Of course it is.
Fuck!
I make her look up the security footage from every way out of the hospital, but once again, they’re all cut off. All of them—so that I don’t even get to figure out which way they took her. For all I know she could still be in the building, with the EFW hiding her until I leave so they can move her out.
I pull out my phone and bring it up to my ear, calling the one person I know I can trust.
“Say it quickly. I have the Prime Minister of France on hold,” Maddox Thorne, the President of the United States of America, answers almost immediately.
I don’t call the president very often. He and I both have a clear understanding of what needs to be done. Of what each of us expects the other to accomplish on our own. So when one of us reaches out completely out of nowhere, we drop everything and answer the fucking phone when it rings.
“They took her,” I say, spitting out the words.
The president pauses, cursing under his breath.
“Where are you?”
“St. Francis. Security footage is wiped out. I have no way of knowing if she’s even in the building anymore.”
“What about the attack on the Ridge this morning? Is it connected in any way?”
“A fucking ploy to distract me. How fast can you get a team here?”
“I’ll talk to Reid to see how we can do this quietly. But Rowan—” A plea of sorts emanates from his voice, and a feral, anger-filled smirk spreads on my lips at hearing him say my name like that.
This is the side of me he’s been afraid of from the very beginning, when we were training in the army together. The side of me that every tabloid across the country painted as a monster more times than I can count. The side of me I keep on a tight leash until it tugs so hard I’m forced to let it loose on the world, leaving dead, rotting bodies in its wake until I get what I want.
I sympathize with my friend, I really do. So when I go to war for my woman, I’ll do my damnedest to keep his presidency away from my crimes.
“Don’t worry, Mr. President. You know I hunt best when the lights are off.”
five
Dove
Present Day
Awise philosopher once said the angel of death sits on every word, and that when your breath runs its course, it comes down on a cloud of ashes to retrieve your heart. Though I can’t see anything past the darkness of the four walls surrounding me, that’s exactly what I’m feeling right now: my chest being broken in two, violated by a pain so sharp that my body shakes with rage, fighting to contain it.
I don’t know how many days have passed. They won’t bring me light. They won’t give me air. Just a piece of stale bread and water at infrequent intervals to keep me on the threshold of life. I stare into nothingness and pieces of me flash before my eyes. Faces I know, faces I love…
My mother in the hospital bed. My brother. My best friend, Sterling.
And the man who owns my dying heart…
I see Rowan’s face in my mind and my limbs ache to run into his arms. To be held tight to his chest, where all is right with the world. Where I’m warm and safe and nothing can touch me. Butthe more I think of him the worse I feel when his image fades away.
The echoing sound of the chains wrapped around my ankles brings me out of my memories, and I fall apart.
They remind me I’m here, and that all is lost.
My brain loses focus, and his face vanishes completely like a leaf swept into a powerful stream. They drugged me again. The same syringe sinks into my neck every day whenever they want to numb me. It’s been like this since they took me and questioned me about everything. They asked about Rowan—about where he lives, and what his plans are with the war in the Ridge. They asked so many things, and my answer was the same every single time—I don’t know.
I know nothing at all, and I finally understand why Rowan kept so much from me.
Where is Cole? Where is my brother? Why isn’t he helping me?
The thought of him knowing I’m here and doing nothing about it hurts almost the same as knowing he was dead. I keep thinking maybe he’s not here at all, that maybe seeing him was just another hallucination from the lack of oxygen in this cell.
