by Amie Gibbons
Next to a hole in the wall.
Was that sound Grant punching holes in my walls!
“And your agent Kowalski is okay?” Daddy asked, voice as hard as his face.
“Yes,” Grant said. “Still unconscious. Chloroform by the smell.”
Daddy looked… unkempt, like he’d rolled outta bed and ran out the door. His jeans and polo top were rumpled, he had scruff like he’d forgotten to shave, and his silver hair stuck up in front, doing the same wahoo thing mine did the one time I cut it short.
I’d never seen Daddy all disheveled outside the house.
Mama’s short dyed blond curls were all over the place and she was in pajamas, but she always said writer trumped Southern when it came to makin’ sure she looked like a neat and tidy lady on the streets.
She’d ran to the grocery store in her nightgown more than once when Daddy was at work and she was in the middle of a book.
“When my man got here, Kowalski was out on the mattress with that rug over him,” Grant said, nodding to Quil.
Quil pat the tall speaker next to him.
No, he was patting a folded-up Pyro on top of the speaker!
At least my baby was okay, but he was gonna be all crampy when he woke up if they left him like that.
I cleared my throat, trying to tell Quil to unfold him.
Nothing came out.
“And who are you?” Daddy asked, staring at Quil.
“Aquila Marius,” Quil said, holding his hand out. “Quil.”
Daddy took his hand, staring him down, and I gulped.
I wasn’t exactly ready for him to meet the parents.
“Ariana’s boyfriend,” Daddy said. It wasn’t a question.
Mama finally looked up, her round face splotchy and streaked with tears.
No. Why was Mama crying? Whoever made my mama cry was gonna get a thumpin’.
She held out her hand and Quil turned it over, bowing over it.
“Why are you here?” Daddy asked. “FBI doesn’t usually call the boyfriend for missing persons.”
“He showed up soon after my agent,” Grant said.
Quil sat next to Mama on the couch. “What has Ariana told you about me?”
Mama glanced at Grant.
“He knows,” Quil said. “And I’m assuming by that, that you do.”
She nodded. “One of my series is vampire romance mysteries. I have to say, you are much more… normal than my vampires.”
Quil smiled but it was strained. “We will find Ariana. We know who took her, and we even think we know why.”
“But…” Mama pointed to the window.
Quil nodded. “I can’t walk around right now, but I can smell the kidnapper.”
“Serial killer,” Daddy said. “Don’t beat around the bush with us. We know what she was chasing.”
Quil nodded. “Ariana’s alive. He fixated on her, wanted to know more about her powers, he’s not going to kill her, and I’d be surprised if he hurt her.”
I wasn’t missing. I was right here.
A knock on the door made Dan and Mama jump. Dan got it and Woods and another guy I was bettin’ was another agent walked in.
“Woods here is going to square you away,” Grant said. “We’ll keep you updated.”
Daddy stood. “We’ve been here before, Agent Grant. We know the drill.”
Grant nodded and they… I can’t say shook hands, more like clenched them in that manly way big guys do.
“Colonel,” Grant said, “I promise the same thing I did then. We will find her.”
Daddy nodded as they released. “She’s my baby. She may be your agent, but she’s my baby.”
The stared at each other and Quil looked between them, obviously as confused as me.
“You can not help, Colonel,” Grant finally said. “Yes, we have been here, and last time, you got in the way. You can not do that this time.”
What!
When I was taken back in college, Daddy interfered?
“You can’t stop me,” Daddy said, low and dangerous.
Geez. I hadn’t heard that tone since I was fifteen and Daddy and Ava got into a fight, and he ended up disowning her.
“I can,” Grant said. “I would prefer not to. This is not a missing college girl. This is a missing FBI agent. We have every resource at our disposal searching for her, natural and supernatural. If you try a spell again, you could interfere with the magic we’re working.”
A spell!
My big, tough retired Marine daddy and magic spells just did not fit in the same sentence.
What the hell had happened when those wackadoodles kidnapped me two years ago?
“Then we work together, coordinate,” Daddy said. “What if it were your daughter?”
Grant nodded. “We have to keep it out of the reports. We can’t have civilians helping on a case.”
“He is.” Daddy jerked his head at Quil.
Now why was I gettin’ the impression Daddy didn’t like Quil?
“He and his team are consultants,” Grant said.
Dan and Andy led my parents outside, leaving Quil and Grant.
“You okay here?” Grant asked.
Quil nodded. “Yeah. I’m useless until sunset. Don’t think I’ll be able to sleep, but I can stay here and do research, call supernatural people in my circles.”
I’d never seen Quil lookin’ so lost.
Grant clamped a hand on his shoulder, nodding as he squeezed.
“We’ll keep an open line. You do the same,” Grant said and walked out, locking the door and shutting it behind him.
Weren’t they gonna process the scene?
Maybe they already had?
Quil grabbed Pyro and walked to the table, sitting at my computer, holding Pyro under one arm like a teddy.
“You were trying to wake him up, weren’t you?” Quil said to my carpet as he hugged him to his chest. “You came home, saw Jet out and Ariana gone, and the sun rose as you were trying to rouse him. Probably felt as helpless as I do now.”
He buried his face in my carpet.
Was my big strong vampire crying?
My heart broke.
Please don’t cry. It’s okay. It’ll be okay.
He looked up with a deep breath he didn’t need and put Pyro on the table, turning on the computer, eyes as hard and haunted as I’d ever seen them as he pulled out his phone.
###
Awareness came back in inches; actually, it was more like centimeters.
It was dark. Oh, that’s cuz my eyes were closed.
I wanted to open them, but the lids wouldn’t listen. They were too heavy to move.
There was pain… somewhere. Maybe my head?
The second I recognized the pain, it tripled.
My brain throbbed, going in different directions and bumping into other parts of the brain.
Brains shouldn’t be allowed to do that.
I lay, listenin’ to the throbbing for I don’t know how long.
As it quelled, I was able to hear other things. The slight creak of floors, the hint of a rustle of skin on sheets.
Skin on sheets?
Oh, that was me. I was moving.
I focused and I could feel my arm.
Hey, I had an arm!
The brain came back a little with the realization that I had an arm.
Focus. Move. Yup, the arm was working. The soft cloth under me whispered as my arm brushed over it.
The other arm moved with it, but didn’t touch anything but air.
I pulled my arms apart.
Wait. No, I couldn’t. They were stuck together. And they weren’t in front of me, they were behind. I wanted them up front. My shoulders were feeling kind of strained, but the arms wouldn’t cooperate.
What was that cold thing on my wrists?
A slight clink as I drew the wrists together helped bring my mind back a little more.
I was handcuffed.
My stiff shoulders cried a complaint as I wigg
led. I settled on my side again and relaxed my arms.
My eyes fluttered open. It took a few tries to get them to stay that way, then took another minute for my brain to start processin’ where I was.
I was lying on a queen-sized bed with soft white sheets and a thick red and gold comforter that looked like something from a hotel. The sheets and comforter were pulled down to my waist. The whitish wall I was facing had nice off-gold stripes on it. The curtains to the floor in the middle of that wall were a beautiful rusty red with a gold pattern.
I squirmed, terribly uncomfortable.
Which was a good thing.
The discomfort helped clear my head and wake me up.
Helped me piece together my brain enough to ask myself what happened.
We’d gone home to sleep and then my parents came to visit… wait, that wasn’t right. That was part of the dream.
Ohhhhh.
I remembered!
Truck, the escape, the tracking, the gris-gris, Jean Montgomery with his spell, and then I went home with Jet.
I was the one they were looking for. I was the one taken.
Panic shot through me and I swallowed it down, taking deep breaths, legs shakin’ so hard I was afraid they’d cramp.
There was a window. There was a door. That meant there were ways out.
Modern houses are not built to stand up to attacks. From outside or in.
I wasn’t trapped.
I’d be okay.
Fear tasted like metal on the back of my tongue and my arms joined the shakin’, straining them against the cuffs.
No! I didn’t get to sit and panic. I didn’t get to be a mess.
My head was killin’ me, the throbbing of a hangover mixed with too little sleep.
But it’d be okay. I had to believe that. I’d get up and out.
And the guys were looking for me.
Grant’s gonna kill me for letting myself get snatched again.
Of course, they’d find and rescue me. That went without saying.
Grant and Quil wouldn’t sleep until I was found. I just had to stay alive until that happened.
Simple enough.
I swung my legs off the side of the bed and sat up, careful to not jar my pounding skull.
I was still in my pink pjs with the penguins on them that Mama bought me last Christmas. The thin pants and tank top weren’t much protection against elements but it was perfectly warm in the room.
So either a place with no AC, or my kidnapper didn’t feel the need to freeze the entire house just because it was summer.
Probably not a Southerner then.
Who was I kidding? I knew who took me.
A giggle escaped me.
I have to get outta here. Completely trapped. I don’t understand how this happened. I don’t understand how I let this happen. What’s he gonna do to me? I can’t just sit here. If I try to run, he’ll catch me like that other girl. I’ll be here forever. The walls will be here forever. I’m never gonna get out and…
No!
I took a deep breath.
Nope, don’t panic. Don’t get to panic.
In the office, when I wasn’t in immediate danger, and I had Grant right there to ride to my rescue, I could have a breakdown and throw a drama queen cryin’ party.
But this wasn’t the safety of the office.
This was real life.
And right now, I was all I had.
Somehow knowing this actually mattered made me calmer.
The guys would rescue me. They had to. But still, it’d be nice to get out on my own and show them I didn’t always need to be rescued.
Yeah, cuz that’s what was important.
My thoughts were all over the place.
Maybe the chloroform was still in my system?
I lay back on the bed and curled my legs into my chest.
We’d practiced how to get out of various bindings in trainings at work, but I’d never been good at them.
I inched my arms under my butt, straining my shoulders as my wrists struggled to clear it.
“That’s it, I’m giving up carbs,” I muttered under my breath, makin’ my dry throat sting.
The sound almost seemed to sing across the room, far too loud in the silence.
I tucked myself into the tiniest ball I could and inched my arms down, willing my hips to shrink, pushing my wrists against the cuffs until the cold metal bit deep into the skin. I grunted and pulled.
Ha ha! I cheered mentally as my hands slid over my butt and I lifted them in front of me.
Now I just had to find something to pick them with.
By the way, picking handcuff locks? Not nearly as easy as they make it look in the movies.
I looked around, taking in the rest of the room. Besides the bed, it was barren. There was a closet on the wall next to the door and it was empty.
Not even a hanger.
I took a deep breath and slowly stood. The head still hurt. The wrists felt like they were about to fall off and were red and bruised down to the bones. The legs were working though.
And the mind was definitely making a comeback. Hey, bonus.
I peeled back the curtains and saw sunny woods. Lots and lots of woods.
Not really narrowin’ it down. You could have that just off main roads in Nashville, and this view would be pretty normal outside the city in any suburban or small town.
Oh, and the window was nailed shut.
Of course, cuz when you kidnap someone, you can’t have the prisoner getting away.
I hate the woods. I really didn’t like the idea of running around barefoot.
There were thorns and rocks and creepy crawlies.
But if it was a choice between having unprotected feet in the woods and staying in a house with a psycho, I knew which I was goin’ with.
I looked around the room for something heavy.
It wasn’t exactly the brightest idea to smash through the window. The kidnaper would probably hear it and come running.
But I at least had a chance of outrunnin’ him and losing him in the woods.
I could try the door and tiptoe out if it’s not locked.
It was possible I’d be able to sneak into another room and get out through a window that wasn’t nailed down. But that meant I was risking all the windows being nailed shut, or the kidnaper seeing me in the hall.
I’d been kidnapped by fanatics almost two years ago, and then there’d been a group of them and they kept a guard outside.
I’d sang at the top of my lungs then, trying to keep myself calm because I knew there was no escape.
But I wasn’t that scared little girl tryin’ to figure out her freak power anymore. I wasn’t going to sit around hoping for the people around me to regain their sanity. It was good detective work on the guys’ part that saved me last time, nothing that I did.
I was not going to let that happen again.
I would not be the victim, the damsel in distress, again.
I am a FBI agent for crying out loud!
There was just one problem. Nothing in the room was even remotely helpful for breaking windows.
So the door it was.
Crap in a handbasket.
The door looked funny and it took me a moment to realize it was cuz it opened outward instead of in.
All interior doors open inward in normal houses.
I gulped, turned the knob very slowly and pushed.
And it didn’t budge.
Okay, the knob was turning, which meant it wasn’t locked, but it wouldn’t move. Was something blocking it? I tried again, pushing with slowly increasing pressure. Stupid, stubborn door wasn’t moving for anything short of a vamp knocking it off its hinges.
Plan C then.
Which was basically a revised plan A. I pulled down the comforter to get to the sheet. I could try to wrap my arm in it and elbow the glass.
The sheet would hopefully protect my arm from the shards without being enough padding to soften the blow.
/>
I froze with my hands on the bed at a scrapin’ outside the door. I dropped the sheet. If I could get behind the door, I could jump whoever came in.
The door opened before I could take three steps.
“Oh,” I said without meaning to.
“What?” Truck asked pleasantly. “You thought someone else took you?”
My shoulders slumped. “No. Hoping is more like it.”
“Oh, Ariana, now you’re hurting my feelings.” Truck shut the door behind him.
He was holding a bottle of water.
I licked my lips.
“You’re a serial killer who’s done in who knows how many people.” My voice sounded rough and the talking made me want to cough.
I held it down. If I started, I might not stop.
“Would you’ve believed me if I lied and said I was thrilled to see ya?” I said.
“No,” Truck said. “I’m glad you didn’t try.”
I sat down on the bed, body slumpin’, letting the despair shine through. I gave in to it, lettin’ tears come and tint my eyes as I met his.
None of it was faked.
Maybe it’d be enough.
Look at me. Look how sad and defenseless I am.
Underestimate me so I can slam in your skull and run like the dickens.
He was just a human. A mental one with some powers, but still, just human. I could take him down. Just needed outta these cuffs and a weapon of some kind or to catch him off-guard.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on the run?” I asked.
“I’m hiding,” Truck said.
“I got that. But my team’s gonna find us.”
Why the hell was I pointing that out to him?
“No, they won’t.” Truck smirked. “I’m smart enough to outmaneuver some gorillas with badges.”
Years in prison hadn’t wiped the arrogant gleam from his eyes. I could see it as they met mine. He honestly believed that. He honestly believed he could hide out under the FBI’s nose, with one of their own, and not be caught.
They don’t say, “Pride goeth before a fall,” for nothing.
I’d found his weakness.
Just had to exploit it.
“Especially with a psychic on my side,” he said.
Oh.
My eyes flew wide. He honestly thought I’d help him run?
“Ugh. JB?” I had to struggle not to flinch under that smile. “Do you think I’m gonna help you avoid my team? Tell you when they’re coming and everything? Cuz, I gotta tell ya, that’s not happenin’. I mean, I could lie and say I’d tell you, and you’d know I was lying, cuz you know I’d never do that. So, could you just tell me what you want, so I can negotiate you letting me go?”