As I stormed across the room, raising the bat, the stranger turned around. I recognized him from O’Connor’s files. It was one of BRS’s freshmen, Robert Buchanan, dressed stealthily yet stylishly in a black leather bomber jacket and dark jeans, complete with a black beanie pulled low over his forehead.
“No one touches my dog, asshole.”
Before he could even raise a hand to defend himself, I swung the bat. It connected with the side of his head, and he dropped like a stone. I stood, panting, for a moment, staring down at Buchanan’s prone figure as my adrenaline rush faded. Franklin emerged from beneath the coffee table and snuffled my fingers. I knelt down next to Buchanan, tipped his head to the side, and pressed two fingers to his throat. There was a pulse, and his chest rose and fell evenly. Buchanan would have a nasty bruise and a hangover-worthy headache, but he’d be fine in a few days.
I glanced around the room. Lauren had either lied to me or underestimated her father. I was more inclined to believe the latter. Orson seemed like the type of man to have a backup plan, but if that were the case, it was likely that Buchanan hadn’t broken in to my apartment on his own. I knew from experience that BRS liked to outnumber their targets.
As if in answer to my silent question, the squeak of the bedroom window opening floated down the hall.
Franklin barked madly but stayed by my side. His encounter with Buchanan had subdued his guard-dog tendencies. I didn’t bother to shush him. I knew whoever was in the bedroom wasn’t Wes. He would’ve charged into the living room at top speed if he’d heard someone trying to hurt Franklin. With my softball bat at the ready, I crept toward the bedroom, terrified of what I might find. Either Wes wasn’t home or he lay incapacitated in another room of the apartment.
I nudged the bedroom door open with the bat and peeked inside. Though the place was a wreck, the intruder was nowhere to be seen. The sheets on the bed had been ripped off, the mattress overturned. Someone had ransacked the dresser, emptying the drawers into a heap on the floor. The closet had been searched similarly. Our clean clothes lay like litter throughout the room. Nothing had been left untouched, and the culprit had found what he was looking for.
The cardboard box—the one full of O’Connor’s research and the only remaining evidence I had of BRS’s crimes—had been tucked beneath the hanging coats at the very back of the closet. Now it was gone.
A cold breeze drifted through the room. The window behind Wes’s desk was still open. Whoever had been in the bedroom left in a hurry as soon as he’d gotten what he needed. I wandered over to the window and peered out, but there was no sign of suspicious behavior in the side yard. With a defeated sigh, I shut the window.
Without any evidence, there was no way I would be able to take down BRS. Lauren would have to fend for herself while Wes and I got out of dodge. There was only one problem with my escape plan. I had no idea where Wes was.
A piece of paper taped to Wes’s work computer caught my eyes. I ripped it from the monitor, holding it near the window so that the sunlight would illuminate its contents. It was a short note, scribbled with permanent marker in messy, nearly illegible handwriting.
Dearest Miss Costello,
We regret to inform you that, due to your misbehavior and inability to cooperate, we were forced to take drastic measures. You will find that you have been relieved of your research, and your record at Waverly University has been expunged. Furthermore, we have taken Weston McAllen into custody. Our previous offer to fund your exit from Waverly has been redacted. You have twelve hours to leave the area. If, at noon tomorrow, you are still in town, or you have made any attempt to contact the authorities, McAllen will die.
Our sincerest apologies,
BRS
I crumpled the letter in my fist, fighting to tame the panic that threatened to overwhelm me. My research was gone, and according to the records clerk for Waverly University, I had never even existed as a student there, but those things paled in comparison to the last part of the letter. Wes was gone, and if I didn’t play my cards right, he could end up dead. BRS hadn’t even offered the promise of Wes’s freedom for my absence. There was no way I was leaving town. I had nothing to lose. If the Black Raptor Society wanted a fight, then a fight they would get.
Prologue
Fully dressed in his police uniform, complete with duty belt and officially issued Glock, Wes McAllen sat at his kitchen counter, staring at the blinking green numbers of the clock on the stove. His fingers drummed an impatient rhythm against the countertop, and one of his legs bounced up and down on the rung of the kitchen stool, jostling the ugly, pug-faced dog that sat near Wes’s feet. The dog, Franklin, peered up at Wes with sad, droopy eyes, his bulbed head tilted to the side in confusion, and let out a high-pitched, nervous whine.
Wes, his anxious reverie interrupted, ripped his eyes away from the stove clock to glance down at the dog. “I know, buddy,” he said in a low voice. “I want her to come home too.”
Forty-five minutes prior, Wes had watched his girlfriend storm out of their shared apartment on a serious mission. Nicole was livid, but thankfully, her wrath wasn’t directed at Wes. Nevertheless, he knew her too well. She had a one-track mind, and once she set her intention, there was no stopping her from bulldozing through whatever obstacles the world had decided to set down in front of her. This time though, Wes wondered if Nicole had jumped into the deep end without a much-needed life vest. Nicole was far from invincible, and Wes knew that she nursed a tendency to incorrectly calculate the amount of risk that her actions involved.
When Nicole left the apartment, she had made Wes promise to give her an hour to solve her problem on her own. Grudgingly, Wes agreed. He prided himself on not adhering to the patriarchal stereotypes that often came with being a cop, to a point where the other boys at the force merrily teased him about being whipped. It didn’t bother Wes. Nicole, after all, had brought out the feminist in him, but even so, it was difficult to discern where the line was drawn when it came to rescuing his girlfriend. She could take care of herself—Wes had witnessed that himself during their undergraduate years when Nicole had verbally destroyed a sleazy bar patron that refused to stop hitting on her before overturning an entire pint of expensive stout on his head—but this was different. It wasn’t just Nicole versus the hoi polloi. To Wes’s intense dismay, Nicole had taken on the most elite and dangerous secret organization on the Waverly University campus: the Black Raptor Society.
In hindsight, Wes wished desperately that Nicole had simply stayed out of it. As it turned out, the Raptors had been responsible for a number of iniquitous happenings on campus, including the murder of Nicole’s history professor, George O’Connor. Wes was at odds with almost everything that had happened in the last few weeks. He had a couple years under his belt as a police officer, but he was still a little green when it came to mixing business with personal problems. He’d never faced such a dilemma as this before. It should have been simple and straightforward. Wes’s report of a beaten body hidden in a secret room beneath the Waverly library should have sent the cops at the local force into a frenzy. The university should have initiated an immediate campus-wide lockdown for all of its students. Wes had expected sirens and crime tape and his boss barking orders at the rookies. Instead, he got a reprimand, a demerit, and the cold shoulder from his superiors.
It was the slowest hour of Wes’s life. For a moment longer, his eyes remained fixed on the clock.
“Fuck it,” he said, pushing his chair back and grabbing the keys to the apartment. Franklin perked up and watched as Wes headed to the door, but just as he reached out to open it, a harsh, demanding knock reverberated through the apartment from the opposite side.
Wes, expecting Nicole, swung the door wide without looking through the peephole. Instead, a vaguely familiar young man in his early twenties stood casually on the landing, wearing dark, fitted jeans, a leather jacket, and a Waverly University ball cap.
“Officer McAllen,” said the man, tipping his hat t
o Wes.
“Yeah?” said Wes warily as his hand floated up to the gun on his belt.
“I’m afraid you’re under arrest.”
With that, four other boys stepped into view from either side of the doorway, all wearing black knit caps pulled low over their eyes. Before Wes could react, they attacked him, shoving him back into the apartment. The man in the ball cap followed them inside, closing and locking the apartment door behind them.
“Lock him down,” he ordered.
Wes grappled with his attackers. At the police academy, he’d been taught how to deal with multiple assailants. He rifled through the lessons in his head. Create space. Plan your exit. Strike quickly. He bucked wildly, testing the grip strength of his attackers. Wes was outnumbered, but the other guys were younger, less experienced, and apparently didn’t log enough time at the campus weight room. Wes ripped his hand free and, as fast as a hornet’s sting, lashed out to strike the nearest boy, a short but stout freshman, in the nose.
The boy doubled over with a loud groan, cradling his nose. “Shit! Donovan, you said this would be fucking easy! He’s a fucking cop! I think he just broke my fucking nose.”
The man in the ball cap rolled his eyes. “Language, Hastings. We’re not heathens. By the way, you might want to get his gun from him. And his Taser. This needs to be as low key as possible.”
Wes, his arm freshly pinned behind his back by one of the other larger boys, stilled as Hastings approached again. When the younger boy reached for Wes’s belt, bowing into his personal space, Wes headbutted him.
“Motherfucker!”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” sighed Donovan as if Hastings’s incompetence was as simple an inconvenience as running out of toilet paper in the washroom. Keeping a careful eye on Wes, Donovan reached forward and took Wes’s baton off of his belt. Then, with an agile flick of his wrist, Donovan rapped the baton against Wes’s face.
The snap of Wes’s nose breaking echoed through the apartment. He yelled out in agony, but the pain in his face and the immediate flow of blood over his mouth and chin only invigorated his rage. He tore away from the boys, ripping the sleeve of his police jacket down the seam. Like a madman, he swung recklessly at anything that moved, connecting once or twice with a jawline or a clenched abdomen. Franklin, who’d been cowering under the coffee table ever since Donovan and his cohorts had arrived, barked madly, baring his teeth like a demon from the pits of hell. Donovan aimed a kick at the dog, but Franklin snapped at Donovan’s boot, the gnash of his teeth an audible snap.
“Enough!” roared Donovan. At some point, one of his guys had managed to rip Wes’s duty belt off. It lay abandoned in a heap on the floor. Donovan leaned down, pried the handgun free, and pointed it at Wes. Immediately, Wes froze. “McAllen, do you know who the fuck I am?”
“Davenport,” said Wes in a lethal voice, and he hawked a mouthful of blood into Donovan’s face.
Donovan flinched, wiping the blood and spit from where it had landed on his cheek, then inched forward and pressed the barrel of the gun to Wes’s temple. “Don’t provoke the man with the weapon, McAllen.”
“If you fire that gun, you’re going to be in deep shit,” warned Wes, his voice thick.
“I’m sure my buddy at the force won’t mind,” responded Donovan, but he stepped back and twirled the gun around his finger like a lawless dueler in the Wild West. “You know him. Officer Wilson. He’s your boss, isn’t he?”
Wes remained quiet. He’d already assumed that certain officers in the local police force were corrupt, but Donovan didn’t need to know that.
“That’s right, McAllen.” Donovan sneered, satisfied with Wes’s silent submission. “Now listen closely because I’m not going to repeat myself, and I’d bet anything you’ll be pretty interested in what I have to say.”
Wes shifted against his captors but held on to his temper. Staring down the barrel of a gun had that kind of sobering effect.
“BRS has your righteous princess of a girlfriend,” announced Donovan, beaming. “Oh, she’s a piece of work, McAllen. I cannot possibly fathom what attraction you find in her. In any case, if you want to keep her alive, you’re coming with us. If not, well, who would really blame you?”
“You piece of shit,” spat Wes through the blood bubbling from his nose.
“I’ll take that as an acquiescence.” Donovan made a wrap-it-up gesture with his index finger to his four cohorts and handed the riot baton to Hastings. “You know the plan, boys. Knock him out, grab what we need, and move out the back door. Oh, and someone take care of that ugly, obnoxious dog.”
Without warning, the baton crashed into the side of Wes’s head. Dazed, he dropped to his knees. Another blow landed, this one to the base of his neck. He came to rest with his cheek pressed to the living-room carpet, observing the room from a blurry, incoherent angle. He spotted Franklin backing away from one of the other boys. Vaguely, Wes realized that someone was duct-taping his hands together behind his back. Conversation floated by like music notes on the wind, and Wes concentrated feebly through what was surely a massive concussion to catch the words.
“Leave a note… for that bitch to find…”
“Look at this shit she has from O’Connor!”
“Take it all… and leave the gun… can’t be caught with that.”
The blood from Wes’s broken nose dripped into the back of his throat. A fleeting thought fought through his muddled brain. He could die here, concussed and drowning in his own blood. Suddenly, he was lifted from the floor by his bound hands. The room swam, and Wes’s stomach roiled.
“Watch out, he’s going to hurl,” said a voice. Wes could no longer distinguish whose voice was whose.
“Get him outside.”
Wes’s feet dragged as he was hoisted between two of the boys and carried out through the back door of the apartment. When the sunshine found Wes’s face, he gave up trying to stay alert. It was much easier to succumb to the darkness. In his last moment of consciousness, he thought of Nicole.
Dear God, just let her be safe.
11
I leaned against the concrete wall of the drafty abandoned parking garage. It was freezing outside. A vast blanket of gray clouds obscured the sky. It would snow again soon, despite the fact that it was nearly April. Springtime in upstate New York was rarely cozy, but this year was unseasonably raw. Everywhere else saw fresh green buds on the trees and the beginnings of the season’s prettiest blooms, but the area around Waverly University’s intimate campus was just as dark and depressing as ever. It matched my mood. Tired and cold, I rewrapped the scarf around my neck to shield my chapped lips from the snappy wind that gusted through the garage. It was a miserable place to wait for someone, but the option to grab a steaming cup of cocoa and a table at the local Starbucks wasn’t exactly feasible. I had to stay out of the public eye. I was by no means a convict on the run or an undercover cop in the process of discovering a drug raid, but there was a price on my head nonetheless.
The last hour had been the most stressful of my life. I’d been kidnapped, drugged, and questioned before making a daring daylight escape from my captors, only to come home and find my apartment trashed, my boyfriend missing, and my dog terrified. The horrifying blood stain on the living-room carpet was enough to set my nightmarish anxieties a-rolling. Wes was gone, and the bastards who had taken him hadn’t provided me with a whole lot of options to get him back. The warning note they had left me lay furled in my coat pocket. I clenched my hand around it then unrolled it to read it again as if I hadn’t already memorized the contents.
Dearest Miss Costello,
We regret to inform you that, due to your misbehavior and inability to cooperate, we were forced to take drastic measures. You will find that you have been relieved of your research, and your record at Waverly University has been expunged. Furthermore, we have taken Weston McAllen into custody. Our previous offer to fund your exit from Waverly has been redacted. You have twelve hours to leave the area. If, at mi
dnight tonight, you are still in town, or you have made any attempt to contact the authorities, McAllen will die.
Our sincerest apologies,
BRS
Twelve hours. If it were a plane ride, it would feel like an eternity. Instead, the minutes were disappearing faster than a mouthful of cotton candy on a hot summer’s day. I checked my watch again. I was already down to eleven hours and forty-two minutes. There was only so long I could wait for my contact to show up. I’d give her another five minutes. If she didn’t show, I’d have to get started on the investigation into Wes’s ransom situation by myself.
A whimper met my ears, and Franklin looked up at me from where he sat against a cracked concrete parking curb. I knelt down to give him a warm-up rub. Even his thick oily fur wasn’t enough to keep the cold at bay. It was a stroke of luck that Franklin had remained unharmed in all the chaos, but now I didn’t really know what to do with him. Dogs weren’t conducive to rescue missions, and all I wanted was for Franklin to stay safe.
As I stood up again, I felt the grip of Wes’s Glock press against the small of my back. I’d found it in the bedroom of the apartment, which had been a disconcerting omen. Wes would never leave his gun behind. Now, it was tucked into the waistband of my jeans, hidden from view by my puffy winter coat but readily accessible. I wasn’t licensed, but Wes had taken me to the shooting range a few times. If worst came to worst, I was at least capable of getting off a defensive shot or two.
The echo of footsteps resonated from across the garage, and my head snapped up to attention. It was impossible to be stealthy in a parking garage, which was one of the reasons why I chose the location to meet up with my informant. No one would be able to sneak up on me. I tugged on Franklin’s leash, pulling him behind a concrete pillar, and listened as the footsteps halted.
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