“Oh, yeah?” Clay forced out, trying his damnedest to sound calm.
A muffled sound on the phone, and then George’s voice, thin and scared. “Clay? They’re at my house, but I’m fine. Fine. Don’t you dare come here. I’m—”
“Don’t listen to her, man. I’m about to—”
“You touch a hair on her body, and you’re a dead man, Ape. Dead,” he said, only to be met with Ape’s cheerfully sordid laugh.
“Trade you. Your life for hers,” the fucker said before hanging up.
An image of Carly’s corpse flashed through Clay’s mind. Only this time, it had George’s face.
He accelerated hard, ignoring the irate honk from the car he’d almost sideswiped, and took off toward her house.
He’d kill them. Ape and Jam and whoever else was with them. He’d use his hands and his knife, and he’d mess them up so bad they’d be unidentifiable.
That animal part of him, the part that wanted to take over, was roaring, a deep, dangerous primal scream like he’d never experienced in his entire fucking life, and he knew he’d tear them apart. Fuck, he’d—
From out of nowhere came an image of George, touching him, healing him, maybe just a little bit loving him, and everything stopped. He couldn’t do any of those things. She wouldn’t want him to. And was that truly who he was?
He’d be no better than them if he murdered them, would he? He was supposed to be one of the good guys. No matter how many times the job had forced him to cross over to the other side, he’d always been a cop.
You are one of the good guys, he told himself, only it didn’t sound like his voice. It sounded like George’s.
He worked hard to think like an agent instead of one of those monsters. He needed to think, to make a plan. What would he do if George wasn’t part of this equation?
Steve. He’d call Steve Mullen. No calling 911, which would put up red flags everywhere, notify the ATF and anybody linked to DOJ. Steve was the only person who had no skin in this game, the only one he could trust.
Working hard at faking a calm he didn’t feel, he reached for his phone, kept his eye on the road while he dug out the guy’s business card, and dialed.
It went to voice mail after too many rings, and Clay came close to losing it again.
Almost to Jason Lane, after trying the number a million times, Clay finally broke down and dialed 911. He had no choice, did he?
When the woman asked him to state his emergency, he hesitated. Kidnapping, attempted murder. Those words would raise a red flag so big that half the fucking state would be here in no time at all. There had to be a way he could save George and keep himself out of sight long enough to see those fuckers in court.
Instead, he told the woman it was a personal matter and asked her to relay him to the sheriff. When he finally came on the line, Steve Mullen sounded irritated.
“What’s the problem, Blane? I got a four-car pile-up on the interstate here.”
“I’ve got an emergency, sir.”
“What’s going on, son?”
“This is being recorded, right?”
A pause. “Yep.”
“Need to talk to you offline. Please.” He gave the man his number and waited for the call to come through.
“Why all the cloak and dagger, Blane?”
“They’ve got Dr. Hadley.”
“Who has her?”
“Sultans MC,” he spat out. “I’m headed to her place now. They’re gonna—”
“Slow down, son, I can’t hear you. Where they at?”
