Please,please, let her be a good enough liar to pull this off.
Cameron stepped up beside Ritchie. “Is she saying what I think she’s saying?”
Becks didn’t look at her, keeping her gaze solely on Ritchie. He seemed to be the one calling the shots, though Becks wasn’t entirely certain he was firing on all cylinders. She hoped she could use that to her advantage.
“Let’s say we do let your brother go, and you sign everything over to us. It’ll still take time to get everything transferred. What do you suggest we do with you while we wait? And what will keep big brother from sending the cops after us before we can escape the country as you so elegantly suggested?”
Becks’ heart hammered in her chest, but she refused to allow herself to get distracted by hope. “Keep me. He won’t say a word if you still have me.” Not that he would be in any condition to give an accurate story of what had happened. She didn’t even know what it was Liam currently knew. His lucid moments were so far and few now.
“And what do we do with you once we have the money?” Based on Ritchie’s expression, he was thinking the same thing as Becks. And both knew thatshewould have no trouble retelling what had happened here.
Becks swallowed hard. “I won’t lie to you and tell you that I won’t say anything. Neither one of us would believe that. But I can promise you that I won’t name you for two days.” She held up two fingers for emphasis. “That’ll give you plenty of time for you to get out of the country.” When neither Ritchienor Cameron said anything, Becks added, “I don’t give a damn about the money. You know me well enough to believe that,” she sneered with disgust. “Take it. Do whatever you want with it. I only care thatbothmy brother and I walk away from this.”
She would agree to anything, give them anything, if it allowed her to see Ghost again.
Cameron’s eyes danced between her and Ritchie. “Can she really sign the money over to us without dying?”
“As long as she’s not lying about being his power of attorney,” Ritchie said slowly, as if he was considering all the angles of this new reality.
Becks did not allow her expression to change, and she’d never in her life tried so hard not to blink. “I’m not,” she vowed.
“Sign everything, and we’ll let him go,” Ritchie told her.
Excitement and hope prematurely filled her. Becks shook her head. “No. Let him go, and once I see he’s free, then I’ll sign everything.” When Ritchie hesitated, she pressed, “You’ll still have me. I just need to know he’s safe before I give you anything. After everything you’ve done to us already, can you really not understand why I need a show of faith on your end?”
Ghost wasn’t asleepwhen his phone rang. Bulldog and Lucky had forced him out of his office, and under threat of Tessa sedating him, Ghost had agreed to go lay down in bed. He never agreed to sleep. Not that he could have if he wanted to or tried. He was fucking exhausted and his entire body ached like he’d been hit by a freight train, but there was no way he was sleeping without his arms wrapped around Becks.
It was like his body had physically been changed by her, and it didn’t function right unless she was with him.
So for the past several hours, Ghost had been lying in bed on Becks’ pillow, staring up at the ceiling and calling himself all sorts of useless. How could he not know where his wife was? Why didn’t he have some sixth sense about what direction to find her in? What was being done to her? His soul ached, thinking the worst. He didn’t know Ritchie—had only met him that one time at the church—but Keys found evidence linking him to a drug dealer in Atlanta. Only a day after the wedding, Ritchie’s bosses made him take a drug test. He failed, obviously.
Was that what all this was about? Ritchie wanted Ranger’s and Becks’ inheritances to fund his drug addiction?
Ghost picked up his phone, not even bothering to check who was calling him. Unless it was Becks, it wouldn’t matter anyway. “What?”
“Ghost!” He bolted upright in bed. Not because of the franticness of the feminine voice on the other line, but because ofwhoit was. Tally! Tally was with Scar. And Scar… Scar had been on the hunt for the past four and a half days. “We found Ranger! He’s in bad shape, but he’s alive!”
The relief Ghost felt at those words was palpable, but tainted. “Becks?” He was almost too scared to ask, but he had to know.
“I’m sorry. She’s not here.” Tally paused, and then said, “The ambulance is coming. I called them before I called you.” Ghost didn’t hear anything, but in the year plus that he’d known Tally, he’d learned that not much escaped her ears. “Once I know where we’re going, I’ll text you.”
“Where are you?” Ghost asked, already getting his boots on. At least he could start heading in that direction.
“Head to Cottonville. I’m not sure if we’re closer to Mount Grove or Cottonville, but we’re somewhere between. She’s close, Ghost.” The sound of approaching sirens cut Tally off. “I have to go. I’ll text you once I know which hospital they’re taking him to.”
The emergency roomwas packed with bikers. Keys had practically set up a mobile computer unit in the visitor area. Tessa was back, consulting with the Cottonville medical staff. Bulldog was talking to Scar and Tally to get every detail they could out of the couple of where they had found Ranger so Keys had a starting place to look. It was unknown how long Ranger had been on the side of the road, though. From what Ghost had gotten from the pictures Scar had taken, Ranger had dragged himself up from a drainage ditch, through mud and filth, to the side of the road.
He was alive, but the diagnosis wasn’t good. Multiple injection sites on his arms hinted at drug usage of some sort, and he’d clearly been tortured. That was all Ghost knew before Tessa refused to answer any more questions.
Bottom line was that Ranger was in no condition to tell Ghost where Becks was. Ghost didn’t blame him—he blamed himself. Becks was in trouble because he’d failed to protect her, and now he was useless in finding her. He was a fucking SEAL, and yet, he had no one to fight, no place to start his hunt. He didn’t even know if Becks was still in Mount Grove.
Bulldog approached. Lucky got up from where he was looking at something over Keys’ shoulder to join them. “Based on the tracks, Scar believes it was a van of some sort that dropped Ranger off. Imprints in the hillside make him think that Ranger was rolled down and was there some time before he crawled his way back up.”
Ghost glanced down at his watch. It was nearly dawn. How long had it been since Ranger and Becks had been together? Then again, there was no evidence they had even been together.What if Ranger had been held in a different place than Becks, and he couldn’t even tell him where to start looking?
Why release Ranger? In the state he was in, chances were that Becks wasn’t in any better shape. What drug had they used? Ritchie used cocaine, but that wasn’t a good drug to try to control someone. Cocaine would have made Ranger unpredictable, even stronger. Hell, the eighties ran on cocaine, and somehow the human race had survived.
It was more likely something like oxy, hydrocodone, speedballs, or heroin. Downers or hallucinogens to keep him compliant. Until Ranger was more with it, though, there was no telling how the drugs affected him long term. Like anything else, some people had a higher resistance, but based on the number of injection sites on his arms, chances were that no amount of natural tolerance would keep him from having some lasting effect.
