by Em Petrova
“Did you know he wouldn’t be around?” North pitched his voice low.
“No. He could be back any minute.”
“Let’s see what we can find while he’s out.” With that, he took off into the kitchen and began digging through drawers. Piles and piles of unpaid bills as well as shut-off notices graced the counter. He found some rat droppings and turned away.
“We should wait until he comes home and set fire to the place with him in it,” Madeline ground out. “Look at these.”
She held up a pile of school photographs from picture day.
North’s stomach pitched. “Take photos of them all.”
She did, snapping one after another and sending them to headquarters where one of their guys—probably Sanders—intercepted them and began a search for each girl.
While she handled the kitchen, North tossed the rest of the house, but nowhere did he see Scarlett’s name or see a photo of Sloane’s sister. When he returned to the kitchen, he dug through the rest of the belongings that Madeline hadn’t yet touched.
Keeping one ear cocked for the sound of a car engine, he flipped open the cover of a phone book. A quick skim revealed doctor numbers and various neighbors’. Then he leafed through more pages and stopped dead.
“What is it?” Madeline asked, looking over his shoulder.
“There’s extra pages taped into the back.” He scanned the numbers and lit on Lauren’s last name.
“That’s it. Take it with us,” Madeline said.
“Run the numbers and get the addresses.”
She took photos of each page, and almost instantly, Sanders flung addresses back at them.
Madeline looked up at him. “What should we do? Follow these leads or wait for Flint to return?”
“Take the leads. One girl might be on the way to the altar—we could stop it before it happens.”
She was already swinging out the door. North grabbed the entire phone book and followed, not bothering to slam the door behind himself. If critters got into the house, it wouldn’t be any worse off.
Back in the car, they dropped in on two of the families on the list. At the first house, the mother told them her daughter ran off. After North applied a certain amount of pressure, the woman cracked and confessed she’d been married off, an arrangement made by her husband.
“I’d like to see my girl again, if you can help me.” Tears poured down her face.
“We’ll do our best,” Madeline assured her. Outside, she said to North, “She’s as bad off as the daughter. Did you see those bruises on her arms?”
“Yeah. No wonder I prefer my maps to this shit.”
At the second house, they received more of the same. Lies and even some belligerence, followed by a threat made by the man of the house. To which North kneed the man in the balls, and Madeline put a gun to his head. They walked out with a name at least.
Once again in the vehicle, North studied the phone book.
“What are you seeing that I don’t?” Madeline glanced over.
He ran his finger along a number. “I don’t like this. My gut tells me it means something.”
“It’s only a number, isn’t it?”
“There’s an extra number—an eighth digit. I can’t make out if it’s a 5 but it almost looks like an S.”
They exchanged glances.
“Sanders sent that one back for the same reason. Tell him to enter it again,” Madeline said.
Sixty seconds later, they possessed an address. And North had a damn good idea who they’d find once they got there.
* * * * *
Sloane picked up the remote control.
“Don’t turn on the TV.” From the other side of the room, Archer sat staring at his phone and seeming not to pay a bit of attention to her—until now.
She set the remote aside and slouched back in the chair. Two days she’d been here—and not only was she going stir-crazy, but she felt her mind slipping. That must be the case. Why else would she be thinking of Bodhi almost nonstop? Besides replaying their more intimate moments in her head, she kept hearing the last words he spoke—She doesn’t like Monopoly. The comment almost made her laugh each time she heard it.
She threw a look at Archer. The man was equally as broad and built as Bodhi, though his dark hair and thick beard growth held an altogether different appeal. Or at least it would to some other woman—from the beginning, she only had eyes for Bodhi.
Starting at the top of Bodhi’s head, there was the man bun. Not many could pull that off and still look rugged and hot as hell. Maybe because the prettiness ended at his curls. His features were sharp and defined, his jaw chiseled and masculine.
She started to mentally pick him apart and couldn’t find much that didn’t make her pulse trip faster.
Archer stood suddenly and moved. She sat up straighter and watched his long legs eat up the room. When he paused at the door before the knock even came, she stood too, heart hammering.
If it was danger, he would have hidden me away first.
The door exploded inward. Archer drew his weapon, and bullets sprayed over the room, one whizzing past her head. She did a tuck and roll as someone clomped toward her. She screamed, and he stuffed a rag in her mouth. She gagged and struggled, but this hulking man could overpower any number of strong guys, and she was powerless to escape.
Still, she fought, screaming behind the rag for Archer. The man was toe-up on the floor, his head tilted to the side enough for her to see he was unconscious. At least she hoped he was only knocked out.
Heart hammering, she kicked and lashed out, using all the moves she ever learned in acting. The man simply flung her over his shoulder and carried her out of the house.
She watched the ground move by beneath her, so far away. This guy must be well over six feet and his shoes were enormous. He carried her to the back of a car, opened the trunk and tossed her inside.
She freaked. Terror consumed her. Dark, tiny spaces made her hyperventilate, and how could she do that with a rag in her mouth? She thrashed, but he bound her feet and hands together so she couldn’t move even an inch, only lie helplessly as he closed the lid.
* * * * *
“Archer, what is it?” North didn’t like getting a call from the man guarding Sloane.
“North. Man, I’m so fucking sorry.”
Dread hit his veins and froze him to the bucket seat of the sports car Madeline drove. Panic blazed, and a sickening coal hit his stomach. “What the fuck happened?” he barked.
“He took her. He burst in and knocked me out.”
“Took her?” he roared.
Madeline jammed on the brakes and hit the side of the road in a skid.
“Who took her? Where the fuck is Sloane?” North couldn’t see straight through the red haze of fury blocking his vision. And if he thought he felt the rising panic before, now it hit full force like a fucking plane crash to his heart.
“What’s happening, North?” Madeline plucked the phone from his hand and put it on speaker.
Archer rambled out, “A big guy. Didn’t get much of a look at his face. Heavy black brows, shaved head. He knocked on the door and I went toward it. He kicked it in before I could shoot him. He sprayed the living room with bullets.”
North’s lungs felt as though they collapsed, and he folded over in the seat.
Madeline was there, taking control. “Where is she now? Where did he take her?”
“I don’t know. I was knocked out. When I woke up, the house was empty.”
“Jesus Christ. Fuck!” North wished he could find this fucking kidnapper just by reaching through the phone.
“Calm down, North. We’ll get her back. Sanders or Roman must have eyes on that house. They saw something. There’s security cam footage. Even the fucking doorbell has eyes on it. We’ll find her.” She set a hand on his shoulder, and he dragged in a full breath.
“When did it happen? What time?”
“Six minutes ago.”
“She hasn�
�t been gone long, then. North, we’ll find her. Archer, get Sanders and Roman on it right fucking now,” Madeline ordered.
“Let me drive. Get out of the seat.” North glared at her.
“No. I’ll drive.”
“Get out of the goddamn seat, Madeline!”
She didn’t even blink at his rage. “No. Handle the fucking maps, North. Listen to the guys and direct me where to go.”
His throat ached with the need to roar and rage. Sloane—gone. Ripped out from under their noses—ripped from him.
After what he found out about Scarlett, he’d been dreading his return to Sloane, but at this moment…all he wanted was to find her.
“Drive!”
Madeline stepped on the gas, and he fought to focus on what Roman told him over the phone. He pulled a map up on his screen, and then Roman patched in the security footage. The instant he saw his precious woman tossed over a man’s shoulder and carried out of the safehouse, his heart seized.
“Do you know that guy?” he demanded of Madeline.
She looked at his screen and shook her head. “Tell Sanders to run him through the facial ID. Roman, you got plates on the car?”
He watched Sloane kick and struggle before being thrown into the trunk. His stomach heaved, and he thought he might be violently sick from the mere sight.
“Madeline, I need you to stop.”
“You’re not going to puke. It’s only your body telling you things are not okay. You’re all right, man. We don’t have time to pull over.”
He gripped the phone until his fingertips grew white. Now he wouldn’t even be able to tell Sloane that they found her sister—or deliver the bad news that Scarlett was so indoctrinated to her new way of life that she refused to come with them or admit anything about her new husband except that she loved him.
She almost seemed…happy…which sickened him and Madeline so much that neither spoke long after they drove away from the house. For hours, he’d battled to think up a way to tell Sloane that her sister wouldn’t leave or that she’d been brainwashed into believing she belonged there. Now this.
“Fucking find her, Roman. Find those goddamn plates!”
Sanders’s voice projected into the car. “They’re westbound. You’re twelve minutes behind them.”
“Twelve? Madeline, close that gap,” he barked.
Sanders placed the car on North’s screen, and just seeing that tiny blip moving away from them and knowing the woman he loved was locked in the trunk of it made him want to tear apart everything in his path to reach her.
Madeline hit top speed, and he stopped caring about how close she sheered to the guardrails as she drove. All he could think of was reaching Sloane. He had to get her in time.
In time…before what?
“Who the fuck is this guy?”
“Plate’s registered to a Donahue George,” Roman returned.
“Flint’s man?” he asked.
“Could be. Seems too rough to be on the environmentalist side of Sloane’s problems.”
“Fuck! Why does she have to have both feet in a well of danger? Isn’t one enough?”
“When you pick a mission, North, you don’t take the easy ones,” Roman answered. “Eleven minutes, forty-five seconds behind them.”
“We can only pray that they stop,” he muttered, looking at the speedometer and seeing Madeline capped out on speed. The car rattled as she pushed it faster.
He dropped his head into his hands and stared at the map. Please let her be okay. Please let her be alive.
I have to tell her I love her.
He didn’t even flinch as the words flooded his brain. For a man who avoided loving to the point where he wouldn’t attach himself to even a stray dog, he sure as hell had lost his heart to Sloane. The woman held it in her hands, and if he never got it back…
He growled. “I’ll get her back.”
“Yes, we will,” Madeline said.
“If it’s Flint’s guy, maybe he saw us go into his house. Roman, I want lists of everyone Flint’s ever spoken to. I even want the name of the guy who sold him his toilet paper to wipe his ass. Got it?”
“On it, man. Hold tight.”
Hold tight. To what? There was nothing to cling to except his hope and determination that he wouldn’t lose Sloane the way she’d lost Scarlett.
The vision of her sister standing in that double-wide trailer wearing a smile and the happy light in her eyes haunted the fuck out of him, especially since she resembled Sloane so much.
“North. Calm your breathing. You’re going to hyperventilate.” Madeline took a curve at a speed that threatened to roll the vehicle. Somehow she held it on the pavement, though he felt certain he left indentations in the armrest.
“I can’t lose her,” he ground out.
Madeline removed her eyes from the road for only a moment, and he let her see the anguish he felt. She returned her attention to the lanes again and nodded. “I get it. You love her.”
“Fucking hell.”
“Love is fucking hell. Especially when the person you love drags you through shit like this. But it’s worth it, North. We’ll get her back and then you’ll see.”
“I’ll never call you the Ice Queen behind your back again, Madeline.”
She chuckled, though it sounded dry and humorless. “Now you’ll just say it to my face, right?”
“I have no idea why you’re rooting for me.”
“I told you, you’re my friend. I want to see you happy. Just because I’ll never find the same happiness doesn’t mean I don’t want it for you, or Oz or Lars. Oh hell, you men are all making me fucking soft. I need to find this guy so I can break his neck— only after I squash his balls like grapes.”
“No,” he grated out. “That’s my job. For Sloane.”
Chapter Ten
On every curve the driver took, Sloane rolled sharply into the side of the trunk, bruising her again and again. Not only was the trunk sweltering but exhaust fumes flooded in, leaving her dizzy and nauseated.
She considered herself a pretty tough woman. She possessed enough guts to fight for what she believed in. Though honestly, she didn’t know how long she’d last here. With no clue as to her destination, her hopes were flagging.
Resting her cheek against the scratchy carpet lining the smelly trunk, she closed her eyes and allowed tears to trickle out. As they rushed down her temple, scorching hot, her mind drifted to the only thing she could control at this minute—her emotions.
She could freak out and waste all her energy kicking and screaming. Or she could use the time to plan.
As soon as the trunk opened, what would she do? Pop up and head butt her captor. Aim for the nose and buy herself some time to escape. Tied up as she was, she wouldn’t make it far, though. She could only pray someone lurked nearby to lend a hand.
One thing that being bound hand and foot in a trunk did to a person was make her realize where her priorities lay. She didn’t give a damn about her next big box office hit or even the mess she’d landed in with her latest role.
What she wanted—needed—more than anything was love. Besides her sister, the person who took up all the corners of her mind wore a man bun and delivered the hottest kisses she’d ever known.
He also filled her with a sense of peace, and despite all the dangers she faced, happiness too. She liked climbing into bed next to him in the middle of the night when she couldn’t catch a wink of sleep. His big strong arms offered a safe haven.
She may have only known the man a few days, but she’d felt more in less than a week with Bodhi than she had in her life. With nothing to do in the dark, cramped trunk, she let her mind explore. Chalk it up to the fumes, but she thought she might be falling for her bodyguard.
Another tear zigzagged down her temple, this time one of relief for finally coming to terms with herself. Whether or not he felt anything for her remained to be seen… At least she knew her own mind and could come to terms with whatever happened next.
When the driver braked hard, she wasn’t prepared for the pain shooting through her side—or for the impact of a wreck. The car seemed to spin like some fun park ride, and her mind couldn’t keep up.
The trunk opened, and daylight blasted her eyes. She blinked.
“Jesus fucking Christ. Help me cut her free!”
Bodhi? Could she be imagining his voice? She squinted into the blinding rays and tried to gasp for a breath of clean air. The rag blocking her mouth threatened to make her vomit, and suddenly someone plucked it out.
She coughed and choked as the ropes binding her loosened. Her stiff limbs still didn’t move, and then big hands reached underneath her and lifted her out.
“Sloane. Thank you, God.”
Bodhi flexed his arms as he carried her away from the car. She tried to glance back, and barely took in the twisted steel of two cars locked together or the blonde woman standing at the roadside, looking down at a hump on the ground. Bodhi carried her out of sight. She felt him waver and then he dropped to his knees with her still cradled in his arms.
Alarm washed through her. His reaction, his behavior…what was going on?
He closed his eyes and buried his face in her hair. His voice grated over her senses. “I thought you were lost. I’ve never been so damn scared in my life.”
She closed her fingers on his shirt front and clung on for dear life. Tears fell freely. He spattered kisses over her hair and down between her eyes. She tipped her face up, and he searched her eyes as if trying to see the depths of her pain.
The sweet air rushed in and out of her lungs, and it seemed she’d never find enough to replace the stench of the trunk.
“I’m so fucking sorry, baby. So damn sorry.”
She curled into his chest. “You found me.”
“I never should have left you.”
“It’s not your fault.”