She felt hands running over her body and wished she could bite the one that squeezed her breast.
“It’s here.”
She’d brought it in case Cooper needed her, and now she wished she’d left it.
“Your brother owes me two hundred thousand dollars, Ms. Smith, and I don’t plan on leaving here without it. So you’re going to call your Texan, and we’re going to organize to meet up with him and my money.” The man grabbed the back of her hair and pulled her head up as he spoke beside her.
Annabelle had thought that she’d known terror walking into that building in Vegas with Ethan, but this… this was terror. Her heart raced, she felt sick, she couldn’t breathe in deeply because her mouth was taped, and the bindings around her wrists and ankles were cutting into her skin.
“We get Cooper and then head straight for that place where we stored the van.”
Annabelle thought about Ethan, and how she’d told him she loved him, and felt her anger begin to push through the fear. She didn’t want to die yet; she wanted a life with the man she loved, and a child like Billy to cuddle and wake up to every morning. They’d find her, she knew that. Her people would come for her when they knew she was missing. Annabelle just had to stay alive until they did.
Ethan flew into Brook at the ridiculously early hour of 7 a.m. After Annabelle’s phone call last night, all he could think about was getting to her, holding her and never letting her go. She loved him. God, her voice had sounded so sweet when she’d told him that. She loved him. He felt the foolish grin he’d worn since he’d opened his eyes grow wider.
Looking around at the clear morning and the still lake, he thought they’d live here. He loved it and this was her home, the place of her roots. His were in Texas along with his dysfunctional family, so he’d choose hers.
“Jesus! What the fuck, Gelderman. It’s seven o’fucking clock!” Jake opened the door with a scowl, wearing a t-shirt and shorts. His hair was standing on end; his jaw was unshaven.
Leaning forward, Ethan wrapped his arms around his grumpy friend and hugged him. “Annabelle loves me.”
“Well, I don’t,” Jake complained, then turned to walk to the kitchen, leaving Ethan to shut the door.
“Hi, Ethan.” Branna was standing half-asleep, resting against the kitchen counter, dressed in shorts and a fluffy sweater with an open book on the front as she watched the coffee brew.
“Apparently Annabelle loves him, so that gives him the right to wake us up.” Jake moved behind Branna and wrapped his arms around her, then rested his head on her shoulder.
Ethan wanted to do that with Annabelle: wake with her in his arms and hold her in the morning while the coffee brewed.
“When did she tell you?” Branna said, leaning back against her man.
“Last night. She called me at one forty-five in the morning,” Ethan said, wondering if it was too early to go there now.
“One forty-five a.m.,” Jake mimicked.
“I forgot what a bitch you are in the morning, McBride,” Ethan said.
“It’s not the morning, Tex. The morning starts at eight at the earliest,” Jake said.
Ethan pulled out his cell phone as it started buzzing. “Hey, baby, you’re up early,” he said, seeing Annabelle’s number on his screen. He felt the smile fall off his face as he listened to her frantic words. “Are you still in Howling, Annabelle?” Ethan didn’t get an answer; instead, a man’s voice came on the other end. He listened for a few more seconds, then the call was cut.
“What?” Jake said with a deep frown.
“That was Jenson. He has both Annabelle and Cooper and he wants two hundred thousand dollars, otherwise I get them back dead.”
His insides felt cold, as if they’d frozen over and were slowing down his ability to think. Someone had a gun at the head of his beautiful girl and Ethan had never known fear like it.
“Branna, call Buster and get him here, and then call Declan, Newman and my parents and get them to do the same.” Jake snapped out the words as he handed her his phone. He then took Ethan’s phone and called Cubby.
“They’ve probably left town or are hiding out somewhere, but have someone block the roads,” Ethan heard him say seconds later.
Shaking his head, he tried to clear it. She needed him to focus now, needed the cool head he’d had in the Army. “I need to start looking,” he said as he walked towards the door, but Jake’s hand stopped him.
“Not alone, now without guns and support, you don’t.”
“He has my girl.”
“And we want her back alive, and to do that we need to do this right. Ethan, you know what I’m saying is the only way.”
