Fuck. If we have any hope of getting Elena out of there, we’re going to need some help.
* * *
Wren
I can’t sit still. Seeing Elena on a mall surveillance camera sent my heart rate shooting up and anxiety coiling in my chest like a snake ready to strike. Where are my pills? Ryker wouldn’t let me unpack anything—in case we have to leave at a moment’s notice—and I tear through my bag, shoving clothes and protein bars aside until I find the small bottle.
Five pills roll across the floor as I win the battle against the flipping child-proof cap, and I scramble for them, landing on my knees with a thud that sends a shock of pain lancing up my thighs.
Why hasn’t Ryker texted me? I want to call him, but I know I can’t. Distracting him at the wrong moment could get Elena killed. Or worse. Both of them.
Forcing slow, deep breaths in through my nose and out through my mouth, I pray the pill takes effect soon. My daily meds keep the generalized anxiety under control, but the panic attacks…they’re a different animal. One I can keep in a cage as long as Ryker’s with me.
Needing to dosomething, I go back to the translations Inara sent. Along with the street names that led me to Kolya’s buildings, half a dozen other words stand out, and I do a search of Russian internet service providers.
“Holy mother of pearl!” A tiny company with a website that looks like it belongs in the eighties matches one word—ryba—and I scan my master list of everything I found in Zion’s files. Yes.
Twenty minutes later, I’m in. Fifty-seven separate unread emails wait for Zion, and my eyes start to burn as I realize he’ll never see them.
“Oh God.” Elena didn’t just send a video asking for Zion’s help. She copied some of Kolya’s financial records. Z’s spreadsheets. He didn’t just sell drugs for Kolya. He helped the man with his bookkeeping. Elena even found bank statements. There’s enough here to keep an accountant busy for months. How the heck did she get all this?
Most of her messages are in English, and as I scan through, still too tense to process her ramblings, I open an email with a photograph attached.
Four women huddle together in a room. Dressed in plain black dresses, bruises dot their arms, legs, and faces. Their eyes are wide, pupils dilated, and they look like they’re scared to death.
The entire message is only two sentences long.
He says he is going to sell them. And if you do not come back, he will sell me with them.
20
Ryker
When I let myself in the back door of the safe house, my mood instantly lightens. Even though I know she’ll want to talk—something I don’t now how to do—the thought of seeing Wren…touching her…kissing her…it kept me going today.
“Wren?”
She doesn’t answer, but I hear scrambling and a muffled curse—or what passes for a curse with her—from the living room. I find her trying to extricate herself from one of the sleeping bags, her cheeks pale and her eyes dull.
“Did you get Elena?” she whispers and then topples over.
Catching her in my arms, I haul her close, breathing in her sweet scent. We’re both using cheap hotel soap, yet she still smells like honeysuckle. And her hair. Fuck. No one’s hair should be this soft. “Whoa, sweetheart. What’s wrong?”
“P-panic attack. Took a p-pill. Sometimes…I get…dizzy.” She sags against me, resting her cheek against my chest. “Stop distracting me. Where’s Elena?”
“In Kolya’s fortress. With a shit ton of security.” Easing her down to the couch, I don’t expect her to shove at me, and my foot catches in the crumpled sleeping bag. I go down, hard, on my ass. “Fuck, Wren. What was that for?”
“For not…getting Elena!” Her breathing takes on a raspy edge, and she clutches at her sweatshirt like it’s choking her. “She knows…too much. Kolya’s…going tokill her.”
“What?” Shaking my head, I shove my questions to the back of my mind. Right now, I have to get Wren to calm down. Meds or no meds, she’s on the verge of another panic attack, and I’m not going to get through to her unless she can breathe normally. “Never mind. Come down here.” With my hands locked around her wrists, I tug her off the couch and into my lap. She resists for all of a second, then yields, collapsing almost bonelessly into my arms.
“She…took a picture…of the girls he’s selling. And…there’s so much…more…” A single, choking sob escapes her lips, and when I brush her hair away from her face, tears brim in her eyes. Tears. Despite being almost kidnapped, recounting her brother’s death multiple times, and traveling halfway around the world to a country where she doesn’t speak the language with a guy who looks like Quasimodo on steroids, she’s shed exactly one tear before tonight. One. And now…she’s barely holding it together.
“Shhh, Wren. Let it out, baby.” Something twists inside me when she shatters, and as she cries into my jacket, I do the only thing I can. Protect her until the storm passes.
“Goddammit,” she mumbles, and I draw back enough to meet her gaze.
“You just swore.”
