I kept telling myself that she had simply lost track of time. The man must have been picking up his friend’s kid and was a shitty driver. My gut didn’t believe me, and it was almost always right.
“Evans,” Xander answered on the fifth ring.
“What the fuck took you so long to answer?” I growled.
Xander sighed. “Jessa saw your name on the caller ID and forwarded the call. I don’t think she wanted to talk to you.” He sounded as irritated as he did amused. His assistant was a tiny slip of a girl, practically afraid of her own shadow. I was a big guy and even though I’d barely spoken to her, she seemed to be frightened by me.
“Whatever,” I snarled. “I don’t have time for this shit. What did you find out about that plate I sent you?”
“What’s going on?” Xander asked, sounding more alert, and I could hear the tap, tap of his fingers on his keyboard.
“I’m not sure yet. Just find me the info.” The school was big and a bit of a maze at times, so it took me a couple of twists and turns to get to Jenna’s room. I finally reached it and pulled on the door but it didn’t budge. It was locked, and the room was dark.
“Fuck!” I started to retrace my steps, stopping to check every door and look in every corner.
“One of the tech guys just sent me the file. The number you gave us was stolen but it didn’t belong to the vehicle it was on either. We managed to track down the—”
“Fuck!” I cut him off with a shout as I ran towards Jenna’s purse, which was tossed in a corner by a side exit. “Put a BOLO out on that Mercedes, Xander,” I shouted, then hung up. I grabbed Jenna’s bag before booking it back out to my car as I dialed another number.
“Weston,” I barked as soon as he picked up. “I need you to call your CIA contact, Alex Shaw, and get the number for Martin Castle.”
“Hello to you too, Q. Why are you asking me and not Xander?”
“Because he’ll have to go through official channels or risk the firm’s clearance. I need him now. Jenna is missing.”
“What the fuck, Q? Why didn’t you fucking lead with that? I’ll call you back.”
The line clicked off, and I tossed the phone onto the middle console as I started the car and peeled out of the parking lot. I headed towards Gray Security, my lead foot fueled by fear and rage. The second my phone made a noise, I whipped it up to my ear. “What?” I snapped.
“Alex is tracking him down. He’ll have him call as soon as he finds him,” Weston informed me. “I’m meeting you at the office. Now, tell me what the fuck happened.”
“Chances are high that the man stole the car from someone near where he is living or staying,” Martin explained over our video call. “My program is using your description to comb security footage within a twenty-mile radius of the owner’s shop where the car was taken from.” His fingers flew across the keyboard and I knew he was moving things along as fast as possible, but I was losing my mind. I concentrated on traffic cams in the area by the school so I wouldn’t start smashing things like The Hulk.
One of the Gray Security tech guys rushed over to my desk and dropped a file. I flipped it open to look over the profiles of Jenna’s students until I spotted the boy I’d seen with her the other day. “This one. Darren Calvin,” I said, passing it back. Only a few minutes later, the same guy was back, handing me the information for Sylvia Calvin, the boy’s mom.
My eyes landed on her occupation. She was a property manager for one of the buildings in the Atlanta Medical Center.
“I found the son of a bitch!” I flipped back to the computer screen in time to see Martin fist pump the air, then punch a key on his keyboard. “Sending it to you.”
A new screen popped up with a mug shot of the guy I’d seen outside Jenna’s school. My blood turned to ice in my veins. No wonder the quick glimpse of him that I’d caught had put me on edge. I knew this guy.
Manny Aszuko. Arrested multiple times for armed robbery and attempted murder. Though they weren’t able to make those charges stick because witnesses had a habit of disappearing. He’d been convicted twice of racketeering and done time. Known associate of the Portillo family. There were rumors that he had a violent temper and was into dark shit.
“Fucking hell,” Weston breathed from over my shoulder. “This guy has my sister?” His face flushed with rage and his fist came down hard on my desk, cracking it.
“Word is that Manny took over when Ira Portillo was busted.” Martin scrubbed his hands down his face, leaving his black, square-rimmed glasses askew.
“What in the hell could be the connection between a guy like that and a single mom who’s in charge of the facilities at a medical building?”
Xander’s head jerked up and he stalked over to us and elbowed Weston out of the way to look over my shoulder. “Which medical building?”
“The Atlanta Medical Center.”
“Shit,” he growled. “They have more than doctors’ offices there. That building is outsourced to other businesses. One of the District Attorney’s Community Prosecution Offices are in that building. I remember reading an article about the initiative. If she’s also in charge of security, she’ll have access to a master key for the whole building.”
“The fucking ledger,” I said through clenched teeth as the whole picture started to come together. “He’s going after the ledger, and he needs her to get him in the building and office.” When Ira was arrested, the district attorney’s office had managed to get their hands on a ledger that contained all of the assets, business dealings, and contacts used in his operation. If someone was looking to move in on him while they were vulnerable, possessing that ledger would go a long way in gaining power.
“What the hell does he need Jenna for?”
I was already on my feet, tucking my gun into my holster and grabbing the keys to a company car, so I barely heard his question.
“They don’t,” Martin said matter-of-factly. “She’s collateral damage.”
“Shut the fuck up, Martin,” Xander snapped as he stalked to my office. My hands clenched, and I was breathing heavily as I fought the urge to pick up the monitor and toss it into the wall. “One of my guys found the Mercedes in the parking lot of a run-down motel. It’s possible Jenna is there, but I think it’s more likely they were simply switching vehicles.”
“Exterior cameras?” I asked, even though I knew what the answer was.
“No. But, it’s a place to start.”
“Text me the address.” I didn’t wait for them to come up with a plan. The next second, I was racing down the stairwell to the garage where I commandeered a vehicle and drove like a bat out of hell to get to my woman.
Chapter 7
Jenna
Darren and I were huddled together on the floor in the corner of a crappy hotel room. My hands were zip tied together in front of me, but they hadn’t bothered restraining Darren. My best guess was that it had been about six hours since we’d been taken from the school—dragged out and tossed into the back of a car. With the way the man I’d seen arguing with Darren’s mom had driven, I hadn’t been sure if we were going to survive the ride to wherever he was taking us.
When we’d pulled up in front of a seedy motel, I was torn between relief that we’d stopped driving and freaked out about the fact that I’d been kidnapped and brought to a secondary location.
When the sun set half an hour ago, the man I’d seen arguing with Darren’s mom left with her and one other man. He’d left men behind to guard us. Every few minutes, I craned my neck to peer over the bed and see what they were doing. They weren’t paying much attention to us as they played poker to pass the time. It wasn’t like they needed to be worried that I was going to try anything, not with Darren here. I felt him trembling next to me and knew I had to do something help him remain calm.
“We’re going to be okay,” I reassured him, whispering so I wouldn’t draw their attention to us.
“But my mom,” he whimpered.
I had no clue what t
hey wanted with her, only that it was somehow connected to her job. Once they got whatever it was, I didn’t know what was going to happen to her—or to us. We’d seen their faces, which meant we’d be able to identify them to the police. That couldn’t bode well for us. But the facts didn’t matter. Not when Darren needed me to tell him she was going to come back for him.
“Your mom loves you. She’s going to do whatever they ask her to do so she can come back to you; that’s why they took you. Because they know she’s an amazing mom. You know that, too, right?”
My heart broke as tears spilled out of his eyes. “Yeah.”
I twisted my neck to look over the bed again. It worried me that the men guarding us couldn’t care less that we were talking. They were too confident that they had the situation under control. Then again, all they saw was an elementary school teacher and a little boy. They had no way of knowing that Quinn had been waiting outside to pick me up, and what kind of trouble they’d bought by taking me.
“You know who else is amazing?” He shook his head as he swiped at his cheeks. “My fiancé. He’s like one of those super soldiers you see in the movies, and he’s going to be searching for me.”
“But what if he doesn’t know he needs to look for you?”
“Can I tell you a secret?” I leaned closer after he nodded. “I didn’t drive to school today. Quinn brought me, and he was waiting for me in front of the school when they took us. They might have gotten us, but he knew within minutes that we’d been taken and he’s absolutely looking for us.”
The tears stopped, and there was a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Do you really think he’ll find us? You, me, and my mom?”
“Yes, sweetie. I don’t just think it. I know it.” I infused as much confidence as I could into my tone. “And he won’t be alone when he comes for us. My big brother will be with him, and these guys are no match for the two of them.”
“Okay.” He still sounded doubtful.
“Can I tell you another secret?’
His nod was more emphatic than last time.
“You can’t tell anyone, but my brother’s a spy. With special gadgets and everything,” I whispered into his ear.
Darren’s head jerked back. His eyes were wide and his brows were raised. “He is?”
“Yup.”
“Wow,” he breathed out. “When the man told me I’d better keep quiet or else he’d hurt my mom, I tried not to cry, Miss Davis. I really did.”
“I know you did, sweetie.”
“But you know what? I’m glad I did. If I hadn’t then I’d be all alone, and I wouldn’t have anyone looking for me.”
As scared as I was for myself and my unborn child, there was a part of me that was at peace with it because Darren was right. Since they were using him as leverage against his mom, his disappearance wouldn’t have been reported and nobody would have even known he was missing. “Then it’s a good thing you did because I’m sure there’s practically a whole army of people out there looking for us right now.”
I wasn’t just making up stories to get Darren to feel better. I knew Quinn would stop at nothing to find me, but that didn’t keep me from being scared. It was amazing how the potentially life and death situation I’d found myself in gave me clarity. I’d been so focused on getting through the end of the school year and then having the wedding I’d always dreamed about that I hadn’t been willing to consider going to the courthouse with Quinn when we discovered I was pregnant. But after all this? I’d marry him the second he got me out of this mess.
“C’mon, Quinn. I know you’re out there. Please find us soon.”
I barely made a sound as I spoke to myself, so I was surprised when one of the guys rose from his chair. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” the other one asked.
“Singing.” He stalked towards the window, yanking a gun out of the waist of his pants in the back. “I think there’s someone out there.”
I strained to listen, almost sobbing in relief when I recognized the off-key sound. Quinn had one of the worst singing voices in the world, but that didn’t stop him when he was alone in the shower.
“That’s what we get for hiding out in this crappy place,” the guy sitting down grumbled. “We have to deal with fucking drunks at nine o’clock at night. What kind of man gets that wasted this early at night?”
It dawned on me then that Quinn’s singing served two purposes. The guys guarding us weren’t threatened by him, and it let me know he was there. And if he wanted me to know before he did anything, there had to be a reason. I could only think of one.
I yanked on Darren’s arm and put a finger to my lips. Then I pointed at the floor as I scooted down until I was lying flat. Darren did the same, and I jerked my chin towards the bed. He rolled until he was flush against it, and I wiggled as close to him as I could get. It wasn’t easy to get into the position I wanted with my hands zip tied, but I knew I needed to move. If Quinn was going to barge in here to rescue us, we needed to be out of the way so he could do what needed to be done. It wasn’t perfect, but at least the bed offered us a little protection from whatever was about to go down.
“Go make sure the guy gets the fuck away from our door. We don’t need him to draw any attention to us.”
“Why do I have to do it?”
“You’re already up.”
I heard the sound of footsteps as the man walked from the window to the door and shifted my body again until I was covering as much of Darren’s as I possibly could.
“But for fuck’s sake, put the damn gun away first.” Yes! I did a mental fist pump. The less prepared they were, the easier it would be for Quinn to take them down. “If anyone sees that thing, they’ll call the cops for sure. And you know what Manny will do to you if you fuck this job up for him. He needs that ledger, and that woman is the key to him getting in without tripping an alarm so he has plenty of time to crack their safe.”
When I heard the sound of the deadbolt on the door being flipped, I braced myself. Quinn changed songs mid-verse, and I figured it was his signal to let me know he’d heard the same thing and was ready. “Close your eyes,” I whispered to Darren.
He squeezed them shut just as the door hinges squeaked as it opened. And then all hell broke loose.
Chapter 8
Quinn
“Highway to Hell?” Xander asked dryly over my earbud. “Seriously, dude?”
I didn’t pay him any attention and continued singing while listening carefully for the click of a lock as I slowly stumbled down the walkway. We only had a vague idea what room they might be in, assuming they were holed up in this shithouse motel. Finally, as I closed in on room 301, I saw a curtain ruffle through the dirty window. I abruptly changed my tune, a final warning to Jenna that things were about to get rough. If she was in there. Fuck, I hoped she was there.
We had a team headed to the DA’s office and deciding whether to go with them or come to the motel had been almost impossible. I wanted to be there when we rescued her and since I refused to believe in any other outcome, the only question had been where I would find her. It seemed more likely that they would want as few people as possible at the break in.
Weston’s shadow was all I could see of him as he edged his way along the wall, coming towards me. He and Xander had quickly followed me to the motel and forced me to stop and make a plan, rather than just kicking in every damn door until I could kill the motherfuckers who had my woman.
We had just reached opposite sides of the door when the clink of metal gears alerted us that the lock had been disengaged. The door cracked open. “Hey, shut the fuck up man—” he snapped, but was cut off when I pretended to drunkenly stumble into it with all of my weight. As the guy behind it flew backwards, I lifted my arm and pointed my weapon at a man sitting at a card table by the window. Weston was only half a second behind me and stood, legs braced apart, blocking the door, his own gun leveled on the greasy man who’d fallen to the floor.
I fired one
round into the wall behind the sitting man, gaining his complete attention “The woman and the little boy,” I demanded. “Where are they?”
“Fuck you,” he spat. His face was red and mottled, his black hair, dirty and slicked back, making his blood-shot eyes overly pronounced. With his overly skinny body, he looked a little like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. When his eyes darted to his companion, I didn’t break my stare, knowing Weston would handle it. Unsurprisingly, his gun fired and howling ensued from behind me. A couple of shots were exchanged between the two before Weston stalked by me.
As he passed, Gollum rushed to his feet and his hand dove into a ratty jean jacket. I put a bullet in his shoulder. He screamed like a little girl and dropped the gun he’d been reaching for to the ground.
“Don’t make me ask again.”
Xander chose that moment to step into the room and with a lift of his chin, he took my place. I whirled around, my eyes scanning the filthy room, glancing right over the bleeding man on the floor with Weston’s foot on his neck.
I rushed over to the opposite side of the bed, hoping…but was caught by surprise when the bathroom door opened and a third man came out and dove down to the floor where I’d been heading. As the scene came into view, I froze.
The guy lay supine on the floor, his arm wrapped around Jenna’s neck and a knife poised just under her breast. The little boy, Darren, was huddled in a ball, pressed up against the bed.
“Back off!” he threatened in a raspy voice, his arm tightening around Jenna’s throat. She struggled to take in a breath and the edges of my vison blackened. He’s a fucking dead man.
My eyes focused on the knife and its position. It was pressed against her, but hovering tensely. I took a single step back and the moment I saw him relax, a flash of relief in his dark eyes, I put a bullet between them.
The Passion & Vows Series Page 25