Is this the last time I’ll ever set eyes on the legendary Graham Coleburn?
15
“I think we need to install a Xanax salt lick for times like these,” Fisher muttered to his fiancée.
Hew didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know they were eyeing him as he paced back and forth across the length of the War Room.
He had tried to sit down. But every time he got quiet and still, his brain offered up increasingly horrific mental reels of what Sabrina might be enduring.
Had she been tied up? Beaten?
Was she bleeding? Broken?
Had her abductors left her alone in the dark somewhere with nothing but her fear to keep her company? Or, worse, were they with her? Tormenting her? Abusing her in ways he?—
Stop it! He silently railed at himself. You’re not doin’ her any good by imaginin’ the worst.
Pressing a hand to his chest, he tried to relieve the pressure there. It didn’t help. His ribs felt too tight for his lungs.
He’d been in plenty of hairy situations. Had dropped friends behind enemy lines, flown into hot zones to pick up wounded brothers-in-arms, and dodged missiles and mortar fire with a chopper full of men depending on him to get them home in one piece. But this…this waiting, while Sabrina was god-knows-where suffering god-knows-what, was worse than anything he could remember.
“Found her!” Ozzie crowed from his spot at the bank of computers.
Those two syllables were enough to lock up every muscle in Hew’s body. Then, like they were spring-loaded, they launched him across the room.
“Where is she?” he demanded from behind Ozzie’s chair. “Show me.”
Around him, he could feel the rest of the Knights gathering. Graham, Sam, Hunter, Fisher. A wall of grim-faced warriors who’d do everything possible to get Sabrina back.
There should’ve been comfort in that. But there was nothing that could comfort Hew now except for her safe return.
Ozzie zoomed in on an image. Then, he zoomed in again. And again, until Hew was forced to bite his tongue and curl his fingers into fists lest he start yanking out Ozzie’s mad-scientist hair by the roots because the man seemed not to grasp how short Hew’s fuse was.
“Oz, man, what are we lookin’ at?” he finally asked impatiently.
It was clear they were viewing real-time satellite footage, but it was grainy and grayscale thanks to the abysmal light of the moonless night.
“Pretty sure that’s the van that followed Sabrina.” Ozzie tapped the keyboard with rapid-fire precision, and the image came into sharper focus.
Hew’s chin jerked back when he realized Ozzie had zeroed in on the bottom of a wheel. The vehicle it was attached to was parked atop a dirty concrete slab, and only part of its hubcap was visible beneath the drooping edge of a tarp.
Hope bled out of him like air from a punctured lung.
“That’s it?” He managed to grit the two syllables from between his teeth. “That’s all ya got?”
“I know, I know.” Ozzie’s fingers began another dance across the keyboard. “It doesn’t look like much until you compare it to this.”
Another image popped up on a split screen beside the first. It was the photo they’d captured off the CCTV cameras of Sabrina and her tail as she drove past the city’s limits.
Ozzie zoomed in on the van’s front wheel.
“Look.” He pointed to a jagged white scratch that ran across the hubcap like a lightning bolt.
It matched the scratch on the hubcap in the satellite imagery.
“Damn good eye, Oz.” Boss clapped a hand on Ozzie’s shoulder.
“Where is it?” Hew demanded, his voice low and tight. “Where is she?”
