Shane jumps off the bed as Mikey and Conor rush into the room.
“They took Liam?” he snarls. “What the fuck happened?”
Mikey shakes his head, looking too distraught to speak. Conor places his hand on Mikey’s shoulder and answers Shane’s question. “Liam was obviously the target. They distracted Mikey and me with some phony bullshit, and they took him, Shane. He was throwing a couple of underage college kids out and they pulled up in a van and grabbed him.”
I sit up and stare at Conor, my mouth hanging open and my stomach twisted in a knot of anxiety as I think about Liam and what they’re doing to him right now.
“Did anyone see who took him. Did they get the plates?” Shane growls.
Conor shakes his head. “By the time the bouncers saw what was happening, it was too late to get the plates. All they saw was a black van. Couldn’t even be sure of the model.”
“They’ll probably be stolen anyway. But it will be on CCTV, right?” I ask as I climb out of bed, the adrenaline kicking in and jumpstarting my brain.
“Yeah,” Conor says with a nod.
“Good. I can access the traffic cameras and track the van’s movements,” I say, pulling on a pair of sweatpants.
“You said the Russians took him? How do you know that if nobody saw anything?” Shane asks as he rubs a hand across his jaw and steps closer to Mikey, who is so pale, he looks like he’s about to pass out.
“Who the fuck else would it be?” Mikey stares blankly at him.
I swallow the surge of guilt that pulses through my chest. If I hadn’t come back, Liam would still be here.
“This isn’t on you, Jessie,” Conor says softly, as though he’s reading my mind.
“He’s right. But we don’t have time to think about anything right now except for finding Liam,” Shane barks as he gives Mikey a brief hug before whispering something in his ear that seems to snap him from his daze. “Were the college kids in on it?” he asks, turning back to Conor.
“Maybe. But they’re long gone. There was another woman with a kid who was asking for me. She must have been in on it, but we didn’t realize that and she’s in the wind now too.”
“Fuck!” Shane hisses.
“We still got the guy with the Mohican though,” Mikey adds.
“The Mohican?” Shane and I say in unison.
“Some kid with green hair told me that Jessie wanted to see me in the VIP area. That was how they distracted me,” Mikey replies.
Shane nods before looking at Conor. “Let’s go make this kid talk then,” he says and Conor nods his understanding. Then Shane turns to me. “Jessie, do your thing, sweetheart, and find out where they’ve taken our boy.”
“Of course. I’m on it.”
“You think you can help Jessie out, kid?” Shane says to Mikey.
“Yeah. We’ll get him back, won’t we, Shane?” he asks, sounding like a scared little boy, and my heart breaks for him.
“Course we will, kid,” Shane replies as he pulls him into a brief hug. “But we need to move. Now.”
“Yeah,” Mikey nods as he struggles to compose himself.
Shane gives me a final glance, his face full of emotion, before he heads out of the door with Conor hot on his heels. When they are gone, I turn to look at their younger brother. He stares at me, his face blank and his deep brown eyes vacant. “Come on,” I hold out my hand to him. “We’ve got work to do.”
He takes my hand and I wrap my fingers around his tightly. The Ryan brothers have never needed me quite so much as they do right now, and I am determined not to let them down. Not to let Liam down. The thought of anything happening to him — of him not coming back here, it is unthinkable. So, I don’t think about it. I push it to the back of my mind and focus on what I need to do to find him.
I fire up the computer in Shane’s office while Mikey hovers nervously behind me. Anxiety and fear radiate from him in waves. “Hey,” I turn to him. “I might need to run a few programs at the same time here. So, can you bring me every laptop and every tablet in this apartment while I make a start?”
He stares blankly at me for a second, but then he nods his head. “Yeah. Sure. All of them?”
“Every single device you can find.”
He straightens his shoulders and sucks in a deep breath. “Of course, Red.”
“Before you go. Can you remember what time it was when you last saw Liam?”
He swallows hard, and I have no doubt that he is wondering if it will have been the last time he ever saw his twin alive, because I can’t help thinking it too. “Yeah. It was a quarter after one.” Then he marches out of the room full of purpose and I turn back to the screen and enter the password before it flickers to life.
I bring up the club security footage first and switch to the camera on the street outside where Liam was taken. I go back over an hour to just before 1am and scan the screen for signs of a black van. At 1:20am, Liam appears on the screen with two scantily dressed females. The sight of him makes my heart start to pound in my chest and I sit up straight and take a deep breath. I cannot let my emotions get the better of me right now. I work best when I can be detached and have a clear head, and Liam needs me at my best. He deserves me at my best. Both of the women appear drunk as they stumble onto the pavement. Liam holds his arm out to catch one before she face-plants the concrete and the other clings onto his arm. They all have their backs to the camera so I can’t see their faces, but I can pull footage from inside the club if we need to trace them.
I watch as Liam guides them to a cab parked out front, before he opens the door and they stumble through it and onto the back seat. Liam watches the cab drive away and then he turns around, and for a brief couple of seconds I see his face on the screen and have to remind myself not to think about what he might be going through right now. It seems like he is about to walk back into the club, but then he disappears and the street is empty.
I blink at the screen in confusion before rewinding it back. But the same thing happens. One second Liam is there, and the next he is gone. I rewind it again and check the time stamp, and it’s only then that I realize that two minutes have been completely erased.
Damn! Someone has hacked into the security system. My heart sinks. If they were good enough to do that and erase just the specific time that he was taken, then no doubt they have messed with the footage from the other cameras too. I rewind again and notice that the cut is almost seamless. If someone wasn’t looking closely, then it would appear that Liam came back into the club. So, we are definitely dealing with someone who knows what they’re doing, and that makes my stomach twist into a knot, because it means it’s going to take me much longer to track him than I thought.
Mikey comes back into the office carrying five laptops, and places them on the desk. “We got some tablets too somewhere. Shall I go find them?” he asks.
I shake my head. We do need the extra computers, but the task of finding every device was also a distraction technique to give Mikey something useful to do. Now I need him. “No. I want you to turn all of them on so I can run some different software. I also need you to use one to check the security footage in the alleyway where Conor was, and also inside the club from 1am to about 1:30. Look for anything suspicious, or anything that will give us a clue who took Liam. And could you also check if there are any time lapses or footage missing?”
Mikey frowns at me. “They fucked with our security feed?”
“Yes. But I have plenty of other feeds to tap into along this street. Don’t worry.”
Mikey nods and picks up a laptop before sitting on the chair opposite me, and we both get to work.
