Page 83 of Keeping Kara

“What does your gut say?” Edge finally asked.

“Nothing good.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

Chaos was at a loss as to what to do now. He understood exactly what his teammates had felt when their women had been missing or hurt. The helpless feeling wasn’t⁠—

“Wait!” he suddenly cried. “My cameras! Jesus, I can’t believe I forgot about them. Give me a second. Let me log in and see if Jen was here.” He hurried to get his phone out of his pocket and pulled up the app.

It didn’t take long for him to see Jen arrive and then he watched Kara head out the front door and get into Jen’s car.

“All right, that solves that. They’re together.”

“But where are they now?” Edge asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, let’s get back to base,” Edge said. “We need to report back to Casper and see what we can do. The cops aren’t going to take a missing person’s report since it hasn’t been that long.”

He wasn’t wrong. It would be up to them and their connections to find the women. And time was ticking. Chaos could feel in his gut that somehow, this had everything to do with her psycho ex. If he didn’t find Kara soon, he’d never get to talk to her again. Never see her smile. Never hear her say that she loved him.

All of which was unacceptable. He hadn’t found the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, only to lose her now. He knew the chances of finding her alive were slim, but his teammates had beaten the odds, so he wanted to believe he and Kara could too.

“Hang on, sweetheart,” he murmured, as Edge headed outside to his truck. He reset the alarm, looking around the house once more before shutting the door and locking it behind him.

Kara was out there, in danger, and waiting for him to be her hero. To find her. She was strong, she’d lived through hell before, she’d do it again…if only to give him time to do what he needed to do.

Namely, track her down and get rid of Nolan Colins once and for all, so they could live happily ever after.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Kara’s blood froze in her veins.

Nolan.

How the hell had he found her? Where had he been all this time?

But honestly, she had more pressing things to worry about at the moment…namely, breathing.

The cord or rope that he’d wrapped around her throat was tight, but it wasn’t cutting off all her oxygen. She could get just enough into her lungs to keep her conscious and aware of what was going on around her.

Nolan had hidden in the back seat and obviously forced Jen to call her and get her to agree to come with her. She had no doubt whatsoever that Jen was just as much a victim in this.

“Drive,” Nolan ordered Jen. “And don’t do anything stupid, or I’ll kill her right here and now.”

He wouldn’t. Kara knew that as well as she knew her name. He wanted her alive, to torture. To make her regret leaving him. But Jen didn’t know that. And Kara couldn’t speak, the cord was too tight. All she could do was try to get her fingers under it, try to loosen it more so she could…

Could what? Escape? That wasn’t happening. She knew that. Her brain was trying to deny it, but she was well and truly fucked. The happiness she’d felt since arriving in Virginia was a thing of the past. Nolan wouldn’t let her go. He was going to kill her this time—after he’d tortured her.

But Jen was innocent in all this. Nolan didn’t want her; she was a means to an end. And Kara knew she had to do everything possible to get Jen out of Nolan’s clutches. Of course, right now, she couldn’t do much of anything other than struggle to breathe.

Jen did as she was ordered and drove.

“Stop the goddamn blubbering!” Nolan shouted at one point. “It’s fucking irritating.”

“Asher, please⁠—”