She’s okay.
Slade’s grip on the steering wheel became white-knuckled because if he was wrong…if the worst had happened, and Rafe and the woman he loved had been killed…even God wouldn’t be able to help the ones responsible for their deaths.
She’s okay.
She’s okay.
She has to be okay.
CHAPTER14
“Alice.”
Shadow woke to her father’s voice, the sound of her name cutting through the dense and heavy fog. It was low and hushed, almost hollow as it reached her ears, and though she couldn’t be sure, the unshakable man sounded as though he were afraid.
“Alice.”
She heard her name again as she fought against the pain. Her head pounded and ached to the point she thought it might actually split in two. The left side of her face throbbed to the beat of her heart, and the taste of blood was still present on the tip of her tongue.
“Shadow!”
Her father’s call came a bit louder as he switched to using the name she identified with most of all. Sensing the urgency in the man’s otherwise stoic and calm demeanor, Shadow forced her eyelids to open despite the harsh lighting shining down on them from up above.
“Dad?” she croaked, her throat and mouth desert dry from whatever drugs the assholes had used. “Where are w?—”
Shadow gasped before she could finish asking where they’d been taken, her lungs freezing mid-pull from the sudden and sharp pain in her right side. And…holyshit, did it hurt to breathe.
“Oh, thank God.” Her father’s relief was more than obvious.
Shadow looked around, taking in the small room where they were being held. Her blurred vision cleared a little more as she blinked, and soon their horrifying reality fully set in.
She and her father were each in their own chairs, positioned side-by-side in the middle of a small, and otherwise empty, room. Their hands had been duct taped to the arms of their chairs, and they were surrounded by nothing but bare, concrete walls.
“I don’t…understand.” She grunted between words, doing her best to ignore the fire burning beneath her ribs as she pulled and tugged in an effort to get her wrists free. “Not that I’m…complaining, mind you, but…why aren’t we…dead?”
Their situation was less than ideal, and they were most definitely on borrowed time. But at least they were both still breathing.
“I don’t know.” Her father shook his graying head. His left eye was bruised and slightly swollen, and a trickle of blood had dried against his bearded chin at one corner of his mouth.
The sight pissed her off as much as it broke her heart. No one got away with hurting her dad.
Not much you can do about it with your hands taped to a freaking chair.
A thought struck, and Shadow’s movements froze. Because she may not know how to get out of a situation such as this, but her father had spent years as an operative for MI6.
“Wait, didn’t they train you on how to escape situations like this back in the day?”
“They did.” He dipped his head in a nod.
“Then why haven’t you?—”
“I’ve been waiting.”
Waiting?“For what, an invitation?”
Her father didn’t respond with anything more than a smile.
Shadow opened her mouth to ask if perhaps the thugs who’d broken into the apartment caused some sort of internal brain bleed. But then she saw the gleaming in his eyes, and she knew.
