Cody looked over at the computer and smiled through the shattering agony zinging through his limbs like an electric current. “One hour? A lot can happen in sixty minutes.”
“Indeed. A lot.” Antonio picked up the hammer.
Cody shut his eyes.Forgive me, Hans, but I’m going to scream like a ten-year-old girl.
***
Hans paced the empty space of Cody’s command center. Years of protective service left him with a natural sixth sense for danger and everything in him screamed that something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Cody had been gone for almost two hours. He never left the house without telling Hans where he was going.
The kid’s desk was cleared of its usual clutter and on it sat one single device. A tiny bug the size of a pinhead. Hans was no whiz like Cody was with all of this tech stuff, but he knew that bug wasn’t a product of Lockwood Industries. Which meant Cody had found it. That bug could be connected to whoever had set fire to the stables and left the package with the shoe. Logically it had to be, but Hans wouldn’t jump to any conclusions.
Hans’s cellphone buzzed in his back pocket. He retrieved it and answered.
“Yeah?”
“Hans, it’s Royce. We’ve got a problem. Cody’s been kidnapped.” Royce Devereaux explained hurriedly. Hans had only a moment to think how lucky Emery was to have such a loyal friend who viewed this as his problem too.
“What’s happened?” he demanded.
“I happened to see Cody at the Dockside Pub. He was having a drink and then he sort of seemed out of it all of a sudden. Like he’d been roofied. I started to go to him, but the bartender looked like he was helping him. But then I saw him walk Cody outside and throw him into a black sedan. I tried to get to them, but the crowds in the bar were rowdy and I got into a fistfight trying to get out. By the time I got outside the car was gone.”
“Damn.” Hans pulled the phone away from his ear to hold it to his forehead as he shut his eyes and drew in a calming breath. He put the phone back to his ear.
“Royce, can you be here in ten minutes? I’ll talk to Emery. We need someone to keep an eye on Ms. Ryder. She’ll want to come with Emery and me and he won’t let her.”
“I can babysit her. I’ll bring Wes. Between the two of us, we’ll keep her safe and sound.”
“Good.” Hans hung up.
***
The bedroom door burst open and Sophie lurched upright in bed, blinking away sleep. Emery was on his feet in an instant, a gun in his hands, aimed at Hans’s chest. He immediately cursed, clicked the safety back on, and set the gun down.
“Damn it Hans, knock next time.” Emery laughed softly, and reached for the covers as though to climb back into the bed. Sophie was still trying to swallow her heart, which had jumped into her throat in sudden panic.
“Royce called. He said he saw Cody get abducted from the Dockside Pub in town.”
Emery cursed. “I’ll get dressed. Do we have any leads?”
“Yes. I found a bug, not one of yours, on the kid’s desk. I need you to reverse the signal and track it to the owner. Maybe we can find whoever took him.”
Sophie struggled to grasp what Hans was saying, but Emery was already up and at his closet. He jerked on a pair of worn jeans that hung low on his lean hips. He slipped a black t-shirt over his head and tugged it down before reaching for his leather motorcycle jacket.
“What was he doing when they got him?” Emery asked.
“Don’t know. Royce said he was just taking a drink and it looked like someone must have slipped a drug in his glass, because he started to stumble. Apparently the bartender was the one who escorted him to the car and drove off with him. Maybe this has to do with the bug I found on his desk. Royce tried to get to him but he got tangled in a bar fight on the way out.”
Holding the bed sheet around her, Sophie climbed out of bed, looking for her clothes as she listened. They’d have to get moving fast and that meant she needed to get dressed immediately.
“It’s Antonio, isn’t it?” she asked Emery softly as she bent to pick up her own jeans and a top from her suitcase on the floor.
The dark expression on Emery’s face was all the answer she needed.
“Probably.” Despite the harsh flashes of fury that swept over him, his skin was paler than before.
