Rio is scanning the ground behind me. “That’s the direction of the quarry,” he says, voice flat. A death sentence of words.
We pick up the pace and reach the still-running truck.
I throw myself into the driver’s seat. Rio’s door slams, and I yank the truck into reverse, gravel spitting as I turn back toward the quarry.
As soon as he picks up a cell signal, Rio calls Callum. “Freya’s gone. Window shattered. Blood on the door. Tire tracks heading straight for the quarry.”
“Units on route,” Callum says tightly. “I’ll meet you there.”
Rio hangs up and immediately calls Gabriel. “Hermano, bring whatever SEAL equipment you’ve got, and get to the quarry now. Freya might be there.”
The words hit like a blade to the gut.
He needs to bring extraction equipment.
Because there’s a chance she and my baby aren’t on the cliff…but below it.
I force that thought back, but it tears at me anyway, hitting so hard that my whole body goes tight around it.
The silence between us turns brutal and heavy—pressure settling under the ribs, threatening to crack something open.
Why does the killer want us to follow?
And what the hell are we about to find?
I train all my focus on one thing—I go where she is.
And someone’s about to learn what happens when a man like me has something to lose.
36
I cometo with the taste of blood in my mouth. My tongue is thick, my head pounding in slow, nauseating waves that don’t match the gentle sway rolling through the seat beneath me. A vibration. A hum. A moving vehicle.
The car jolts over a pothole, and panic slams up my spine. My brain scrambles, dragging up shredded pieces of memory:
Speed trap.
A shadow moving.
Glass exploding inward.
A burst of pain at my temple.
Then nothing. Blackness swallowedeverything.
I’m upright now…and though my head weighs a thousand pounds, I manage to pry open my heavy eyelids. I’m strapped in.
Across my lap, my wrists are bound with heavy-duty flex cuffs, the kind officers and military use for mass arrests. They’re strong, unforgiving, and I know I won’t be getting out of them anytime soon.
I force my head to turn. My vision swims, then resolves enough to make sense of the man in the driver’s seat. Broad shoulders fill the space, his posture unnervingly rigid. One hand grips the wheel with eerie calm; the other rests low near his thigh on a gun angled toward me.
Ice floods my veins.
This is the man from the roadside. The shadow that moved faster than I could process, the one whose smile didn’t reach his eyes.
My tongue is like sandpaper in my mouth. “Who…who are you?”
He glances at me with hollow, terrifying eyes like murky glass. But he says nothing—only turns back to the road without a sound.
