“I thought you said she was going to be fucking safe,” I spat through clenched teeth.
August huffed out an angry breath. “She was safe, Roman,” he insisted. “I wouldn’t have put her with someone I thought was incapable.”
My chest heaved. “Then how did this happen?”
“We weren’t expecting two attackers, Roman,” August seethed.
I froze, my brain processing what he’d said.
Jude had been chasing someone, and got attacked from behind.
“Two attackers?” I repeated.
“Yeah,” August said. “We weren’t prepared for two people. No one was supposed to know Palmer was at that cabin in the first place.”
I stared down at my hands braced on the top of my desk.
My knuckles were white, the muscles in my forearms rigid as I tried to steady myself.
How the hell would anyone know where Palmer was?
Sweat prickled along the back of my neck. My heart pounded so hard it felt like it was trying to break out of my chest.
“Where’s Palmer now?” My voice cracked.
August didn’t answer right away.
“When Jude came to, the cabin was unlocked…” He let out a long breath. “Palmer was gone.”
Gone.
I closed my eyes.
Gone.
The word echoed through my head like a gunshot.
She couldn’t be gone.
When I didn’t say anything, August continued, “Fox and Reid are already on their way to you. Roman, I need you to stay alert.”
But I barely heard him. My phone vibrated in my hand as a text message came in.
It felt like I was moving through a dream; my body went numb as I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked down at the screen.
Unknown number.
My thumb moved without thinking as I opened the text message.
It was an image that plunged a knife right into my chest.
Palmer was lying down on some kind of old table. Her wrists were bound in front of her, a rope cutting into her skin. Her ankles were tied together too, leaving her completely helpless.
A strip of fabric had been pulled tight across her mouth.
Her head had fallen to the side, hair tangled and spilling across the dirty wooden surface. For a terrifying second, I thought she might already be dead.
At the bottom of the image was a single butterfly emoji.
