Ethan checks it out, comparing the app’s information to the GPS map on his phone. “Industrial complex. Looks like an office building.”
He then looks at satellite images. “Last time there were cars in the parking lot was three years ago. Most recent images make it look abandoned.”
“We’re going in. Get your guys together,” I tell Nick before retreating to the bedroom to arm myself.
“This is what he expects us to do!” Nick points out. “He wants us to rush in without thinking first.”
He’s right. But dammit, she’s there, and I want her back. I need her back.
Get it together. She needs you to get your shit together and not rush in blind.I close my eyes, taking a few deep breaths with a gun in each hand. “Get together all the information you can about the location,” I reply. “Blueprints, preferably, along with information on all access points. Alert the team. Have them gather here—I want them by the end of the hour.”
“I go after Aurora,”I announce over my earpiece as we pull into the wide-open gates of the industrial park. Like he’s waiting for us. I have no doubt he is. Waiting and plotting and smiling to himself.
“What if she’s there?” There’s a heaviness in Ethan’s question. I’m not the only one Selina betrayed.
“Keep her alive,” I decide. If only so I can hear her excuses. Do I have it in me to end the life of someone I used to rely on that heavily? She was like the sister I lost, almost a replacement for Laura in so many ways. I see that now. It’s something that insists on repeating in my head no matter how I try to quiet it. There’s no room for it. Later, once it’s all over, I can look back and make sense of everything.
We pull up the way we did outside of Donovan’s mansion. It might as well have been a lifetime ago. I’m not as sure of myself as I was that night, but I’m just as thirsty for his blood. This time, I want him to suffer, and I’m not making the mistake of walking away until I know for sure he is dead and gone. Because he’ll behere. He’ll be here, because he knows I’ll come for the daughter he cares nothing about.
The rest of them rush into the building while I walk at a steady, determined pace, following the flashing blue dot. It doesn’t move, still tucked in one corner of the single-story structure.
Ethan follows the team, but Nick stays by my side. “I’m going in alone,” I remind him.
“That doesn’t mean I can’t cover you on the way.” He leads me through a maze of corridors while I call out directions, firing at one, then two men who might as well announce their presence before showing their faces. It makes sense in a twisted way. This is a new group of guys, men Donovan scraped together after we eliminated so much of his original team. He doesn’t care whether they’re any good, not really. They’re just more bodies to churn through. The appearance of power with no substance to back it up.
It’s almost too easy, but then he would want to make it that way. He wants me to find her, because finding her means finding him. The reason he took her to begin with.
“Go back,” I tell Nick once we reach a door at the end of the corridor. The blue dot blinks away on the other side. “I’ve got this.”
He doesn’t want to leave, but he knows better than to defy an order. After hesitating for a beat, he doubles back to get into the fight along with Ethan and the others.
While I fire at the lock, then kick the door open to find exactly who I expected.
She’s alive. My relief is short-lived once I take in the situation.
“Took you long enough.” There’s laughter in the psychotic bastard’s voice. He’s alive and well, all right, seemingly in perfect health, standing with his back to a small bed in what could havebeen a closet at some point, but was transformed into a cell. Once again, she was in a cell.
She stares at me, unblinking, frozen stiff. I would be, too, if my own father had a gun to my head and used me as a human shield.
“See, here’s one thing I figured out a long time ago,” Donovan says with a sneer while clutching Aurora to him. “Never have women on the team. They’re too emotional. It’s too easy to find their weak spot.”
He tsks at my silence. “I mean, come on. That cute piece of ass you had working for you? It took nothing to convince her to turn against you. She was jealous, and you were too fucking blind to see it. And now?”
He glances at his daughter before winking at me. “I mean, come on. You can’t trust a woman to think rationally. She’s always going to react to emotion.”
“Suddenly I’m supposed to take advice from you?” Would he shoot her if it meant saving his own neck? I don’t have to think about it. He absolutely would.
“Consider it a lesson.” His teeth flash when he smiles. “Not that you’ll have much time to do anything with it. Do you think I’d make it this easy? Let you walk right in, take what’s mine again?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I counter. There’s no other way out of this room beyond the doorway I’m currently standing in. If he wants to get out, he’s coming through me. “But she’s not yours.”
“She sure as fuck isn’t yours,” he snaps. She sucks in a gasp when he holds her closer, jamming the gun against her temple. “She’s mine. I made her.”
His smile widens. “And if I decide to blow her fucking brains all over the wall, that’s up to me. But you can help change my mind.”
“How can I do that?” I ask, though I already know.
“Put down the gun.”
