“Mr. Gunnarsson!” the man says, trying to pull Ash off Barry. “Stop! He’s unconscious!”
He wraps himself around Ash’s arm to stay it, but it’s a few seconds more before Ash stops fighting the hold and lowers his arm.
“He’s down,” the man says. “Go check on your woman.”
Ash’s head jerks to me where I’m still lying on the ground. He throws himself off Barry and crawls over to me. He pulls me across his lap and wraps his arms around me, squeezing me so hard I almost can’t breathe.
“Fuck, Gray,” he whispers, his voice cracking, as he cradles me against him. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you? I’ll fucking kill him.”
I can’t answer past the lump in my throat. At some point in the near future, I’ll break down in tears, and once I start, I doubt I’ll stop, but for now my eyes are bone dry.
Ash grabs my face in his hands. “Baby, tell me you’re okay, or I swear to God, I’ll kill that fucker with my bare hands.”
I swallow. “I’m okay.” My voice is scratchy and barely a whisper, but I get the words out. I start to shake, partially from the cold, but mostly as the reality of what just happened sinks in.
“Jesus, you must be freezing,” Ash says.
He pulls his coat off and wraps it around me before pulling me back against him and rocking me in his lap. “Do you know him?”
I nod against Ash’s chest. “We went on a date. The night you gave me the shoulder massage.”
Ash stops rocking. “Why did he take you? What did he want?”
A humorless laugh jumps up my throat. “Revenge on womankind for his involuntary celibacy?”
Ash tenses. “He’s an incel?”
I nod.
“Boss, I gave the police our location,” the other man calls to Ash. “They should be here any minute.”
“Who’s that?” I ask Ash.
“That’s Sully,” Ash says. “He’s one of the guys I had following you the last few weeks.”
I frown. “You still had him following me?”
“Sort of,” Ash says. “I’d already paid him through tonight, so he was in the parking garage watching your car when this fucker came down with the laundry cart. Sully didn’t think anything of it at first, and he wasn’t watching too closely until he looked up and saw this guy pull you out of the cart and dump you in his trunk. He tried to stop him, but the guy got in his car and took off.”
“Barry didn’t notice him in the garage?” I ask. “Barry is the guy’s name,” I explain at Ash’s questioning look.
“Tinted windows,” Ash says. “Sully gets paid to stay hidden. Anyway, he tried to tail the guy, but he lost him, so Sully called a friend who’s…um, handy with computers, and he tracked your phone. The guy, Barry, must’ve brought it with him, which is just dumb.”
We hear shouts in the distance and a dog barking.
“Sully called the police to tell them what he’d seen and to give them the car’s license plate. Then he called me, and I was able to catch up to him,” Ash goes on.
I’m still sitting across his lap on the ground, and he reaches up to stroke the side of my face as he nuzzles his nose into my hair.
“If I’d lost you, Gray…” I hear the choke in his voice as he trails off.
His own break snaps the thin tether of my control, and I start to cry.
And then I cry, and I cry, and I cry.
Chapter 45
Gray
