“Don’t leave. I’ll send someone by in a little while with some more questions.”
“No problem.” Caleb salutes the guy and closes the door in his face before he has a chance to scurry off.
“Call Mateo, we need to make sure Megan isn’t with him. There’s something off about those camera feeds.”
We keep it brief when the call connects. It sounds like we’ve just woken him as he yawns. The fucker seems to perk right up when we mention that the girls have disappeared.
“I changed their locks—there’s no way someone got in without an invitation or a key.” The panic is clear in his tone, and I lower the volume as his voice gets all high-pitched as Caleb rolls his eyes and pulls up his jeans.
“Is he crying?” I whisper with brows pinched. The wracking sobs from the other end of the line are answer enough. If we’re saving Ebony and Megan, it won’t be with his help. Maybe he can come and distract the cops with his sad little rich boy routine. I’m sure his daddy has lots of money to let the police run with the kidnapped-for-ransom idea while we get to work.
“I don’t understand,” he whines, his keys jingling as it sounds like he’s running down a flight of stairs. “What do we?—”
Caleb cuts off the call, and I slide the phone into myback pocket before Mateo can finish his question. “Abercrombie is on his way over then?”
“We need a better nickname for him,” I decide.
“He’s totally earned the name ‘princess.’” Caleb grins while securing his belt and shrugging into a t-shirt he finds slung over the back of the sofa, tossing me one out of the pile to follow suit.
“We would have been better off trying to squeeze into one of the girls’ tops,” I groan, tugging at the cheap fabric that itches against my skin.
My phone chimes with a message, and I pull it out and open it to an email with footage of Ebony’s living room. A man dressed all in black wearing a balaclava lowers to the ground and hides behind the sofa moments before Ebony comes into the kitchen. We watch as she dances along to the music while that fucker remains hidden; she clearly has no idea. The moment she finishes her drink and sways on unsteady legs, the stranger rises from behind the sofa and injects her with something. Her face crumples with pain, tears in her eyes as the fear consuming her washes away the taut expression. Her voiceless cry for help stutters out of her. When she becomes a heap on the ground, the masked intruder turns and waves at the camera.
“Set an alarm—we have a maximum of two hours to find Ebs. Someone wouldn’t go through all this trouble to be content with just holding her hostage. She has no family and no money. This is personal.”
I don’t highlight the fear I hear in my brother’s voice, but I feel it too as my chest tightens painfully at what we’ve just seen.
Caleb may be acting like this is a run-of-the-millkidnapping, but we both know the only person who could have our Dove is the Horseman, and up until now, he hasn’t been in the girl-snatching game for the money.
“Got a plan?” I watch Caleb pull up his boots and throw the towel over our new friend Percy who is still out cold on the sofa.
With determination creasing his brow, he looks me dead in the eye, the strength he knows she needs right now unwavering in his glassy green gaze. “We follow the technology. Ezra said the feed is linked to a home base here in the building, so we start at the bottom and work our way up until we find something. Ever broken into a basement before, brother?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
EBONY
The distant shrill ringing wakes me. The low thrum ofElvis’ ‘Suspicious Minds’playing on an old beat-up radio. My head pounds as the bright strip of overhead lights blind me. I remember dancing in the kitchen back at the apartment, but everything after that is a blank. The more I try to wrack my brain for the answers, the worse the headache gets. I fight against my bindings, not because I’m trying to escape, but to drop kick that fucking radio. The sounds, the smells, the monotony of the leaky pipework lining the dank green walls, my body is too wrecked to compartmentalise everything, and it’s overwhelming.
“Fuck.” I spit out the mouthful of bloody saliva building in my mouth, the coppery taste of it clogging the back of my throat. Tied to a chair with my hands in ropes attached to chains above my head, it doesn’t go very far. Just dribbling down my chin and onto my t-shirt.
Well, that’s just perfect.
“Where are we?” Megan jostles beside me. “And what is that ringing? I feel like I’ve been trampled over by a couple dozen horses.” She groans, moving her hair out of her face with her shoulder to get a better view of our new home.
“In purgatory if the stench is anything to go by.” The sulphur-tainted air that carries the scents of rotting egg and burnt matches clings to my skin like a rash, and the desire to scrub myself clean with bleach and a wire brush hits me. I’ve spent far too many years held hostage, feeling unclean despite the hours of washing them from my body.
“Trust the process. Karma works in mysterious ways.” Positivity Princess to the rescue, I guess. If I didn’t love this girl so much, and I wasn’t hanging from the ceiling like a sacrificial lamb, I would slap this girl hard enough for her to see some sense.
“We are both currently strapped to chairs and being held hostage by a murderous psychopath. Maybe let’s not praise Karma too loudly just yet. I don’t know about you, babes, but I feel like this whole situation is fucking me right in the arse, and not in the nice lubricated three-way scenario I’m used to.”
The audible pop of her jaw draws my attention, and I want to swallow back my words. “Oh my god, you had sex with them both at the same time?” She giggles wildly. For the first time since I woke up, I’m grateful we’re tied up so she can’t clap excitedly like a performing seal as the joy of my revelation warms her cheeks.
“Seriously not the time, Megan. How about we find a way to escape, and then we can discuss my epic sex life later.”
“Sorry. Forgot where I was for a second there. I’mtotally on board.” She grins wide, wincing around her split lip, one eye bruised and almost completely sealed shut.“Would it be pre-emptive to state this might not be the worst date I’ve ever been on?”
I don’t know how she’s making me laugh right now when death is so imminent, but I love her for the levity. I’m treating her to the best spa day money can buy and spilling every dirty secret of my time with the guys if we get out of this alive.
