Her parents hadn’t loved her enough to come back, after all. Why the hell would a man she barely knew be the exception? She slammed her eyes closed with a breathy laugh, shaking her head softly as the cold hard truth continued to encase her and send ice water churning through her veins.
“Who exactly are you waiting for, my love?”
Mia gasped and swirled on top of the bed at the sound of Malik’s voice behind her, making wrinkles in the duvet just as her eyes locked with his across the room. He lingered in the doorway wearing an all-black suit with his hands in his pockets. His eyes bulged the moment she looked at him, tongue darting out to wet his bottom lip. He tilted his head as he awaited an answer.
Mia took the comforter below her into tight fists. Her toes curled as well. The lump in her throat warned her that if she tried to speak at that moment, only an indecipherable croak would come out, so she swallowed it away.
“I’m not waiting for anyone,” she finally managed.
His eyebrows shot up, lips pressed into a tight line. “I’ve never seen a woman so enamored by the sight of a ticking clock.” He took a few slow steps closer.
She fought to urge to scoot back with every step he took, tightening her fists around the bedding.
He massaged his jaw, a heated smile crossing his lips. “I can’t help but wonder who on Earth you believe is coming for you?”
To the untrained ear, it was a simple question. But Mia heard the real question. The one he would never outright ask but was clear as day in his eyes and demeanor at that moment. She felt the change in him. The resentment, now that he knew she’d slept with another man. And she had no doubt he knew. His goons had probably been chomping at the bit to inform him about what a whore his wife really was. How they’d caught her with another man’s dick between her lips. How she had appeared to be loving every second of it.
Malik’s eyes widened again as if he were envisioning that very thought. It made him pause several feet from the bed.
“It’s interesting…” His voice was soft—too soft—as he motioned to her. “All your fingers and limbs, still intact. Not a scratch on you, in fact. Contrary to all the phone calls I got with you screaming horrifically in the background because your vicious captor was doing you harm.”
Her racing heart climbed up her throat once more and blocked her airway, forcing her to heave in each breath. She hid her hands, which were, in fact, perfectly intact, behind her body.
He held her eyes, a silence falling just as two men entered the room, both nearly a foot taller than Malik and twice as wide as him too.
Mia held her breath as her eyes flew back and forth between those men. One of whom never made his roaming gaze a secret whenever she found herself alone in a room with him. Who’d given her so many elevator eyes since the day he’d been hired it was a wonder his eyeballs hadn’t rolled straight out of their sockets by now. That guard licked his lips when Mia met his gray-blue eyes, a smirk picking up the corners.
“I didn’t want to believe it. But considering that fact that you don’t have a scratch on you, my love, I’m sure you can understand my suspicions.” Malik smiled softly as he motioned to the two men behind him without breaking his eyes from hers. “I’m sure you can understand…”
Fresh tears built up in her eyes.
Malik’s smile vanished. His face darkening once more, and he swirled his finger through the air, signaling the goons behind him.
“Find it,” Malik ordered softly, before turning and strolling from the room, not once looking back at Mia as he went.
The two men proceeded toward her with faces hard as stone.
She hadn’t even realized her feet were kicking against the bed, crawling furiously backward, until her skull slammed into the headboard.
“Don’t touch me,” she spat, just as the first goon—the one who’d always had an elevator eye and lip-lick just for her—seized her calves and yanked her down on the bed, putting her on her back. “Don’t fucking touch me!”
Her pleas went unheeded but still grew more desperate with every touch of his vile hands. Her horrific screams filled the room from wall to wall.
And, this time, she wasn’t faking it.
——
Linc was ready to die.
Emma, he realized, was safer that way. He could only hope that, upon his death, Jason would follow through on his promise and deliver Emma to his mother in Shadow Rock. He hoped that his mother would heed the advice Jason would no doubt give her. To get out of California—preferably, out of America—because Malik would surely be coming after her.
Hunger tightened his stomach to the point of pain. The cuffs locked too tightly around his wrists had left both his hands numb from where they were still locked around a water pipe over his head. The only goon that remained from the pack that had surrounded him the other day sat with his legs spread wide in a folding chair a few feet away. He blinked lazily as he returned Linc’s hard stare, so visibly exhausted that the gun he held limply between his splayed legs seemed seconds from tumbling to the concrete floor.
As they watched each other, no sound in the room but their heavy breathing and the leaky pipe in the distance, Linc almost stole the first words Mia Ali had ever said to him.
Just kill me.
Everyone was better off without him. All of them. Emma. His mom. Even Mia—though it was now too late to save her. To spare her the tragic fate that always befell any woman foolish enough to love a man like him. If it hadn’t been for him, she’d still be living a life full of fake smiles and empty sex in that sham of a marriage to her disgusting husband, but at least she’d still be breathing.
Now she wouldn’t even have that luxury anymore. All because he’d kidnapped her. All because he hadn’t had the strength to man up and resist the blinding need to take her to the bedroom. He was truly cursed. Doomed to destroy the life of any woman he touched. Any woman he loved.
The goon’s eyes fluttered closed, and his head fell forward, but the moment the weight of his skull bent his neck to the brink, his head flew back up, drawing in a sharp gasp as he violently woke himself back up.
Just kill me, and you can sleep all night.
Linc nearly said the words. It’d be better with him gone. Maybe then Emma would have a real chance at a safe, normal life. And his mom too. After what Linc had done, Malik would never stop hunting him. Hunting Emma. He’d never stop seeking revenge on Linc. Not just for taking Emma—taking what was “rightfully his”—but for fucking his wife as well. Malik was more likely to leave Emma alone—to leave his mother alone—if Linc was gone. Hurting Linc’s family wouldn’t be as satisfying if he wasn’t alive to watch it happen.
Yes, it was better this way. Before he’d left California, the ghetto he’d grown up in had been rapidly gentrifying. It was only a matter of time before his mother could sell the tiny shack she’d bought a decade earlier for ten times what it was worth, leaving her and Emma set for life. Free to leave the country and start a new life somewhere else. A life without him nipping at their heels—professing his undying love even as he cursed them the entire way. Ensuring their eventual doom just for associating with him. Just for loving him back.
“The fuck you looking at?” the goon spat at Linc, squinting one eye and curling his upper lip.
Linc smirked. This guy always talked the most shit when he was fighting to stay awake.
Thankfully for him, the door to the abandoned basement creaked open, sending a sharp beam of light petering into the dark space from the hallway outside. Hakeem appeared for the first time since Linc had woken up, bound in that room, two nights earlier.
After looking over his shoulder, the goon shot to his feet, wide awake at the sight of his boss.
Hakeem didn’t leave the doorway, his dark brown eyes riveted to Linc. “Spoke to Malik. Change of plan… No Americans. Just kill the son of a bitch.”
Linc’s eyes fell closed.
“But keep it down, we have important guests upstairs.”
Linc opened his eyes just as the sleepy goon looked away from the door Hakeem had stepped out of and met his eyes across the room. The goon’s blue orbs widened at Linc, and then he shrugged as if silently apologizing for what he was about to do with the gun still hanging at his side.
“Just do it,” Linc’s deep voice rang out for the first time that day, hoarse from thirst and rife with desperation.
The goon seemed in the midst of getting sentimental. Of telling Linc that their time together in the humid basement had been the best hostage situation of his life. That, of all the assholes he’d strung up to the water pipe, Linc was his very favorite. Then the goon seemed to come to his senses, realizing how ridiculous that was, and raised the gun in his hand.
Linc took only a moment to stare down the barrel of the gun before he closed his eyes once more, just as the goon cocked it, the unmistakable sound filling the room like a firecracker going off. Swallowing thickly, Linc waited for the hit.
The gun went off, the boom of the bullet so powerful it made Linc’s ears ring, and he waited for the journey to the mysterious place so many mortals have envisioned but never been to. The journey to the other side. He waited for that journey with hope in his heart, wondering if his wife would be there.
It wasn’t until a moment later that Linc realized dead men probably couldn’t feel their ears ringing the way he could feel his own ringing right then. That they probably couldn’t be annoyed by the fact that their damn arms were still numb from being slung over their head the way his were right then. He realized, if he were dead, it would’ve been impossible for him to complete those last two thoughts at all, and that realization caused his eyes to fly open with a gasp.
The goon lay on the floor before him. It appeared he’d finally surrendered to the sleep he’d been fighting all night and—if the bullet wound between his eyes was any indication—apparently against his will. The wound oozed blood that streamed down his nose and soaked into his eyeball before finally dripping down to a puddle on the concrete floor. The gun Linc believed had just gone off laid limp in the goon’s hand, his finger still on the trigger, his limbs strewn every which way on the floor.
Clarity crept in on Linc, and his eyes shot up, across the basement, and locked onto Jason O’Malley, stomping toward him in his signature suit, with his own gun hanging at his side. A gun that still had white smoke billowing from the barrel.
Linc’s mouth fell open.
Jason’s bald head gleamed under the dull yellow light of the basement—his jaw clenched and teeth grinding as he stalked toward Linc, hazel eyes ablaze.
“What the fu—” Linc couldn’t finish, his gaze following Jason as he bent down next to the goon and ruffled inside his pockets.
The clink of keys rang into the air after Jason fished them out. He stood tall, and wordlessly approached Linc, reaching up to undo the handcuffs locked around his wrists.
A million thoughts raced through Linc’s mind—and even more singed the tip of his tongue—as he watched Jason at that moment. But as Linc lowered his freed arms to his sides, his limbs screaming in pain from behind held up in the same position for so long, all he could manage was profanity.
“You’re supposed to be watching my fucking kid.”
If Jason was offended he didn’t show it, face remaining stoic. “She’s fine, and a hell of a lot smarter than you, if we’re being completely honest.”
“Where is she?”
“Safe.”
“How did you—?” Linc didn’t finish his question because the thoughts racing through his mind answered them all on their own.
Jason took hold of the flaps of Linc’s sweatshirt and yanked him forward. “You unimaginable, unfathomable, unbelievable goddamn fool. You slept with the mayor’s wife?”
The light bulb that went on in Linc’s head nearly blinded him. He pulled open the flap of his sweatshirt and looked down. Sure enough, a circular adhesive greeted him from the inside the flap. The transparent tracker powerful enough to span hundreds of miles was nearly invisible to the naked eye.
Linc’s eyes flew back up to Jason’s, wide in amazement.
“You’re welcome. You unimaginable, goddamn idiot,” Jason grumbled. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Jason turned away from Linc without another word, gun still smoking at his side, and at that moment, Linc wondered how many men he’d already killed to get inside that basement. He didn’t know how Jason had got in. As an intelligence operative, the man was basically Casper and moved in complete silence. Linc realized it didn’t matter how he’d got in—he was just happy that he had. Happy and amazed. Amazed that being bound for over forty-eight hours had nearly driven him to the brink of insanity. To a place where he’d been ready for death. Hoping for death. A place where he’d convinced himself that death was what was best for him. Was the best for his daughter.
With every moment he watched Jason retreat, still too stunned to move his bones to follow, Linc collected himself a little more, realizing what a mistake it would’ve been to allow some goon to take him out. To leave his daughter alone in the world when she would always be better with him by her side. He pushed his eyes closed for a long moment, terrified at how deeply he’d sunk into a dark world he never wanted to revisit again. When he opened them again, everything had cleared, and he felt like himself once more.
Eyes open in more ways than one, Linc stumbled after Jason, his limbs still struggling to remember how to function after being motionless for so long. He slowed his pace as he passed the dead body. Bending down, he took the goon’s gun and then sank his hand into the pocket of his black slacks. He came up with his cell phone in his hand—which he’d seen the goon slide into his pocket days earlier—amazed to find that it was still alive. With only 3% battery power left, Linc could only pray that he could still pull up the map he’d been staring the other night, right before everything went black.
The map did come up, prompting a loud beep to fill the basement as the phone warned him that it was on the verge of death. The pulsing red dot greeted Linc once more, indicating that Mia’s GPS was still active and that, somehow, she was on the water. Probably in a boat that would soon carry her to a place out of range, ensuring he lost her forever. It was only a matter of time before that boat surpassed all the land and bridges he could still see on the map and sailed into the middle of an ocean. To a place he could never reach.
His heart exploded in his chest at the thought and, even though he’d just saved his life, he knew he’d be forcing his friend to babysit for another night.
37
Emma remained fast asleep in the back seat of Jason’s Mercedes saloon even as the wheels of his car screeched against the asphalt as Jason slammed on the breaks in the middle of Tooley Street, a road just alongside the River Thames. Tower Bridge greeted the car from above the water, its yellows lights booming into the night sky and making the dark waters glow. The two massive, gray stone pillars that had made the bridge iconic soared into the starry sky, their Victorian Gothic style giving the bridge an eerie feel in the darkness.
Thankfully, it was the middle of the night, so coming to such a jarring halt hadn’t put them at risk of an accident on the empty street. Linc found himself looking over his shoulder from the passenger seat due to the sudden halt, so violent it made him fly forward even though he was buckled in, forcing him to brace himself on the glove compartment. He exhaled in relief when his worried green eyes landed on the back seat, and he found his baby girl still fast asleep. She wore the same pajamas Linc had helped her change into after her bath earlier that evening—one of his white t-shirts that swallowed her body whole from where her tiny limbs were curled up a tight ball. Blonde spirals fanned over her face, and she cuddled the stuffed bear close to her chest with her lips and nose buried in the toy’s plush yellow fur
His heart stayed with Emma, even as his eyes zoomed forward and landed on the touchscreen on the dashbo
ard of Jason’s car, where they’d pulled up the GPS map that had kept them updated on Mia’s whereabouts for the entire furious drive from The Ali Hotel. As soon as his eyes hit that touchscreen, all Linc could think about was getting to the red dot that still pulsed in the center. One look at that map and he instantly understood why Jason had brought the car to such a grinding halt.
He’d done it because, sailing toward them in the river’s dark waters, minutes from passing under the bridge, was a white yacht. A yacht represented by the red dot still thudding on the touchscreen and illuminating the interior of the dark car. The three-tiered yacht radiated atop the waters, sailing calmly toward them even though the very sight of it sent a thunderous storm raging through every bone in Linc’s body.
Jason spoke the words Linc already knew, keeping his voice down for the bundle still slumbering in the backseat. “This is the last jumpable bridge before they reach the ocean and go off the radar. You won’t survive the leap from Queen Elizabeth…”
Since Linc already knew the warning Jason was speaking, he’d already thrown open the passenger door and had one foot out on the asphalt before Jason had finished his sentence. Without another word or even a goodbye, his eyes locked on the boat sailing toward them in the distance, seconds from passing the last bridge he could clear without risking his life, Linc broke into a run without even bothering to close the door behind him. Without even bothering to remind Jason to take care of his daughter. Linc knew Jason would never let anything happen to Emma, and now it was time for him to make sure nothing happened to the woman he and Emma both loved. The only woman, either of them, could imagine stepping in to take the place of her mother. The only woman who could complete their brand new, budding family, in the way that Emma deserved.
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