“I continued to monitor Collins’ phone after she and Riley were taken, and I combed through older messages and ran a tracer in tandem with the newer threats. I was trying to see if any of them could generate a shared location crosspoint, anything that could feed me hints of where he could’ve possibly taken her.But—” He turns in his seat to look between me and Jett, annoyance crossing his features before schooling themagain. “My digging was continuously interrupted with an endless stream of calls and text messages.”
“I was worried about her,” Jett says, running a thick hand over the faded buzz cut he’s now sporting. Jett shrugs and glances out the window into the slowly fading darkness beyond before returning his attention to me once more. “I always worry about the girls when I don’t hear from them for too long. I expected communication with Collins to fade over time, but when I didn’t even get so much as afuck offwhen I checked in on her time and time again, I felt it in my gut that something wasn’t right.” He hits me with a glare that could kill, the ire reigniting in his eyes enough to make me flinch. “But the last fucking thing I expected to hear—from a total stranger—was that she’d been fuckingkidnapped.And it happened right. Under. Your. Fucking. Nose.”
That pisses me off. He’s right, but motherfucker be damned if I let him add to the guilt that’s already eating me alive. I meet his anger with my own, letting him see the craze lurking just beneath the surface.
“If you believe for one goddamned second that I don’t fucking hate myself for what happened, you’ve got another think coming, motherfucker,” I snarl back at him. “We had no idea just how resourceful Guy was. He’s a wealthy man who has a fuck ton of money and a lot more people in his pocket than we expected, apparently. This prick somehow managed to even outsmart the fuckingmafia,” I spit,and I swear I catch Lachlan flinching in his seat.“He had hired a highly skilled marksman who took outtwelvesecurity guards in the blink of an eye. He hurt Collins, shot Riley, and threw the both of them into the trunk of a car like it was nothing. Sped off with them before we even got a fucking security alert.”
I’m full-on yelling now, my chest heaving with the force of my words as I spew them at Jett and his accusatory looks. “Ifyou’re here to help, then fucking help. But don’t come around throwing accusations and judgment at me when you have no goddamned clue who the fuck we’re actually dealing with.” I jab a finger in his chest and lean in close, my voice dropping to a threatening tone. “Get informed or get the fuck out.”
“Guys, shut the fuck up,” Lachlan interrupts, his voice leaving no room for argument. “We’re getting close.”
Jett looks like he wants to say something, but instead, he faces forward, his hands gripping and squeezing the straps of his bullet-proof vest. Silence fills the cab, but the air around us is charged with so much rage, fury, and anticipation that I could fucking choke on it.
We make our way down the two-lane road when an eerie sense of dread cascades over me like a tidal wave, and I find that for the first time tonight, I’m fuckingscared.I have to hold onto hope that Riley and Collins are both alive, but the terrifying truth is that I have no idea what we’ll be charging into. Never in my twenty-nine years did I think that I’d be this deeply involved with the Scottish mafia. That we’d be on our way to rescue the two people who make up each half of my soul. Who were kidnapped by a violent, sadistic man, and that I’ve been armed with agunand was briefly trained on how to shoot to kill. To fuckingkillsomeone. Multiple someones, according to Lachlan.
None of this shit was on my fucking life bingo card.
Turning in his seat, Lachlan pins me with a harsh glare as he speaks, “When we arrive, we stay in the vehicle?—”
“No—”
“We stay in the vehicle,”he repeats over my argument, “until I have disarmed the CCTV system, and the security around the perimeter has been eliminated. Our goal is to retrieve Riley and Collins, but we can’t do that if you charge ahead and get yourself shot or killed in the process. Once clear, only then will you move in. Camden will lead the team. He and his men will do the initialsweep before they break off into smaller groups to clear out the rest of the building.
“You and Jett will follow behind. Always watch your surroundings, but keep an eye on Camdan. He will dictate every advancement you make until Collins and Riley are secure. You keep your guns drawn until all threats have been eliminated. You see someone who isn’t one of our men in these uniforms,” he gestures to his driver and to the foot soldiers now filing out of the vehicles, their dark forms barely visible since the sun has yet to rise this early in the morning. “You shoot. You aim to kill.”
I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t a little uneasy about taking another man’s life, but the fact that said men are working for the piece of shit who took what’s mine? That guilt has faded, quickly morphing into determination to bring them to their fucking end. I won’t allow their deaths to weigh heavy on my conscience, and I will not regret making the decision to raise a gun against any man who stands between me and what’s mine.
Lachlan went over some basic hand signals that Camdan will be giving once we infiltrate the warehouse so that we know his commands and how to communicate without words once ordered into radio silence.
Jett sits so still beside me as he listens to our instructions that I start to question whether he’s actually breathing or not. I thought I’d be squirming in my seat more, but a lethal calm washes over me just before Camdan and Asher appear in front of the vehicle, signaling for us to file out. Approaching them, Jett and I check our weapons one last time, rounding the vehicles before we start to make our way through the woods.
The silence that surrounds us as we make our way closer to the clearing that reveals a relatively new-looking warehouse is fucking eerie. Camdan holds up a fist just ahead of us, signaling for us to stop. I lift the gun higher, scanning my surroundings but find nothing. The distant gunfire can be heard coming fromaround the back of the building has every muscle in my body feeling awfully rigid right now. It’s one thing to talk plans and make threats, but it’s something else entirely to hear it in action. I keep my eyes focused on the building in front of me, ignoring the bodies scattered along the ground.
I’m a fucking musician, not a gangster. But I can’t even think about that part of my life until Collins and Riley are back in my arms, and Guy has been wiped off the face of the earth.
My earpiece crackles briefly before a curt announcement comes through. “Perimeter all clear.”
Camdan signals again and his men flank him. Asher pulls up with the remaining crew, covering me as we all move from the woods into the clearing. My heart is pounding out an erratic beat with every step that brings me closer tothem, the force of each thump threatening to drown out all other sounds. I take a slow, deep breath and release it just as Camdan’s hand flies up, giving us several commands to follow once the door is open.
I nod in understanding even though he can’t see me. A split second later, he takes aim and blows the handle from the door. The sound of the bullet exploding against the metal is muted, but the pang off of the metal handle is startling. He lifts a massive boot and slams it into the door, the blunt force entry cracking the frame and causing the heavy metal wobble on its hinges.
Camdan’s gun goes off before he’s even lowered his foot, then Asher follows behind, his firearm popping off, bullets hitting their targets in rapid succession. The rest of us file inside swiftly and silently, the loudest sounds come from the grunts of pain and the bodies hitting the floor one by one. It’s fucking with my head with just how quiet these firearms are with the suppressors attached to the barrels.
No sooner does my foot cross the threshold does all hell seem to crash down around me. The men Guy had hired to guard theinside of the warehouse are ready to fight back and bullets start to fly all around me.
Camdan’s team fans out as they quickly eliminate Guy’s men. I turn to check on Asher just in time to witness him sink a bullet right between the eyes of his intended target. He turns to me and nods, but my eyes are pulled away when movement behind him steals my attention. A man with a bandana covering his mouth steps out from around an upturned circular table, his gun trained on my best friend.
I don’t think. Gripping my gun tightly, I aim, and I shoot. The bullet explodes through the side of his neck as blood sprays and his body slumps to the ground. I’m no stranger to seeing blood, especially after beating the shit out of Tony, but watching a man bleed out with undiluted fear in his eyes is a whole new level of fucked up to witness.
My empty stomach churns, threatening to expel its contents from my body, but another crackling sound comes through my earpiece, followed up with another, “All clear,” that has Asher spinning me on my heel to face him.
His eyes are the only thing exposed through his balaclava, and they bore into me as he grips my face and butts his forehead against mine. “Keep your shit together. We’re so fucking close, brother.”
I nod, breathing heavily through my nose and keeping my pistol raised. I watch as the team splits off into smaller groups to begin sweeping the separate halls and rooms for the possibility of any more of Guy’s hired men hiding out.
As more rooms are cleared, my body starts to vibrate with a new rush of adrenaline. My blood is fucking thrumming, pounding through my veins in a violent cocktail of venomous rage and anticipation as I look between the two vacant hallways and choose the one that Lachlan had pointed out when goingover the plan. Asher follows close behind, but we both freeze in our tracks when several sounds filter through the hallway.
The most haunting sound comes from the end of the hall. The hair on the back of my neck rises because it’s the most macabre, blood-curdling broken scream I’ve ever heard in my entire existence.
