he explained with all seriousness. “That was the best time to make their move.”

“What the fuck?” Alex muttered under his breath but it was loud enough for all of us to hear. He slammed his hand against the table so hard that the papers rustled and the table shook.

“They could still be in the city,” Anthony added after the noise had died down. “I would bet my life on it.”

I turned to look at Alex who was already looking at me and I knew that the same terrible thought had crossed through both our minds.

If they were really still in the city, we still had a chance. Even though it was small, we were desperate and were going to take it.

We asked for the footage to be sent and we watched it again in the Florida airport and watched each and every part of the footage, making sure not to skip over any part or blink while we watched it.

And that was when Alec saw the man again, the man that was standing by the boarding gate.

“That guy looks exactly like Nathan,” Alex spoke up. “His body stature and the way he moves, no one other than Nathan moves like that.”

“You’re on to something, it really could be him,” Carter said. “I’ll send the footage over and they’ll run a facial scan on him so we can be sure.”

In less than five minutes, Carter received the result of the face after he had sent it for a facial recognition scan. And just like that, we were back to the beginning with no lead or idea of what to do next.

The scan had ruled out the possibility of the man being Nathan.

But what we heard next made us scared to our bones and our reality was quickly becoming a nightmare. The man was not Nathan because he had been on the plane with the girls all these while.

Angrily, I pulled out my phone and dialed the number that I should have never had—the one number that should even exist at all.

The phone rang once. Then again.

I was starting to believe he wasn’t going to pick it when the call connected.

“Took you long enough,” Nathan said into the phone like he had been waiting for me to call. His voice was drawn lazily and he should like he was bored. “I was not only starting to get bored but also tired of waiting for you to call.”

My hand tightened around the phone until my knuckles turned white and the phone felt like it was about to crack.

“You fucking son of a…”

“No. No. No,” he said, interrupting me, his voice filled with amusement as he said every word. “There’s no need for you to be so violent and start calling me names. You know you need to be on your best behavior, right Dom? Lives of precious ones depend on it, you know.”

I closed my eyes and forced myself to let out a breath to calm my nerves. It took all the strength in me to hold back from throwing the phone in my hand against the wall.

I so badly wanted to find the bastard and beat him to a pulp until his words were incoherent and he was begging me to spare him.

“You’re going to pay for this,” I hissed through clenched teeth.

“You’re getting this wrong, Dom. You’re the one in chains right now,” he replied with a mocking tone. “And on the contrary, you’re the one that’s going to pay for what you did. You and your precious Alex. You both thought you could lock me behind bars and walk away without any consequences, hmm?”

I didn’t say anything but I clenched my jaw so hard, I feared my teeth would crack.

Nathan let out a low, dark chuckle. “Here’s what is going to happen,” he started, his voice suddenly serious and scary. “I’ll send you a location. Both you and Alex will meet me there. And don’t you dare try to play smart with me and don’t bring that little cop with you either. Unless you want to find the lifeless bodies of your wives in a ditch.”

A heavy silence filled the line and my heart fell into my stomach.

“And one more thing,” Nathan added, his voice dropping to a sinister whisper. “Tell Alex that he better get ready to sign those divorce papers. He won’t be with his precious Raina much longer.”

And just like that, the line went dead.