A chill zips down my spine, so cold that my blood turns to ice. “What?”
A terrifying grin pulls at the corners of his lips. “We don’t want him,” he rasps. “We never did.”
My stomach drops instantly.No.
As if he can read my thoughts, the man’s blood-slick smile widens.
“Aja,we want the girl.”
My world spins out of control and stops moving in the same millisecond, my entire body going cold.
Mackenzi.
Upstairs, alone.
Jesus fucking Christ.
The man starts laughing again, and I fire once, a round directly through his chest, killing him instantly. Myfeet move before the reverberation stops resounding in my ears, needing to get to her.
“Daddy…” Mackenzi’s fragile voice crackles in the earpiece, barely audible above the ringing. “There’s someone here.”
Pure panic detonates in my chest, my heart hammering so loud against my ribs it drowns out the thud of my feet against the floor.
“I’m coming, trouble,” I choke out, sprinting full speed through the corridor. “Daddy’s coming.”
I switch channels as I run. “Mackenzi!” I roar into the public line.
Gunnar’s voice explodes through my earpiece. “What?”
“They’re after Mackenzi!”
I take the stairs three at a time, my bare feet slamming painfully hard against the marble as every instinct inside me screams that I’m going too fucking slow.
“Mackenzi! Talk to me!” I shout into the private channel desperately. My heart nearly stops when I don’t get a response.“Mackenzi!”
A door crashes open upstairs, but momentary relief washes over me when it is followed by the sound of her crying in my ear. “I can hear them. They’re outside my room,” she whispers brokenly.
“Daddy’s almost there.”
Rage hits me with the force of a physical blow. I traverse the second floor in a dead sprint, rifle raised. The residence corridor stretches ahead of me in dim emergency lighting. Aman—tall and armed—crosses the hall and reaches for the handle of Mackenzi’s bedroom door.
I follow behind him, knowing only one of us is leaving this room alive.
At all costs…
“Daddy’s almost there!” Damon shouts through the earpiece. It should comfort me, but his tone is laced with panic.
I clamp my hand harder over my mouth, squeezing my eyes shut as tears spill down my face. I can’t answer him, because someone is in here with me. I can hear them.
Every slow, measured footstep they take across the marble floor is deafening inside the cramped darkness of the closet. I’m curled in on myself, pressing against the back wall, while I fight desperately to keep my breathing quiet.
My pulse is racing so violently, I swear it’s shaking my entire body. The trembling only grows as the footsteps move closer to the closet door.
Oh, God…
The earpiece crackles faintly against my ear, but Damon’s voice doesn’t follow. I press my palm harder to my lips to stop the threatening sob from escaping.
Please. Please don’t let them find me.
