“What the fuck?” I ask as I stare at my oldest brother with my mouth hanging open, because I’m pretty sure I must have misheard him.
“It’s him,” Shane says, shaking his head as though he doesn’t even believe what he’s saying himself.
“No way. He can’t be,” I insist. I mean I don’t remember him from when I was a kid, but Conor and Shane always speak fondly of him. He left Ireland shortly after our mom died, but before that, he was our uncle. He taught Shane and Conor how to shoot. He was an expert marksman in the army.
“Fuck! How do you know?” Conor asks, seemingly more ready to believe this than I am.
“He has a scratch on his neck that wasn’t there when I saw him yesterday afternoon.”
“A scratch?” I interrupt him.
He glares at me and I stop talking.
“He got it in the space of a couple of hours. The same couple of hours during which Jessie was taken.”
“Still, Shane…” Conor frowns at him.
“And he called her Jessica,” he says and I blink at him as realization dawns on me. Our own fucking uncle? The Wolf?
“Fuck!” Conor hisses. “You never mentioned that’s her real name?”
“No. Why would I? Jessica is like a different person to me. I only know Jessie.”
“But it is short for Jessica. Maybe he assumed?” I say even though I know I’m clutching at straws. He fits the bill in every other way. A hired assassin, able to disappear without a trace and hide in the shadows.
“And my key card was missing when I got back here yesterday.”
“What?” Conor frowns.
“I thought I must have left it behind, but there’s only one here and I assume Jessie didn’t take hers with her. He was the only person who got close enough to me to take it.”
“Why did you just let him walk out of here then?” I ask, suddenly the thought that we just let the Wolf leave here and go back to do who the fuck knows what to our girl, hits me.
“Because he’s the fucking Wolf, Mikey,” Shane snaps. “You think he would give her up if he thought we were onto him? He would die rather than let us find her. Did you not listen to anything Jessie told you about him?”
“Yes!” I snap as I walk toward him. “Did you? Because you knew she was terrified of him and you still left her here on her own. You let him walk into this room and fucking take her. And now our girl is out there somewhere living her worst fucking nightmare and who knows if we will ever fucking get her back!” All the anger and frustration I’ve been holding onto for the past fourteen hours comes tumbling out of me as I advance on Shane.
It is Conor who stops me in my tracks. “Hey!” he snaps. “We need to focus on finding Jessie right now.”
I glare at Shane who hangs his head as though he can’t even bear to look at me and now I just feel like shit because how the fuck was he supposed to know our own uncle was such a fucking monster?
“So what do we do when Liam calls?” I ask instead.
“Shane?” Conor says when he doesn’t reply. “I need you on your fucking A game here, so get your head out of your ass and tell me what the fuck our next step is?”
Shane looks up at us both and I’m relieved to see his usual look of certainly and control back on his face. “We wait and see where Paul goes and if he stays there or leaves again. It depends on what Liam tells us.”
“So we just wait?” I ask.
“For now.”
So we all sit down and wait for news from Liam, each of us wrestling with our own emotions alone, because to start talking about our fears and our anger would make it all that more real and for now we have to stay focused on finding Jessie. If I think too much about what she might be going through right now, I won’t be able to function, let alone outsmart the Wolf.
