“Address on the business?” Blade asked. If they couldn’t find Terry Richards through his home address, they’d just get to the man through his work one.
“Only address listed for it is the same building where Whitney used to work, the one she blew up,” Steel answered.
“Damn,” Blade swore, his knife moving automatically back to peel away at his skin. It seemed only fitting that he keep punishing himself because who knew what kind of hell Whitney was going through at this moment.
“Stop doing that,” Dragon snapped, reaching for the knife, but Blade swung it out of reach.
“We were supposed to be following her, but we lost her. I promised her she’d be okay, and we all know she’s not,” he snarled. His gaze fell on the small cut in his palm. His promise to his girl, broken already.
“Even if they found the trackers on her, she still has the one Teresa invented, that doesn’t get turned on until it’s activated,” Voodoo reminded him, like that was any comfort. In theory, the device created by Cyber Team member Teresa Dash wasa workaround for most situations, but if someone was using a jammer, then it was useless.
“Problem is, we shouldn’t have assumed she’d be taken straight to Dr. Gardner,” he said. Whitney had told them that the only other person who worked for the scientist who might want to get his hands on her was her former handler, who was the man Blade had killed last in the forest that day. There didn't seem to be any reason to suspect that having her taken straight to the man who bought her wouldn't happen.
What had just hours ago seemed like a perfectly logical plan, let Whitney play bait, follow at a distance, be led straight to the source of all their suffering, now seemed like it was so full of holes that a kindergartener could have come up with something better.
“We don’t know that she hasn’t been taken straight to Dr. Gardner,” Lion reminded him.
“Well, we sure as hell know that we have no way to track her regardless of where she is,” he snapped back. In the end, it didn't matter if she was still with Terry Richards. If she was with Dr. Gardner, or if she was with someone else, or hell, even dumped alone somewhere. She wasn't with him and that was all he cared about.
“Your girl is smart,” Steel said, his expression and his voice fierce. “She survived these people for twelve years, and she was only a child back then. She knows we’re coming for her, she knows she’s not facing this alone, and she knows her brain is too valuable to Dr. Gardner for him to risk hurting her too badly. She will survive, and we will find her. We have a name and a company, and there will be something linking them to actionable intel that will lead us to them. None of us is giving up on Whitney, which means you can't either.”
“Rather be dead than give up on her,” he said simply, and the gravity of his own words hit him hard. Sitting there, peeling off his own skin was wasting time. Time Whitney might not have.
January 16th
4:52 A.M.
So many hours had passed since she was taken.
Too many.
Was Blade still out there? Somewhere close by, just waiting for a glimpse of Dr. Gardner before he came swooping in on his white horse to save her?
Or …
Had he left? Maybe not even followed her to begin with? Maybe when he’d found the dead cop and her gone, he’d just decided this was too much hassle and he and his team had headed back home to come up with a new way to go after the man they despised.
“No,” she said aloud, her voice loud and strong, if slightly panicked, and she traced a fingertip around the gash on her palm almost convulsively, like she’d been doing most of the time since Terry had left her alone. “That’s just your fear talking.”
There was no way Blade would just leave her there.
Bound by blood. That’s what he’d promised her.
“He wasn't lying to you when he said you were his, that he wanted you,” she assured herself, annoyed that doubt remained. Whitney was ninety-nine percent sure that Blade hadn't been playing her, that he’d been serious, that he knew she would help regardless, so he didn't have to lead her on to gain her cooperation.
Yet …
There was a teeny, tiny, little piece of lingering doubt. She hated it, but it was there nonetheless, and no amount of reminding herself of Blade’s words, his touches, his kisses, could seem to eliminate it.
A fingertip lingered over the small tracking device that had been placed under her skin right beside the wounds from the ropes. It was created by one of the people who worked for Prey Security’s Cyber Team, and Whitney thought it was a brilliant idea. Apparently, it remained inactive so it wouldn't be picked up by a scanner and then was turned on by the fingerprint of the person it had been programmed for.
When Terry Richards had been in there earlier, he’d taken great pleasure not only in describing in vivid detail what he planned on doing to her body, but also in letting her know that her little plot, as he’d called it, had failed. The man had scanned her after drugging her and taking her there, and he’d found all eight of the trackers that had been hidden on and under her skin.
Eight trackers was the number that had been planted on her by Blade minus one.
The one only she could access.
As they’d been planning this op, they’d discussed this being like the failsafe, her option if anything went wrong. Of course, they’d hoped that some of the other trackers wouldn't be discovered because they were an easier way for her to be followed by Blade and the others. But Terry had said he’d found the trackersafterhe already had her there, so she still believed that the guys had been able to follow her to this location and were waiting nearby.
