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Gritting his teeth, Snow grabbed on to the chains running from the manacles and used them to pull himself up to his feet. His body ached and throbbed in time to the pounding of his head. He couldn’t tell what pains were from the car wreck and which ones were from the beating. It was all just one big ball of pain now.
There were no memories after they got him into the SUV. Someone must have clocked him over the head or drugged him to knock him out.
Snow leaned heavily against the wall, panting once he gained his feet. Tilting his head as close as he could to his right hand, he ran his fingertips along his temple until he finally felt the rough cloth that had been used as a blindfold. It took three tries, but he got the damn thing ripped off his face.
He blinked several times against the bright overhead light. His vision was blurry, but when his eyes finally focused on the room in front of him, he almost wished he hadn’t removed the blindfold.
Not more than a few feet away was a bare, queen-sized mattress and box spring on what looked to be a sturdy wooden frame. The cinder block walls were mostly bare except for the occasional splatter of blood or the dried remnants of some other bodily fluid. At the foot of the bed were two apparatuses he’d seen used in photography and video lighting. And an empty tripod that likely held a smartphone or camera for filming.
Oh, fuck…he was in the same room where Jordan was beaten and raped.
He jerked at the manacles and chains, trying to pull free, but the chain was bolted into the wall and there was no give in the iron manacles. Pain lanced through his body from his thwarted escape, leaving him panting and leaning back against the wall. Bile boiled up from his stomach and Snow swallowed hard, fighting to keep the contents of his stomach down. The video had been hard enough to watch, but to know that he was now standing in the room where Jordan’s desperate screams had beaten against the walls left his knees trembling and threatening to buckle.
Dropping his head back, Snow forced himself to take several slow, deep breaths, and he found himself mentally rolling his eyes as a wayward memory skipped across his brain. At Christmas, Rowe had joked about wanting to chip all of his family so that they could be found at all times. They’d all laughed and said that dangerous adventures were finally done for all of them. Snow had thought they wouldn’t see anything more exciting than whatever shenanigans would ensue at Ian’s wedding and just the insanity that would inevitably follow when it came to Lucas attempting to raise a little girl.
But no. He was chained to a wall by some homicidal lunatic, and he had no idea what had happened to Jude. The wail of police sirens had sounded close. He didn’t think the men who grabbed him had a chance to grab Jude, but he also didn’t know whether they’d simply shot his trapped lover before they made their escape.
Jude is alive. He has to be alive.
Snow repeated those words over and over again in his brain. He was not going to lose Jude. They needed more time together. It had taken Snow a lifetime to find Jude, and they’d had only three short years with each other so far. He needed to see his Jude, hold him tight against his chest until he could feel Jude’s heartbeat pounding against his own. He needed to get married and hold their child, not just because those things would make happiness glow in Jude’s dark eyes. But because he needed to experience these things with Jude. He wanted that life with Jude because with Jude, he finally felt like he deserved all the things that “normal” families had.
Fuck…how the hell was he going to get out of here?
He doubted that Jude nor Rowe nor anyone knew where to find him. He was completely unarmed and chained to the wall. He wanted to believe that he’d been in worse scenarios, but even when he found himself in over his head during his darker years, it seemed like Lucas or Rowe always knew where to find him, knew exactly when to swoop in and pull him out. That wasn’t the case this time. He believed that Rowe and his team of genius hackers would find him, but they would need him to buy a little time and help where he could.
With renewed determination, Snow forced himself to study the room around him. Eventually, someone was going to come in and unchain him. He needed to be ready to fight back. After getting over the shock of being in the same room as Jordan’s beating, Snow was disappointed to find that there wasn’t much available that might help his escape. The bed had no blankets or sheets and appeared to be bolted to the floor and wall. There was a metal hook above the bed next to the light fixture that also turned his stomach.
