Page 79 of Blood Money

Alex rolled and twisted her body, trying to rise to her hands and knees. She sucked in heavy breaths. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Laughter echoed from across the room, and she caught sight of Fatima grinning in her direction.

The woman emptied another can of gasoline onto several bales of hay. She rolled up the blueprints and shoved one end through the heater’s grating where they instantly caught fire. She dragged the flaming blueprints over the gasoline-soaked boxes and hay lining all four walls of the barn. “No,” Alex gasped, her eyes already tearing from smoke. “Please, don’t do this.”

Flames began shooting up the walls. Again, Alex struggled uselessly against the tape binding her arms and legs. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

In seconds the smoke was so thick she could barely see. It billowed all around her, burning her eyes and lungs.

She jerked her head left and right, up and down, searching for something, anything. A way out.

But there was none.

Moaning came to Alex’s ears, and she realized it was coming from her own mouth.

Gunshots rang out. Alex screamed, fully expecting her body to be on the receiving end. Through the smoke she saw the laptop on the table, shot to hell. Fatima was destroying all the evidence. The laptop, the blueprints…

Her.

As the flames engulfed the room, Fatima ran toward the door, disappearing in a haze of smoke. Alex couldn’t see but heard the door slam shut, followed by the distinct clicking of a lock.

She was alone, left to die.

Alex started to cough, her lungs filling with gasoline vapors and smoke. Again she tried pulling at her bonds, frantically twisting her wrists to loosen the tape. Her fingers contacted the table leg and something else.

The thumb drive.

She closed her fingers around it and shoved it down into the tiny space between her wrists and the duct tape. A silly act given that she, along with everything else in the warehouse, was about to be burned to a crisp.

All around her, the fire roared louder. Her eyes and lungs burned, and every breath she took was labored and smoke-filled. Coughing, she got to her knees and began crawling, dragging herself along the floor on her forearms. But she had no idea where the door was.

My God, I’m going to die here. Gray, where are you?

At least the smoke would kill her before the flames burned the skin off her bones. Tears streamed down her face.

“Nicky, I love you,” she whispered. “Gray, I’m so, so sorry…I love you, too.”

…

Gray pounded on the horn. The taxi still didn’t budge from where it was illegally double-parked, blocking his path. He hit the lights and siren and the taxi hauled ass.

At this point, he’d lost track of how long he’d been driving or how many miles he’d covered. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Three o’clock. Alex had been missing for nearly three hours.

Every patrol car in the city was on the lookout for her, but only he and four other ground units in Manhattan were equipped with receivers tuned to the frequency of Alex’s locator.

They’d systematically searched east and west, and north and south along the island’s busy streets without hearing a single beep. Another dozen or so units were scanning the streets in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, plus the three choppers on loan for this operation. Every police department in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania had been notified of the kidnapping and a BOLO had been issued for the entire country.

Gray knew everything humanly possible was being done to find Alex, but if she was outside the city boroughs it would be as difficult as identifying a specific grain of sand in the desert. She could be anywhere. With the locator’s weak transmission, even if she was in one of the boroughs, it was still a long shot they’d ever get a signal.

Knowing the answer, Gray cued up the mic anyway. “All units come back if you’ve got anything.” As expected, the radio remained silent.

Exhausted as he was, he vowed to drive every street in the city, Long Island, then into New Jersey, Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and Delaware if had to. Sleep would be impossible until Alex was safely at home.

Nicky.

He hoped to hell that he wouldn’t have to make good on his promise to find Nicky a new home. In that moment, he knew he could never hand Nicky over to anyone. He’d adopt the boy himself.

Don’t think that. It won’t happen. I will find her.

Gray called Cassie’s cell phone, relieved when she answered. “Sis.” His voice nearly choked. He struggled to say the words. “The bastards grabbed Alex. She’s missing.”