Page 97 of Heated Takeover

“We have movement,” she says, and I bolt upright so fast my neck cracks.

“Where?”

“The Everglades. Garrett used an ATM, and his phone connected to a tower near one of the cabins.”

“Of all places,” I mutter.

Tuck turns a monitor toward me. “The expensive properties were too obvious. This is a fishing cabin buried behind a shell company. We only connected it after the court orders opened the account records and Garrett’s phone data.”

Seconds later, the authorized camera account sends a motion alert. The exterior feed shows their SUV. In the living room, Reese carries Jamie’s small, sleeping body through the door and lays him on the couch. He curls into a ball, his chest rising and falling.

My heart clenches like a fist in my chest. “I’m going with the response team.”

“You’re going to the command perimeter,” Agent Chen says. “You do not join the entry. You do not approach until my people clear the cabin.”

“Ash, she’s right,” Tuck says. “This could get ugly. My job is to support the agents and protect you, not put you beside a SWAT team.”

“And my job is to protect my son,” I snap, unable to take my eyes off Jamie.

Every instinct in me rebels, but charging into an active rescue would make Jamie less safe, not more. I force the words through my teeth. “Fine. The perimeter. The second they clear him, I go in.”

Tuck nods once. “That I can work with.”

Chapter 37

Natalie

“You haven’t touched your soup,” my dad says as I stare at the bowl on his kitchen table. Tuck’s equipment fills the dining room, lawyers are working in the study, and every phone in the house is turned all the way up. We have not left the command location. Dad simply heated food neither of us wants.

“Sorry,” I sigh. “I’m not hungry.”

“Neither am I,” he admits, pushing his own untouched bowl away. He reaches across the small table to take my hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze. It helps two percent. “But we have to keep standing until Jamie comes home.”

I cannot help the souring look on my face. I am tired of being told to be hopeful and patient and optimistic when my son has been abducted. There is literally an Amber Alert circulating Florida and the surrounding states. Family or not, this bridge is not merely burned. It is demolished.

Still, Dad’s hand is warm, and for one second I let him hold me together while voices and ringing phones carry in from the next room.

“You and Reese have always had your struggles,” he says.

I let out a humorless breath. “That’s one way to put it.”

“We never spoiled you kids. At least, we tried not to. Your mother used to joke that you and Reese weren’t rich. We were. You still had to earn your way like any other kid.”

I smile slightly at the memory.

“And you did that,” he continues. “Everything you have, everything you are now, you earned. You got good grades, you were ambitious, you went to college and tackled that internship in Paris with gusto. I was so proud of you. Your mother would have been proud of you.”

“Dad…” I swallow hard and push the spoon through the cooling soup even though I have no intention of eating it. I need something to do so I do not start crying again.

“I know. I’m just saying you and your sister are different. Despite our efforts to teach both of you the value of hard work, perseverance, and humility, it fell on deaf ears with her. Reese has been a diva since she was born.”

“That’s putting it lightly,” I say with the smallest of smiles.

“It got worse after your mother died. I know that. Despite Margaret’s involvement, there was no changing her. And I’m afraid to say there still isn’t.”

“Maybe jail will help with that.”

Dad’s expression mixes worry and disappointment. “Maybe…” he says.