He blinked, and things blurred.
“Mia,” he said, his tongue thick. He was going to lose consciousness, and he fought against the rising tide of dark water.
Stumbling, he tried to move toward the rectangle of light that indicated the front door. “Mia.” He dropped to his knees as the man came up behind him.
“It would’ve so much easier if you’d have just come,” he said in a tired voice that didn’t make sense inside Declan’s muddled mind. “Now we’ll have to carry you.”
Declan fell to his side, his eyes drifting closed as sleep took him completely.
* * *
When he woke, the scent of gasoline and skunk was enough to make his stomach clench. He groaned, trying to figure out where he was and why his mouth tasted like someone had stuffed old gym socks in it.
He thought, Mia, but she didn’t appear.
No one did. The room didn’t have much heat, and he yelled for someone to come talk to him. He found himself tied to a standard kitchen chair, his back abnormally straight as his arms ached from their position behind him.
He started working on the cords keeping him prisoner, his mind clearing with every breath of oxygen he took.
Several minutes later—or an hour, Declan wasn’t sure—the door in front of him opened. A woman walked in, but it wasn’t the dark-haired beauty he wanted to see.
But the blonde with the red lipstick.
“Untie me,” he said.
She grinned like he’d just given her the best birthday present ever. “I can’t do that, Declan.” She stalked toward him, her right red heels clicking against the cement.
“What do you want?”
“I think you know what I want.”
Did he? He didn’t know this woman, but something told him not to tell her that. He forced himself to be quiet as she stepped closer still.
“You didn’t get rid of the lawyer,” she said. “So I hired one for you.” Her breath smelled like stale mint, and he flinched away from it.
“I don’t need a lawyer,” he said.
Surprise crossed her face, but it seemed false. “Really? Then why do you have that Addler woman working for you?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because,” she said, and nothing else. She cocked her head and studied him, and Declan didn’t like it. He’d been on the stage in front of thousands. Hundreds of thousands at the show in Paris two years ago.
And he’d never felt so unworthy.
Fear struck him behind his ribcage. The kind of fear he’d experienced as a child, at the abusive hand of his step-father.
His vision clouded, and Stacy still stood in front of him. Doing nothing. He wasn’t even sure why his body was reacting this way. His fingers clenched, the plastic bindings biting into his skin.
He had to get out of here.
Something bad was going to happen.
His flight or fight reflexes screamed at him as she took another step toward him. “You belong with me,” she said. “And I’ve started a charity to help battered women. We could do so much together.”
Declan looked into her blue eyes, wondering what her angle was. “So you want my money?”
“The money would be nice,” she said, sliding one painted fingernail down the side of his face. Declan worked hard not to flinch away. Not to move at all. “But I really just want you to apologize.”
“For what?” Declan ground out between his teeth. She smelled so sickly sweet that his stomach turned.
“I needed you,” she said, her voice low and menacing when he’d thought her to be purring at him before. “And you weren’t there. Put that restraining order on me. Shut down the only way I had to make money.”
Her fingernails scratched now, and Declan winced away from the pain along the side of his neck.
“Because of you, it took another three years and an association with some rough characters to get away from my husband.”
“How was I supposed to know that?” he asked. She’d been a crazed fan. Another face in the crowd. Yes, he donated money to good causes and charities, but was he expected to save everyone?
“I wrote you a lot of letters,” she said. “You knew.”
“I didn’t,” he said, but that made her snarl. He realized he shouldn’t have admitted to not reading the fan mail he got. But the band got a ton of it, and surely people knew they couldn’t read every note scrawled on every napkin.
The band.
His mind seized onto that, because he was supposed to be in a conference call with them that night. So they’d know something happened to him.
Everyone already knows, he told himself. Mia had been at the house. He heard her cries in his mind, and he hoped she hadn’t been left unable to call for help—or worse.
His mind spun then, as he imagined all the horrible things she could be going through.
The woman in front of him spoke, but he didn’t hear her. He wanted to ask her where Mia was, but clamped his lips around the words so they wouldn’t come out. Stacy didn’t like Mia, that much had been made obvious.
“I’ll send in Jonas,” she said, and she sashayed her way to the door and left him in the room.
He’d missed who Jonas was and why he was coming in, so when the beefy man who’d stuck him with the needle waltzed in with a laptop balanced in each palm, Declan’s confusion tripled.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Don’t be difficult,” the man barked. “You tell us the account numbers. We make sure the money’s moved. We all go home.”
But Declan knew he would not be going home, even if he gave them the money they wanted. He’d seen Stacy’s face. Seen this guy. The other man had showed up at Mia’s work. No way he and Mia were getting out of this as if they’d just stopped by the ATM and transferred some money from one account to another.
Jonas put the computers down on a table and pulled it over in front of where Declan sat. He wrestled with the chair post, trying to get it move even a little. The plastic zip-ties on his wrists sent pain screaming up his arms, and something sticky started oozing down his thumb. Blood. He’d drawn blood, and he stilled.
“I’m ready for your account number,” Jonas said, his face an unearthly shade of white-blue from the glow of the laptop screen.
“I don’t have my numbers memorized,” Declan said. “I don’t even deal with my money.”
“Who does?” he asked.
Declan ground his teeth together, determined not to give out his manager’s name. It was easily obtained on the Internet, but while this oaf seemed to know how to move money from account to account, maybe he didn’t know how to Google.
“Who?” Jonas demanded again.
Declan raised his chin, sure he was about to regret the idea that had popped into his mind. “My lawyer.”
Chapter Thirteen
Mia opened her eyes, her first realization how wet and cold she was. Rain sprinkled into her eyes, and the sound of it pittered against the leaves surrounding her.
Leaves.
She tried to sit up, but a groan leaked from her mouth. An ache manifested itself in her back, and the memories of how she’d gotten behind this bush rushed through her mind.
“Declan,” she said.
“Over here,” a man called, and footsteps came through the foliage where she was still on the ground.
A man appeared, concern on his face. Mia recognized him, but faintly, and she didn’t know his name.
“Mia?” he asked, and she lifted one hand to her eyes to clear the water. “Are you all right?” He turned as another man appeared from a different direction, and she recognized him too. These were the friends Declan had brought with him to the beach a few weeks ago.
The second man reached for her, his hands huge and tattoos running up the length of both arms. She didn’t know a ton, but she’d worked for plenty of people around town looking for relief, and she recognized some of his ink marking him as a member of the motorcycle club in this part of the stat
e.
The Sentinels.
“I’m Maverick,” he said, his voice calm and soothing. “Can you stand up?” He helped her, giving her strength when she wobbled on her feet. “Jed, call the cops back. I can’t believe they didn’t find her.”
Mia glanced around the woods and found the back of Declan’s house a hundred feet away. Someone had dragged her out here and she hadn’t even known it.
She shivered, and Maverick put his arm around her. “Come on, Mia. Let’s get inside while Jed calls the cops.” He nodded to the other man. “And take pictures. Don’t step anywhere but where you already did.” He seemed to know a lot about how to handle a crime scene, and Mia was mesmerized by him.
“Are you part of the Sentinels?” she asked.
Maverick just glanced at her, his face stoic but not unkind. Once they made it inside the house in front of Declan’s, he helped her sit at the kitchen table. “Tea?” he asked.
She nodded, staring at her wrinkled and pruney fingers. She’d been outside in the rain for a long time. “How long?” she asked, drawing Maverick’s attention.
She could’ve been asking about the tea. But he seemed to know exactly what she meant, and he said, “They took Declan about two hours ago. We don’t know where.” He turned from her and set a kettle on the stove. “I’ve got my guys looking, and the cops came and went through the guest house. We didn’t know you were back there.”
He spoke in a slow, clear cadence, obviously in complete control of the situation, both externally and emotionally. He felt calming to her, despite the tattoos and piercing blue eyes.
“Your guys?” she asked.
“My Sentinels,” he said. “Do you know what a Sentinel is, Mia?”
She struggled to make her mind work past a couple of words. Her body started to warm, and she managed to say, “A soldier. A watchman.”
“Right,” he said. “Or a guard. That’s what we do.” He faced her, a bit of challenge in those eyes now. He could see right into her soul with them, and a tremor of fear moved through Mia. He was the kind of man she filed restraining orders against, and yet he had the soul of a gentle giant at the same time.
“My guys will find Declan,” he said with confidence. “Do you want honey with your tea?”
The two sides of the conversation whiplashed her around, but Mia nodded. Maverick finished making the tea and brought her a cup. He poured himself one and sat with her at the table. He’d only taken one sip when he said, “Oh, the cops are here.”
How he knew, she wasn’t sure. But he got up and headed for the back door, stepping out and closing it behind him so she couldn’t see anything.
She didn’t want to see. She stayed in the house, which smelled like air freshener and tea, and sipped her hot drink. Several minutes passed where her mind whirred through everything that had happened.
“Oh, my heck,” she whispered to herself. “You led them to Declan.” She realized now that the man in the parking lot at her office building wasn’t a lawyer. He’d given her a card and told her to give it to Declan, hoping she’d go right to him with it.
And she had.
“Stupid,” she chastised herself as she got up. Leaving her tea on the table, she moved to the windows at the back of the dining room. She caught sight of the back of a police officer as he rounded the corner of the house, probably going back into the woods where she was found.
They’d want to interview her too.
How no one had known she was there was a mystery, and she frowned at the scene in the back yard. It looked peaceful, not like a man had been abducted from his own home only a couple of hours ago.
“My car,” she whispered, her breath fogging the cold glass. Wouldn’t they have seen her car? She strode to the back door Maverick had gone through and went outside. She’d parked her car right in front of Declan’s guest house, as the driveway went almost all the way to the porch.
It was gone.
Feeling lost and confused and alone, Mia pulled out her phone. Surely others had tried to call Declan, but she had to do something.
She tapped on his name in her texts and pushed the phone icon to get the line to ring. It did, and she drew in a deep breath and held it. She pressed her eyes closed as the phone rang and then rang again.
He didn’t answer, and Mia hung up when his voicemail message picked up. “Where are you?” she asked, and she put through another call.
The line rang once, twice, three times before he said, “Mia?”
“Declan.” Relief rushed through her so strongly she couldn’t say anything else.
“Where are you?” he asked, his voice tight, tight, tight.
Mia hesitated to answer him. Something wasn’t right, and her lawyerly instincts kicked in. “Where are you?” she asked.
“I need help with my bank accounts,” he said next, only adding more confusion to Mia’s mind.
She said nothing. He’d been taken. She’d been hidden in the woods. And now he needed help with his bank accounts? Someone wanted his money, and she couldn’t believe it would be little Stacy Keyes from Birmingham Alabama.
“Mia?” he asked.
“I’ll get the info,” she said, though she didn’t have it. Didn’t even know where to find it. “Where are you?” she asked again.
“No cops,” he said, and she knew then that he was being fed lines by someone else. Why he was going along with it, she didn’t know. Surely she couldn’t show up alone wherever he was and everything would magically be okay.
“They’ll text you the address,” he said.
“Okay,” she said. “And you’re okay?”
“I’m tied to a chair,” he said. “My wrists are bleeding. But I’m okay. And you?”
“I’m fine,” she said, deciding not to tell him about being passed out in the woods for a couple of hours. “Just heading to my office now.”
A police officer came around the side of Declan’s house, and she darted back inside as Declan said, “Make sure you bring everything.”
“I will,” she said, wishing they’d worked out secret codes beforehand. “Even the…?”
“All of it, Mia. You know who to call to get everything, right?”
In that moment, she realized he wasn’t talking about bringing things. But people. “Of course,” she said, watching as four cops approached the house, followed by Jed and Maverick. “I need a few minutes to get it all.”
Scuffling came through the line and then a different man said, “Just get it all and get here.”
The line went dead, and Mia was left holding her phone when the cops came through the back door. A moment later her phone chimed, and she held it toward them. “That’s where Declan is. I just got off the phone with him. We need to take in every officer, every Sentinel.” She looked at Maverick. “Everything we’ve got.” She drew in a deep breath, wishing it didn’t shake her lungs quite so much.
“He was scared, and nothing scares Declan.”
Maverick nodded, his phone already at his ear. He stepped out of the kitchen when he started speaking, and the cops just stared at her phone. Finally, Morgan Quinn lifted his head and said, “This is in Williamsburg, Mia. We’ll have to call the department there.”
“Fine,” she said. “Do it quickly.” She took her phone back and pocketed it. Maverick still stood in the living room, his back to her as he faced the windows. She edged in his direction so he could get the address to where Declan was being held.
Behind her, chatter came through the police radios, and Jed stepped in front of her. “What’s your number?” he asked, his voice low and his eyes on the officers.
She recited it quickly to him, and a moment later, her phone beeped.
“Silence that,” he said. “Send me the address. We’ll get him out.”
She wasn’t sure what kind of friends Jed and Maverick were, but Maverick definitely had control of the motorcycle club. Mia had never run into legal trouble with the Sentinels—in fact, a couple of times, they’d accompanied h
er client to court as a way of showing silent support against domestic and spousal abuse.
Hopefully, everything they did was legal, because she couldn’t get involved with them if they weren’t. Not if she wanted to keep her job.
But right now, she wanted to keep Declan alive, so she forwarded the address to Jed and turned back to the cops. Jed and Maverick were private citizens, and they could do what they wanted.
If she had to create a diversion so they could, so be it. “Update me,” she said, stepping over to Morgan again.
“Have you called your family?” he asked.
“No, why?”
“Maybe you should,” he said with a shrug. But the look in his eyes suggested a lot more than that, and Mia tried to riddle through it. “Phoenix, at least,” he said. “He’d probably be interested in knowing you’re okay.” He turned back to the other cops in the group, two of which were on their phones, talking in loud voices about the “hostage situation” and “possible drug cartel connections.”
No way Mia was involving anyone in her family in this. Phoenix and Allegra had just gotten engaged, and she’d never forgive herself if her brother got hurt because she’d called him.
Nope.
She was on her own.
Chapter Fourteen
Declan had never told Mia about Maverick, the motorcycle club, or Jed’s team of Army buddies. He ran with some…tough friends, and he’d always fit in with his bad boy rock persona. Sure, they weren’t really bad men, but the reputation of a secret society of servicemen or a motorcycle club member preceded them.
And he needed all of them, at the top of their game, to get out of where he was. He’d bought himself some time, but now he had two goons in the room with him, both standing on one side of the door like he could somehow get through it with a chair tied to his body.
He wasn’t entirely sure who Stacy had fallen in with, but he remembered Mia saying something about her being from Alabama. And there were some seriously messed up groups and secret organizations down there. Everything from white supremacy groups to drug cartels running ops across the water to Cuba and Mexico.
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