“Missed you too,” I replied with the truth. “Come and sit; we have food.”
He carried me to the chair, seemingly unwilling to let me go yet. When he sat, I remained on his lap and handed him a few of the small egg sandwiches. He wolfed them down in an instant, and I knew that he’d been neglecting both sleep and food over the past few days.
“Coffee? Juice?” I asked as we waited for him to finish eating. While we were all desperate to hear the rest of Grayson’s information on Angelo, his wellbeing was just as important.
“Coffee, please,” he said, sounding more relaxed and at ease now that he’d eaten. “And another kiss.”
It was a relief to have his demanding side back in play.
After making his coffee as he liked it, black as night with no sugar, I handed it to him with a peck on the lips. I was turning away with a laugh, when he rumbled out a “Fuck no”and captured my face. This time the kiss wasallGrayson—dominating, his tongue tangling with mine as he controlled the pace. By the time he was done, I was breathless and confused about what the hell just happened. The Gray effect.
Grayson had a way of stealing my sanity and reason, until I forgot everything, including the heartache in my life.
“Tell us what you found out,” Jace said, leaning forward in his chair, his coffee mug loosely held in one hand. “We’re done waiting around for information. We need to know.”
It wasn’t justmy Angelmissing. Jace had just as much to lose here.
His brother.
“Right.” Grayson was back to business. “So, we tracked Wilson’s path from the house to that first rendezvous spot. That was where he handed Angelo off to some of his associates to be transported to the next drop site.”
“Did they do that to make it harder to track him?” I asked, twisting on Grayson’s lap so I could see his expression.
“Yep.” He nodded. “Change the path frequently to confuse any who are tracking you. That way no one knows the end destination, just the next step. No matter how many of Wilson’s people we managed to find and torture, we could never get more than one step farther.”
“But he was alive two days ago,” I said, confirming what Jace had already told me.
“Alive and well, apparently. There was no evidence of abuse, which is a good sign. It means they have bigger plans for him than a quick and clean death. They want to make it a big spectacle, so they’ll be patient.”
None of that sounded like a good sign, but I understood what he was saying. It was what I’d been hoping all along: We still had time to save him.
“Do you know where he is now?” I asked. “Did you manage to track down all the different groups who moved him?”
I was expecting a no. I mean, they’d only had three days. How much could they have learned in that time?
To my surprise, he nodded once more. “Yes, we actually did track Angelo down. He’s on his way home to Siena.”
I jumped out of his lap, spinning to face him as my panic took hold. “If he’s already on the way, then we’re too late. They’re going to arrive long before us, and Angelo will be killed before we can save him.” All of the hope I’d been desperately holding onto was dashed in a split second, as panic threatened to send me to my knees. “This can’t be happening,” I cried.
“Prickles, love, breathe,” Grayson said calmly. Too calmly. That calm broke through my panic, reminding me that Grayson wouldn’t be casually sitting here eating breakfast if we were in a race to get back to America before Angelo. There had to be more to the story.
“What aren’t you telling us,” Rhett said, twisting his lip ring around in one of the only nervous tics I ever saw from him. “Is Angelo going to get to America before us?”
“Nope,” Grayson replied immediately. “He’s on a cargo ship. That route, depending on the weather and such, should take at least ten to fifteen days.”
Ten to fifteen—what the actual fuck?
Now I had a new damn worry to add to the plethora consuming me.
“We need to go after him!” I might have stomped my foot like a toddler, but seriously, fifteen days in a cargo ship with god knows what being done to him. This might actually be worse than what I’d been expecting.
Grayson’s lips twitched, and despite his fatigue, his eyes were lit up. “Aww, you’re so prickly right now. I’d like to throw you over my shoulder and work out all of your anxiety.”
Shaking my head, I managed not to roll my eyes.
This time he laughed out loud, and that made me feel a tiny bit better. It didn’t happen a lot, but when it did, I loved to hear Grayson’s laughter. “They’re not going to waste time, money, and resources transporting him secretly into America, unless they want him to arrive in one piece,” Gray reassured me. “Angelo will be fine, outside of a little fucked up from spending fifteen days in what can be rough waters.”
“There’s no way for us to rescue him?” I double-checked.
