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“Fucker got behind me,” Gabe said as we walked out of the laundry room.
The housekeeper was still standing in the hall, crying now but looking relieved to see Gabe on his feet. “The police have probably been called,” she said. “If not, I can call them.”
I shook my head. “We’re fine.”
Her eyes flicked to Gabe. “He is not fine!”
“He’s not,” I conceded and braced Gabe so I could reach into my back pocket and pull out my wallet. I flashed her my FBI badge. “But I’ve got it handled, all right?” The housekeeper relaxed when she saw the badge, and she allowed us to walk Gabe back down the hall.
“Do we have a first aid kit?” Zach asked.
“In my bag.”
Back in the hotel room, we sat Gabe down, and I got the first aid kit for Zach. He was always good at field dressings, and he was able to quicky and efficiently clean and dress Gabe’s head wound. “You said someone grabbed you?”
Gabe nodded his head but groaned from the movement. “Two of them. They pushed me into the laundry room,” he said. “I never saw them coming. One was a big dude too.”
“Did he pull a weapon?”
“He was the weapon.”
It reminded me of the man who attacked Nataliya at the diner in St. Francisville. He probably bailed himself out of jail, if he even went at all. That’s what Nataliya was talking about, I thought. If one of his minions can escape any consequences, what do you think Ian Hayes will do for himself?
I shook it off. This wasn’t the time to get lost in hypotheticals. “Did you see Nataliya at all?” I asked. “We haven’t seen her since she went to call Elias.”
Gabe started to shake his head, but then he stopped. “I think I heard her saying my name,” he said. “But it didn’t last long, and then—” I watched him trying to remember. Horror filled his face when the memory returned. “She was taken. I heard that asshole say they were ‘going for a ride.’”
My stomach turned to ice. Hayes had her; there was no other explanation. Everything went very still for a second, and then I took a deep breath and set my shoulders, ready to go into battle mode. “We have to get her back,” I said. “Now.”
Zach clapped me on the shoulder. “We will. Let’s call the others and make a plan, okay? We’re not going to leave her to the wolves.”
I nodded. “Get Drake, Nate, and Owen on the phone. We’ve got to find my girl.”
“Yes, sir.”
TWENTY-ONE
NATALIYA
Don’t panic, I told myself. Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t?—
I jumped when a door slammed somewhere in the house. I drew my knees up to my chest and locked my arms around my legs, trying to make myself the smallest ball possible. Being small wouldn’t protect me—I knew that, logically—but I couldn’t fight the instinct. Not when any minute now, they would come for me.
We’d driven north of Atlanta the night before, into the Blue Ridge Mountains, and as we climbed the summit, my heart began to squeeze in my chest. We eventually stopped at a manor masquerading as a cabin—all the wood trappings and folksy exterior but four times the size of any normal house—and the thug who grabbed me from the hotel dragged me from the car and inside.
I had been in this room ever since, and the fear that sat, heavy and sludge-like, on my chest was slowly suffocating me. If only there was something in this room, I thought, not for the first time. The only furniture was a mattress on the floor. There wasn’t a window or a closet; there wasn’t anything I could pull apart to fashion a weapon.
I’m going to die here. That thought kept playing in my head, over and over again. I tried to push it away by telling myself that Adrian would come for me, but it was hard to believe it after I’d been on my own for so very long.
There was another slammed door, and I heard thudding footsteps coming closer to me. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. This was it. I squeezed myself into a ball to stop the trembling, and I bit my tongue to hold back a scream when the door swung open.
“Get up,” a voice boomed. I didn’t move. Screw that, I thought and hugged my knees all the tighter. The man attached to that voice crossed the room. “I said get up.”
I refused again, and a hand clamped down on my arm. I yelped as he yanked me to my feet and half-dragged me out of the room. I tried to get my legs under me so I could walk without stumbling, but the man never slowed. We walked down the hall and up a flight of stairs before he opened a door and shoved me inside. My knees hit solid oak floors, and I winced.
“I’m so sorry for the rough treatment,” said a voice, silky in way that made my skin crawl. I looked up, and knew exactly who I was facing, even though Ian Hayes did not look like I’d imagined. He was younger, for one, though his dark hair had a slight peppering of gray. Distinguished, my mother would have said. He had dark eyes to match his hair. He looked good in the suit he was wearing. “But I think Peter is still a little upset over your last meeting in St. Francisville.”
“I wasn’t the one who beat him silly.”
