“You got it.” His face darkened. “We’ll find your girl, Grizzly. I’ll send…”
“No.” Gunnar shook his head. “I’ll call if I need more people on the ground. You have less rules to fly out of here than I do from Italy. If I need a team somewhere before I can get a plane in the air, I’m gonna need you to be able to fly on short notice.”
“I’ll put my guy on alert. We can be wheels up within thirty minutes of your call,” Dory agreed.
The man whose woman was missing was at war with the warrior inside him. The first wanted to go down to the holding cell and beat the shit out of their prisoner until they had every scrap of information he had yet to tell them. The warrior knew this was not the optimal way to go. They needed reliable intel, not something given up under his fists. The only way to get that was to hope Jorja was still in Europe. “No stone unturned, Remi,” he said into the phone as Colt returned and nodded in his direction. “I want everything as soon as I get home.”
“I’m sorry…”
The urge to snap at his brother was strong, but Gunnar beat it back. “It’s on me, not you,” he said flatly. “We can blame each other when we have her back.” Because he would find those responsible and he would get her back. Any other option was not acceptable to him… to any of them.
“Okay.”
He could hear the sound of sirens in the background and realized Remi must have reached out to them even as they were talking. “I’ll let you deal with them. I’m headed out.”
“See you in a couple of hours.”
“Plane will be ready as soon as we get to the airport,” Colt said as soon as Gunnar ended the call with Remi. “Trucks are waiting at the front door,” he added.
“Thanks.” Gunnar refused to allow his brain to go down the ‘what-if’ road. ‘Maybe’ and ‘I fucked up’ streets were off the agenda too. He headed for the trucks, knowing the guys would ensure everything they needed was onboard. They couldn’t fly weapons into Italy—not without a shitload of paperwork. Paperwork he didn’t have time to deal with right now. He sat behind the wheel of the lead truck; all he could do was hope like hell Jorja survived this and didn’t hate him when he got her back. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Almost four hours later, as he drove through the gates of the compound, Gunnar silently prayed Remi had something—anything which would point them to who had taken Jorja. The time on the flight had given him the opportunity to rehash every single word they’d exchanged. Every whisper, every promise repeated inside his head reenforced that she wouldn’t leave just because she could. And she definitely wouldn’t do it this way. How he’d managed to maintain his composure as they’d gone through security at the airport and had to deal with delays was not something heunderstood. The chains on that composure stretched to their limits when he saw Remi waiting for him on the steps.
Gunnar clenched down hard enough on the inside of his mouth to draw blood and switched off the engine. That Colt had to pull up the handbrake he forgot made him wince. So much for the locked down emotions vibe he’d been going for. “Tell me you got something?”
“Not much…”
Not much means something and not nothing.
“Spill.” He followed Remi through the house and into the war-room. He paused in the doorway transfixed by the image of Jorja on the screen. Clearly, she was walking toward the store. He recognized the parking lot and could make out the shape of one of the company trucks in a spot not far behind her. “Remi?”
“I stopped talking when you stopped listening,” Remi muttered. “That’s from just after she arrived. Timestamps match up with you still being in the interrogation room in Morocco,” Remi continued as he sat down and hit play on what was most likely video footage from the store.
Someone nudged his back, urging him further into the room, and Gunnar sat heavily into the first seat at the war-table. He wasn’t entirely sure how he hadn’t lost his shit yet, but he could feel the fear, rage, and a desperate need to punch something simmering. He’d never really struggled with waiting like some of the others. Hurry up and wait was a fact of life when you worked for the military. Waiting came with the job. But this wasn’t military, this wasn’t a job… this was Jorja. His Jorja; it didn’t get more personal than that. Thankfully, no one commented on him taking Marco’s seat. Instead they took a seat and watched the scene on the screen play out in front of them.
Remi split the screen in two. One of them focused on thetruck in the parking lot. The other followed Jorja to the pharmacy and from there into the grocery store.
Gunnar was so focused on Jorja he almost missed the van pulling in next to the truck.
Why is it always a fucking white van?
He had an idea of what was about to happen. Both his heart and stomach clenched as he watched Jorja come out of the store and walk toward the truck. She hesitated not far from it.
Good girl. Your gut is right, listen to it, he urged her silently. He could read the hesitation written all over her. Then his girl turned around and went back toward the store, searching in her purse as she went as if she’d forgotten something. A thought occurred to him. “Did she have a phone?”
Remi shook his head. “It’s charging next to the fridge at your place.”
“Fuck.”
Remi paused the videos. “My best guess is something felt off to her, and she was going back into the store. Probably to see if there was a way to call me.”
His words warned of what was to come. Still, watching the van speed out of the parking spot, stop next to Jorja, blocking her from view, before speeding off and leaving an empty space where she once had been scalded him right to the bone. “Fuck,” Gunnar ground out the words through gritted teeth. The guys didn’t need to know he had his hands balled into fists under the desk or that he was imagining invisible chains keeping him in place so he didn’t completely lose it.
Remi rewound the footage and played it again. And then did it again. Every time a stab in the heart; Gunnar imagined hearing her scream, or feeling her struggle as she tried to get away. Behind his closed eyelids, like a damn movie on repeat, he could see the scene play out. Those invisiblechains he’d worked to have in place reached their breaking point.
Ping.
