There'll be Hell to Pay (Hellcat Series Book 6) by Sharon Hannaford Read Free Book Online Page B

for,
Gabs?”
    “ That one.” Gabi pointed to her mother’s unassuming silver
sedan as it turned right onto Arnold Street. It was in frame for a
couple more seconds and then it disappeared. Trish’s fingers tapped
quickly and another video came up.
    “ She’ll probably take a left onto Fletcher,” Gabi said, knowing
her mother was inclined to steer clear of busy intersections even
if it meant a longer trip home. A couple of minutes into the new
video, a silver car turned. It was too far away to be sure it was
her mother’s, but it was turning onto Fletcher. Trish paused that
video and brought up yet another.
    They tracked
her mother’s car for another three minutes. She was being
completely predictable, taking exactly the route Gabi guessed she’d
take; there was no indication of anything amiss.
    And then her
mother’s car vanished.
    They had a view
of the back of it turning left onto Kernsey Road, but it didn’t
appear on a single camera after that.
    “ There’s a freaking blind spot,” Trish fumed. “Right there, in
that one-block section of Kernsey, there is no camera.” She
continued to mutter under her breath as she jabbed the keyboard
with far more force than necessary.
    “ Can you go back to the video before she turned onto Kernsey?”
Derek asked. He was standing shoulder to shoulder with Ross and
Rory, three feet from Kyle’s TV.
    “ Did you see something?” Gabi asked, striding over to
them.
    The video
started playing again. The silver car could be seen several blocks
in the distance. It stopped at a red light behind two equally
unexciting sedans and a taxi and continued its journey when the
light turned green. It drove past and under the camera and
disappeared.
    “ Did you see it?” Derek asked, more certainty in his voice this
time.
    “ What?” Gabi demanded. She hadn’t seen anything.
    “ Wind it back twenty seconds,” Derek told Trish.
    As the video
replayed for a third time, Derek reached out a hand and pointed to
a vehicle parked on the far left of the screen. It was an emergency
vehicle of some kind, a white van with bright green and yellow
stickers emblazoned across the side and front. It looked like some
kind of breakdown service, but the video footage was too grainy to
make out any details. Two figures sat in the front seats with caps
on, pulled low over their faces, and the driver’s window was rolled
halfway down. Gabi squinted, still not sure what Derek had seen.
But as her mother’s car approached, she saw the driver come to
attention, and something dark and tube-shaped poked out of the open
window. A second later her mother’s car passed the van and the
black object was withdrawn back inside the car. The driver
immediately rolled the window up.
    “ Keep it going,” Gabi told Trish after the silver sedan
vanished from view again. All eyes trained on the logoed van as it
pulled out into traffic, heading in the same direction as her
mother’s Toyota. “Next one,” Gabi said, her voice hoarse with
stress. The next video played, the last one her mother’s car made
an appearance in, and sure enough, twenty seconds after her mother
turned the corner, the van followed.
    The atmosphere
in the cottage became heavy as they once again searched the rest of
the videos for signs of either vehicle.
    “ There,” Kyle finally said as they replayed one of the videos
for a third time. A plain white van with no signage came into view.
Only the driver was visible in the front, and he was wearing a dark
hoody and sunglasses. “It’s the same make of van. They’ve pulled
off the signage and the driver has changed appearance, but I’m sure
that’s it.” In the pit of her stomach Gabi knew he was right, just
as she now knew for certain that her mother hadn’t simply gone
shopping or broken down somewhere.
    She’d been
abducted.
    The knowledge
stole Gabi’s breath and blanked her mind.
     
    “ Do you think Julius is awake yet?” Derek’s hushed voice
speaking Julius’s name