“MAN, I’Mfreaking the fuck out,” I said as I threw open the door to my condo for Landon. “Where the hell is she? Do you have a lock on her?”
Landon crossed the threshold and ran his hand over his face. “Tampa. Let’s go. We don’t have time for chitchat.”
“No shit. Tampa, what the hell? You let them get that far?”
My fist met with the mirror, shattering it—the same one Lynx had looked into to apply her lipstick a few nights ago. Pieces of glass went everywhere, raining down on our feet.
“Fuck! I knew I should’ve kept Jovi on her, but she caught him watching her and gave me hell.”
“Mike, beating yourself up isn’t helping. Let’s go. I shouldn’t even be taking you, but Carson assured me over the phone I was signing my death warrant if I didn’t.”
“At least he’s right about one thing.”
“For a preppy white boy, you’ve got a lot of street in you,” Landon said as I slammed the door closed.
“Asher’s more of a father to me than my own. And what the fuck? Preppy? Don’t insult me.”
He only nodded. There was nothing left to say. If Landon fucked this up, I was going to kill him, and he knew it.
“Don’t be so cocky. This better work out in the end,” I muttered when we exited the elevator.
Landon shot me a glare. “I didn’t waste all that time over in the desert saving those girls just for them to go back.”
He beeped open the doors on his black Escalade and didn’t waste time gunning the engine. The flashing red law-enforcement light on the dash cleared traffic ahead of us, helping us maneuver out of the city fast, and before I knew it, we were flying over Alligator Alley.
Landon’s phone went off every other minute or so, and he’d bark some instructions into his headset while nodding his head. “Uh-huh. Yeah. Feel me?” was about all I was privy to.
Unable to take it anymore, I slammed my fist into the dash. “What the hell is going on? Stop with all the calls and head-shaking and uh-huhs. Fucking tell me.” I was good and sick of hearing only one side of every call.
“She’s in a hotel in Tampa. We’re already inside with a surveillance team, and Carson is working on getting a second one. Bruno’s with her and armed. But he’s alone and outgunned, so we’re gonna get her out real soon.”
“Tell them to do it already! What the hell are they waiting for? Go!” My voice boomed inside the car, and I didn’t give two shits.
“We have to wait and see who’s coming, catch him on something bigger, more incriminating. He doesn’t have much more to give us.”
“That’s bullshit! Stop using Lynx as a decoy. Go in, or I’m going to when we get there.”
Fishing my phone out of my pocket, I called Carson. “Man, what’s with all this waiting shit? I want to get her out of there. Now!”
I heard all kinds of background noise on his phone and then it went quiet.
“I’m on my way,” Carson said. “And you need to calm the hell down. I have a team watching. Let’s see what Bruno is up to. If I didn’t think it was safe, I’d say pull her, but we got eyes on her.”
Gripping my phone so hard it might crack, I practically yelled into it. “No, I don’t like it. Either you send someone to get her, or I am. I’m not joking, Carson.”
I disconnected the call before he could piss me off any further.
“Go, drive faster,” I yelled at Landon.
WE PULLEDup across the highway from the luxury hotel where Bruno was holding Lynx, stopping in front of a small commercial building that looked empty. I eyed the hotel from the passenger side window. No one knew hotels better than me. I counted the floors, guessed where the emergency exits would be, and formulated a plan in my head.
Compared to the crap we used to pull as teens in my dad’s hotels, this was cake.
“We got a surveillance crew inside here,” Landon told me as we sat in the SUV, nodding toward the empty building next to us. “Got a camera on the room. Lynx is tied to a chair, but she’s in no imminent danger.”
I played dumb and continued to stare at the hotel. Chances were they were on this side of the building if his team could see them from here.
“Which room? Show me.”
