The attacker shook her off, and then he swung out with his fist, clipping her hard in the face.
“Sonofabitch.” Preston brushed a kiss over her cheek. “He will pay for that.”
She clicked the button on the mouse to pause the feed once more. Her head turned toward Preston. “The punch is the least of our worries. He needs to pay for abducting us. For killing Bridget. The punch doesn’t matter.”
He merely cocked a brow. “It happens to matter a great deal to me.”
“I don’t even feel it anymore. The bump on the back of my head was way worse.” Though even that was gone. Not like she’d sustained lasting damage.
Bridget could not say the same.
“He’s gonna pay for everything that he did,” Preston vowed.
Sloane did not doubt that he meant those words.
She tapped the mouse. Watched the feed begin playing. Saw herself fall. She had to wince when her head slammed down into the pavement. Okay, granted, that smack had been hard. Hard enough to make her black out for a bit.
“Bastard,” Preston rasped.
Yes, their attacker was a bastard.
In the feed, the man in the ski mask picked her up. Her hands and arms dangled loosely. Her feet just kind of flopped. With zero hesitation, the attacker tossed her into the back of his van. A blue delivery van from the big online store. A van people saw in their neighborhoods all the time and never gave a second glance.
Preston cleared his throat. “When you were being, ah, interrogated yesterday, Debra told me the van had been reported stolen. The driver stopped to run in and grab breakfast on the day of our abduction. He came out to find his van gone. It’s been recovered, but she said it appears to have been wiped clean.”
Her eyes narrowed as she studied the screen. “No packages were in the vehicle.” At least, not that she could see from this angle.
“They were dumped behind a store on the edge of town. Debra found those, too.”
“Maybe he left a print on one of them.” She doubted it, though. In the video, the man was wearing gloves. A ski mask. Dressed entirely in black.
The perp bent to retrieve the syringe. When she’d launched at him, he’d dropped it. After securing the syringe, he reached into the back of the van, then tossed something out.
“That’s him throwing away my watch. It had a GPS locator, so he was just ditching it. You know, the better to make sure no one found my ass.”
Her left hand lifted toward her throat. Her fingers smoothed over the delicate lily on her chain. The chain felt far too fragile. One hard snap, and it could break from her neck. “We need to get you a more permanent tracker, stat.” She’d feel far better once she had a way of locating him, anytime, anywhere.
“Working on it,” he assured her. Then he turned the chair around so that she faced him. The wheels beneath the desk chair didn’t even squeak. His hands curled around the chair arms, and he leaned toward her. “I want you with me.”
“I am with you.”
“No, I mean…” His jaw tightened. “Until he’s caught, don’t?—”
The doorbell rang. Pealed through the house. Her shoulders tensed.
Preston stretched out his hand and tapped on the keyboard near them. Automatically, her head angled so that she could see what he was doing. After a few clicks, a new image opened on the screen. The front of his house. The main entrance.
The two men who stood on the threshold of the house.
Men she recognized. The knots in her stomach got a wee bit worse.
“Who the hell are those guys?” Preston groused.
The two men—one in a gray suit, one in a black suit—had their hands loose at their sides, but she could see the bulk of their holsters beneath their suit coats. “They’re Feds.”
“You know that just by looking at them?”
Sort of. “I know that because I know them.”
