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“One more step and you join him at the morgue tonight.”
Kaylie knew she would gladly take that bullet if it meant Lia would be safe. But this wouldn’t do that. Her eyes flickered to the others in the station. The mother held her two children close, hiding them behind a row of chairs. The elderly woman hadn’t moved, but her hand was on a cellphone. Hopefully, she’d already called the police.
She didn’t have any options. She’d never beat him in a fight. She couldn’t outrun him, not with Lia with her. Kaylie had only ever wanted to protect Lia, but this time she’d truly failed.
She held up her hands in surrender. “We’ll go,” she said, resigned to her fate.
Sirens grew closer, and the man directed them out the door with a flick of his gun.
Cecelia fought back as Kaylie tried to direct her toward the door.
“We have to go, honey. We have to listen to him,” Kaylie tried to explain.
“I need Elphie!” Lia’s wail filled the station as she tried to push past her.
Kaylie groaned. “The stuffed animal,” she explained. “Please. She’ll go quietly.”
Her capturer swore but grabbed the pink elephant from the floor by his feet.
When they got outside, he pushed her into the driver’s seat of a black Honda Civic, while he climbed in the backseat with Lia. “Don’t get any ideas. One wrong move and you’ll never see your daughter again.”
Kaylie trembled as she drove, struggling to keep her eyes on the road as her daughter cried in the backseat. “It’s okay, sweetie. We’re going to be okay.” She knew she was making promises she couldn’t keep, but she’d do anything to ease her daughter’s fears, even temporarily.
Turn by turn, her captor led them to a bleak motel with dark-brown doors and a sign hanging precariously from one edge of the post. If it hadn’t been for the four cars in the parking lot, she would have assumed it was out of business and abandoned.
Kaylie pulled Lia into her arms the minute they were out of the car, stroking her hair and pressing her face into Lia’s little shoulder. “I’ve got you, baby.” The question was how long they’d let her keep her.
The motel was exactly as disgusting inside as she’d assumed from the outside. There were no overhead lights and two dim lamps by the bedside weren’t nearly enough. Her eyes struggled to adjust to the relative dark after the bright noon sun outside.
But she didn’t need light to know Paul was here. His presence practically suffocated her, her body responding to his presence before she even saw him. But when her eyes adjusted, she found him immediately. He was sitting in a threadbare armchair, one leg crossed over the other knee and his fingers steepled together. As though he were holding court, instead of ordering a kidnapping and protecting a murderer.
That poor man at the bus station had been completely innocent. He’d tried to help, and it had cost him his life. Kaylie was going to find out who he was when she got out of this. If she got out of here.
With a flick of his wrist, four men pulled her onto the bed and tied her wrists to the headboard as Paul looked on with a twisted expression. She knew from experience that he had a hidden proclivity for rather dark tastes, but she’d always been spared his perverse fantasies. The gleam of arousal in his eyes made her want to retch.
With another flick of a finger, the four men left the room, leaving Kaylie alone with Lia, Paul, and the man who’d captured them. “I always knew you’d be back someday,” Paul said. “I should kill you right now for the way you betrayed me.”
Kaylie immediately looked at Cecelia. Her daughter was huddled by the dresser, clinging to Elphie with all her might. Her heart clenched at the idea of her daughter growing up in the clutches of the evil man she’d run from five years ago. No matter what, she had to survive this.
“Luckily for you, you’ve caught the attention of someone who could be… valuable to me. I’m not sure why they are even bothering with trash like you. But under my leadership and with a new partnership with the Syndicate?” His eyes flashed with greedy satisfaction. “The Moreno family will be more powerful than ever before.”
Kaylie’s head spun with questions. The Syndicate? That sounded ominous, but who–or what–were they?
Her eyes widened as Paul stood. He walked slowly across the room until he crowded Lia’s tiny frame, tucked against the edge of the dresser. Her daughter whimpered in fear.
Kaylie yelled again, “Leave her alone!”
“I’ll keep what belongs to me,” he said cooly, as he ran a single finger down Cecelia’s round, pink cheek, tracing the path of a tear.
Rage flooded Kaylie’s body, and she tugged against the restraints, the plastic digging painfully into her wrists. His face transformed into a sneer as he looked back at Kaylie.
“And I’ll let the other team take out the trash.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
The room's harsh fluorescent lights highlighted the disapproval etched on Marshall's face as he confirmed Tank's unconventional means of safeguarding Kaylie and Lia.
