Then one of them knocks over the mop bucket with his foot. The metal clatter is loud enough to wake the dead. The guard closest to me freezes.
“Hold on,” he says. His hand grips the edge of the cart and pulls it aside. We lock eyes, his widening with the kind of recognition that always comes right before a fight.
Making another in a long line of bad decisions, I try to bolt past him.
He grabs my arm and yanks me back with a firmness I wasn’t expecting. I twist, trying to break free. My bag slips off my shoulder and hits the floor. He keeps his grip tight, dragging me upright.
The second guard joins him, reaching for my other arm. I lash out with my knee, catching him in the thigh hard enough that he grunts.
“Stop fighting,” the first guard growls, squeezing my arm tighter.
I don’t stop trying to get away. I should, but I’m panicking and can’t get ahold of myself. I kick again, twisting, pulling, dragging every ounce of resistance I can manage. For a split second, it works. I slip free of one hand, but the second guard grips the back of my coat and slams me against the wall hard enough to knock the breath out of me.
Pain sparks through my face and ribs. My vision blurs around the edges.
The first guard grabs my wrists and clamps them together. The second pins my shoulder to the wall. Their radios both crackle at once with a command I don’t understand.
I gasp for air as they force my arms behind me, holding me in place. I try to yell for Rivera, hoping he’s already close, but my voice barely rises. One of the guards pulls out a zip-tie.
“Package secured,” he says into his radio.
And that’s exactly how I became a package, not a person. Their words piss me off, so I try to push back. Using the floor for leverage, I try to push back. But they drag me towards the restricted wing, towards the place I should never have entered and never even got a chance to explore.
Chapter 17
Slate
Katie sits on the carpet with her new puppy across her lap. His little tail is wagging as she brushes him with a pink plastic brush Ma gave her. Every time she stops brushing he yips for more. Katie giggles each time he squirms. The sound fills the room in a warm way that settles deep in my chest.
I sit on the floor beside them, leaning against the edge of the bed. My shoulders ache from the fight with Neal and the hours we spent dragging details out of him afterwards. Neal was tough, right up until he wasn’t. I gave him an extra tune up for the beat down he put on Rivera. The stupid fucker actually thought we were gonna let him go. That asshole is our ace in the hole. He ain’t going nowhere but six feet under.
Striker was still combing through data when I left to come upstairs. Everything he found explained the mystery of why they were so desperate to get their hands on Christina that they pursued her for years. I can’t believe she had an actual bounty on her head all this time. Come to find out, there was more on that encrypted flash drive than any of us could have imagined. And Striker reports we only opened about twenty percent of it. Most of it implicated none other than Neal.
I’m still not happy that she took it upon herself to try and do some investigating of her own. But to be honest, I’m not surprised. It’s what she does for a living. Rivera is with her so at least she’s not alone and we’ve got the asshole who was stalkingher in our cells. I resist the urge to text her in case I interrupt important research, so instead I focus on my daughter.
She holds up one of the puppy’s paws for me to see. “Look, he’s got toes.”
“Yeah,” I say. “They’re really cute toes too. What are you gonna call him?”
She screws up her face in concentration, “Still thinkin’, he’s so fluffy and sweet.”
“He’s gonna be a big growly dog one of these days, so don’t go callin’ him Mr. Fluffball or Buttercup or somethin’.”
When she grins up at me, I add, “You’re taking really good care of him.”
She nods happily. “‘Cause I’m his mommy.” She carefully smooths the fur on his head with one small hand. “When’s Mommy coming back?”
I swallow down my concern about what Christina is up to. “Soon, sweetheart. She’s with Rivera. They had to do some errands.”
Katie nods slowly and goes back to brushing the puppy.
Truth be told, I should have heard from Christina by now. She knows I wanted her to stay at the clubhouse. I’m not quite crazy enough to think I can tell her what to do. And I think that plucking up the courage to go to the local library or wherever she went to look for information proves that she’s putting some of her trauma behind her. When I met her in Kabul, she was fearless. I want her to have that confidence back. That’s why I haven’t panic called her already. She’s somewhere local withRivera. That means she’s safe, I tell myself for the tenth time in the span of a few minutes.
I pull my phone from my pocket just to see if she’s texted. There are no texts or missed calls from her or Rivera. Normally, I would say that means there are no problems. However, in this instance, I have a bad gut feeling.
I finally decide to call her, planning out in my mind how to sound casual. The phone rings once before dropping straight to voicemail. Christina always picks up when I try to contact her. She always keeps her phone on vibrate and close. I curse under my breath.
Katie looks up when she hears me mumbling. The puppy distracts her by licking her chin before she can comment. I stand clutching my phone in my hand.
