Do something!
I know I’m in trouble. That if I do not move, scream, fight, I will disappear. Or worse.
Hands rove up and down my body. Squeezing. Pulling at my blouse. My skirt. In my ear, Austin, Trevor, and Leo shout, but I cannot make out their words.
The haze muddling my thoughts starts to fade. “Outside!” I scream. The slap sends my head whipping to the side. Rough fingers yank the tiny comms device from my ear.
“She’s wired!” Pinzon. I will never forget his voice. I blink hard, and his angry face swims over me. He tosses the little earbud to someone, and a door slides shut. A van. I’m in a van. But it does not matter now. No one can hear me. “Go, go, go!”
Pinzon flips me onto my stomach. I flail my arms, but he captures my wrists and pins them behind my back. The zip tie digs into my skin. I scream and kick, but Daniel isn’t the only one back here with me. Another man binds my ankles. “That was very advanced technology,” he says. “Leo Basher is not careless. Check her again.Everywhere. I will disable her phone.”
Unlike Pinzon, this man’s accent is lighter. More refined. I struggle to see his face until his words sink in.Everywhere. Pinzon’s hands slide over my calves, between my legs, all the way to my panties.
“Get off me!” I cry. “Stop! Please!”
My tears soak into the rough, gray carpet on the van’s floor. Pinzon chuckles as he squeezes both of my ass cheeks. He stops short of violating me, but this…this is so close, I want to throw up. His fingers dig under the waistband of my skirt, then move to my back.
The GPS tracker. He will find it. How long has it been? Only minutes. They had a plan. They knew we would be at the hotel. Knew we would be together. Knew exactly how to separate us. The van was waiting outside, the engine running.
Pinzon pulls up my blouse, and I squeeze my eyes shut. “What is this?” His hot breath over my cheek makes me gag. Digging under the band of my bra, right against the side of my breast, he finds the small GPS tracker. “Thought we would miss this,Domina?”
He drops the tracker right in front of my face, and the other man—he’s familiar, but fear clouds my memories—slams the butt of his gun down on the small device.
“Please,” I whimper. “Stop the van and let me go.”
“We can’t do that,” the other man says. “Your lover and hisfriendsruined our best chance to kill Cortez. So we are going to make him do it for us.”
“Leo willneverkill Manuel. He is too good of a man.”
Pinzon flips me onto my back. Half a dozen slices from my cactus mar his cheeks and forehead. A bloody stain covers half the white of his left eye. But it is his smile that terrifies me the most.
“He will. Or he will watch you die.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Leo
Someone pushes me so hard,I stumble several steps back. If it weren’t for the crowd, I’d be on my ass. Bodies close in around me. Who the hell let all these goddamn people in here?
“Diana? Diana! Fuck it. Domina, answer me! Jimmy, do you have eyes on her?” The memory of her fingers in mine is still so fresh. Where the hell is she?
“No! Why?” Austin asks.
“Domina!” Frantic, I spin around, but catch only a glimpse of her dark curls. “She’s at the back door. And I don’t think she’s alone!”
After a beat, Austin switches to Spanish to shout, “Get out of the way before I shove that camera up your ass!”
“I’m too far away to get there.” Trevor’s out of breath, and a door slams. “Still four floors to go.”
Shit. He was seven stories up on a roof across the street. I can’t see her anymore. Austin bursts through a wall of reporters, ignoring their rude gestures and vague threats of cutting off his balls.
“What happened? Where is she?” he asks. The bone conduction mics are more advanced than anything on the market today and filter out almost all ambient noise. Right now, I’d give anything to hear what’s going on around her.
Together, we fight our way through the crowds. Austin leads, shoving, pushing, and using his entire body to part the sea of supporters desperate to see their candidate.
“Outside!” Domina screams.
I grab Austin’s arm, our gazes locking for a split second. She’s terrified. Which means she’s not alone. Someone took her.
