Chapter Twenty
“I cannot let you do this.”
Maddie threw her leg over the Harley. “If you try to stop me, Adam, I’ll put a bullet in you.”
“I know you don’t mean that, so I won’t take offense,” Adam assured her.
She lifted a brow at him. “Yeah? Try me.”
The man sent a glance Finn’s way as if trying to elicit his support, but Finn only shrugged and shook his head. “Sorry, brah, I already tried to talk her out of this half-assed plan.”
“If you’re both so concerned, then come with me,” Maddie said. “Otherwise, continue to sit around here with your thumbs up your asses while I try to actually do something to help Jack.”
“We need to discuss our options,” Adam told her calmly. “You won’t do Jack any good if you are captured as well. You need to pause to consider your options. Your judgment is currently clouded by concern for your colleague.”
Maddie’s brows shot up, suddenly furious with the man’s lack of urgency. “Mycolleague? Are you shitting me?”
“Maddie, honey,” Finn said, stepping in between her and Adam to try to ease the growing tension. “He didn’t mean—”
“He’s more than acolleague,” Maddie spat, talking over Finn. “Ilovehim. And I thought you all were his brothers, his brethren. You’re supposed to care about your fellow Templars. But I guess all you care about is putting the moves on a woman who just saw her grandfather shot to death in her apartment!”
Adam’s face went instantly stony at the accusation, the closest thing to a show of emotion that Maddie had seen from the man. He dipped his head in a curt bow, his jaw clenched. “Clearly, you do not value my opinion in this matter. Forgive my interference.”
“Jesus,” Finn muttered, riffling his hair with agitated movement. “Will both of you just shut the hell up! Maddie, Adam wasn’t putting the moves on Eva, for fuck’s sake! He was trying to calm her. Maybe you should let him try it on you for five damned minutes so you can listen to reason.”
Maddie cocked her head to one side, so not in the mood for Finn’s bullshit surfer wisdom. “Wow. Seriously? You’re going to leave Jack hanging? After all he’s done for the Alliance? What would Will say to that?”
Finn gave her a sympathetic look. “He’d say that the intel on Jack’s location is suspect. That the whole damned thing has all the earmarks of a trap. The Illuminati are using Jack as bait—and you’re taking it, honey.”
Maddie slumped back on the bike. As much as she hated to admit it, Finn was right. “What do you expect me to do? It’s Jack. I can’t leave him there. He’d walk through fire if it were me. But not just for me, Finn. He’d do it for any of you—and you know it.”
“Then let us help you,” Finn replied. “I’ll get Will on the phone, get his ETA, figure out a plan. Just give me a few minutes before you bolt. Can you do that for me? Please?”
Maddie pressed her lips together for a moment, her thoughts racing, her impatience to get to Jack increasing with every second, making her want to crawl out of her skin. Finally, she jabbed a finger at Finn’s chest. “Ten minutes. Then I’m leaving with or without you. And I don’t care if I have to kill every single one of those assholes to get to Jack—I will.”
When Finn turned away to talk on his phone, Adam took a deep breath and slowly exhaled before turning his attention to the H2, where Eva sat watching all of them anxiously. “What about Ms. Antonovich? We have a responsibility to keep her safe.”
“Call the guys at the Detroit commandery,” she said. “Let’s have them take her into protective custody until we can bring Will up to speed on her situation.”
Adam seemed to consider her words for a moment before nodding. “I’ll explain the situation to Ms. Antonovich. Considering her family connections, I imagine Commander Asher will want to discuss a relocation strategy after we return to Chicago.”
Yeah, he probably would. That seemed to be Will’s style. God, at the rate they were going they might as well set up their own relocation colony, for crying out loud. But at least he wasn’t offing anyone and everyone who got too close to Alliance. She’d read about some of the Alliance’s ops over the centuries. There was a reason the Alliance was still a secret society after all. Will was taking a big risk not eliminating both Claire and Eva. But she had to respect him for not taking such drastic measures without first trying other alternatives. She just hoped it was the right call—for everyone’s sake.
Finn tapped the device in his ear as he came back toward them. “All right, kids. Will’s en route and is calling in Luke and scrambling a detachment from the Detroit team. And we’ve got backup meeting us and bringing the mobile command center. We’ll set up at the central triangulation point and see if we can zero in on our boy.” Here he turned and leveled his aqua gaze on Maddie. “Jacob didn’t give you anything besides the fact that Kozlov was still in Detroit?”
She shook her head, wishing like hell the man had given her something—anything—more to go on. But it sounded like Jacob honestly hadn’t had any knowledge of what the hell Kozlov was planning for Jack. As he put it, asking questions put him at risk. And if someone like Kozlov had been so kind as to take it upon himself to remove a threat to Jacob’s safety, then who was he to argue?
But “for old time’s sake” and out of the “kindness of his heart”—she’d actually laughed at that one before she could catch herself—Jacob had assured her that Jack was still in Detroit. Beyond that he could be no help. He would leave it to her to determinewherein Detroit they were holding Jack.
She just prayed they could find him before it was too late. And before she managed to get anyone else killed.
* * *
Jack awoke on an enraged roar, the icy water jolting him from his drug-induced, nightmarish slumber, which had featured horrific, terrifying images of Maddie being tortured and murdered over and over again while Kozlov laughed, his sneering, twisted face smeared with her blood.
Still locked in the grip of his fury, he tried to lunge to his feet and go after the son of a bitch and tear him apart with his bare hands, but barbed wire bit into his wrists and ankles, keeping him where he was. He strained against his restraints, his desperation to get to Maddie overriding the searing pain as the barbs dug deeper into his skin.
Kozlov’s harsh chuckle finally made Jack go still. “Still you try to escape?” Kozlov said, his tone pitying. “For three hours we have been here and each time we revive you it’s the same foolishness.”
