“I’ve got Grim,” Gage’s voice cut through his memory.
Elvis blew out a breath as he ran his hand through his hair.
“Damn,” he heard Gage mutter. “Nurses are helping him sit on the bed. Looks like he’s been drugged. Spilled coffee cup on the floor at his feet. Elvis, Delaney isn’t with him.”
“Where is she?” Elvis demanded to know, clenching his hand into a tight fist at his side.
“Grim, where’s Delaney?” Gage asked. The words were distant, as if Gage had set the phone down. “Grim, look at me. Where’s Delaney?”
“Is he all right?” Elvis asked, glancing over as Dane and the marshal stepped into view. He put the phone on speaker and held it in front of him.
Then he heard Grim talking, his voice distant, his words slurred. Elvis couldn’t make out what he said, though, which drove him even crazier.
“Grim says she was standing at the door watching Donovan,” Gage said. “As they were back there, a nurse offered him some coffee, and he thought nothing of it, just watching Delaney with the marshal. He didn’t intend to sip it, but… habit, I guess.” He heard the man take a deep breath. “The next thing he knew, nurses were helping him off the floor.”
Elvis moved to the wall and fell back on it, the phone now at his side. “They got her.” He looked up at Dane, his heart breaking. “They took her. That bastard took her.”
Dane crossed the corridor, placing his hand on Elvis’s shoulder. “We’ll find her.” He squeezed Elvis’s shoulder, his voice the calm assurance he used with his team when things went off the rails. There was no panic, no doubt in his tone. Simply determination. “We’ll find her. We’ve got Leon and his men. We have his phone, and Blaze can run through the contacts. We’ll get her back.”
Elvis looked at the interrogation room door where Leon sat on the other side, handcuffed to a table, looking as if nothing in the world would disrupt his life.
Elvis felt the growl rumble out of him. The man was wrong about that. He shoved himself off the wall, heading back inside the room.
“What are you doing?” the marshal asked, following his movements with his gaze.
Elvis didn’t even look at him. “Taking care of business.”
He walked back into the interrogation room, closing the door behind him, and yanked out the chair across from Leon and fell into it for the first time since they had arrived. He placed his phone on the table between them and then folded his hands ashe glanced across the table at the man with an expression that was far from professional.
Leon looked back at him, and whatever he saw in Elvis’s face made his eyes widen as he leaned back in his chair, sitting up straighter.
“Here’s what’s going to happen.” His voice was low, even, carrying a tone that meant he had arrived somewhere beyond anger to something like deadly calm. “You’re going to tell me where Matteo is taking her, and I don’t care how I have to get the information out of you. This is your only chance to spare yourself from something that won’t end well for you.”
Leon merely stared at him.
“Elvis Presley used to say that image is one thing and the human being is another.” He made a slow bob of his head. “He meant it as a warning about distancing yourself from two images of a person. That what you see isn’t really what’s there.” He let his head tilt to the side as he stared at the man across from him. “I’m telling you there’s no distance left between me and this situation. What you’re seeing is what you’re about to get. I’m not here to threaten you with empty words. I’m here to get answers anyway way I have to. So, if I were you, I’d think carefully about what your silence is worth to you right now and what it’ll cost you to keep it.”
The room remained quiet as Leon dropped his gaze to the table.
Elvis stared at him, waiting. He was good at waiting, but right then, he had never found it harder to do.
And then he slid back in his chair as he rose to his feet, his eyes narrowing even further. “I told you this was your only chance. You really should have listened to me.”
And then he moved around the table.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
DONOVAN LOOKED SMALLER THROUGH the window in the door. It was her first thought as she peeked at him, and it remained with her as she worried about how a man who had moved through her life with such a powerful presence now laid in a hospital bed wrapped in a tangle of wires that made him appear fragile and unexpectedly vulnerable.
Still, he was breathing. She could see it in the slow rise and fall of his chest, the steady green line on the monitor visible through the glass, and it gave her a line of hope that she grasped with all she had inside her.
For the moment, breathing was enough. Right then, it was everything.
She’d been standing at the window for perhaps five minutes, hands loose at her sides as she simply stared at the marshal. She basked in the relief that flowed through her in a slow, thorough way rather than suppressing it so she could manage it. She had been managing her feelings for years; she deserved to take a few moments simply to feel, just as she had with Elvis.
Behind her, Nash remained quiet, his head on a swivel, taking in everyone who moved around them. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him lift his coffee cup, taking slow sips as if justneeding to do something. When he had managed to get coffee, she had no idea, but she was sort of envious. He did his best not to be intrusive, giving her the space she needed to do what she needed to do right then. If anyone watching them thought the man odd, they didn’t show it.
Then something changed. It wasn’t drastic but subtle, just a whisper of movement at first, and she almost missed it. Turning, she still hadn’t noticed it right away, her gaze raking over the long and pale hospital corridor, lit with the flat overhead light that cast everyone in a sickly light regardless of their condition. Two nurses at the far end moving away from her, their heads bent in whispers and giggles as they passed a supply cart someone had parked against the left wall. Nash still stood behind her, his back against the wall as he stared after the departing nurses.
