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I keep my eyes shut, so I don’t see it when he hits the wall. But I can hear it, the smack of his flesh on the boards. I can feel it, the floor vibrating around me as he storms away again. By the time I open my eyes, he’s already wrenching the office door open.
“Get this bitch out of my sight,” he shouts, and next thing I know there’s two of his thugs on either side of me, dragging me off the couch.
Shit.
I struggle, then. Try to wrench myself free from their muscular hands, but it’s no use. One of them alone could overpower me. Two? I don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. This time it’s not ropes that wrap around my wrists. Cold hard steel clicks around them. Handcuffs.
They lock them tight. My elbows can barely flex, my arms pinioned behind my back the way they are. On the far side of the room, I hear Rich yelling at them. “Take her down the back exit. Basement level.”
Before I’m dragged out of his office, Rich speaks to me again, his voice cold and hard, and my head reels. “You better pray your brother comes through for you, bitch—all six hundred thousand. Because next time I won’t ask for that favor from you.”
I can only hope that the wire picked up those words. The change in the amount. His threat.
It could be our saving grace.
29
Stone
“What the fuck did you let her do.” I don’t phrase it like a question, as I crash through the door of Ian’s apartment, hands fisted and ready to finally hit this little shit. He was supposed to protect her. Watch her while I was gone. Instead, he’d fucked it all to hell. Ian’s huddled over something on his kitchen counter, back to me, though at least he flinches when I barrel inside. Least he could do, when he seemed utterly unsurprised after I called him an hour ago to tell him about Skye being kidnapped, and he just calmly invited me over to his apartment.
“I didn’t let her do anything. If you know my sister at all, you’d know that she does what she feels is necessary, whatever the situation.”
“You don’t know Rich like I do—”
“I know him plenty,” Ian snaps. “She took off and went to him herself. I didn’t let her do a fucking thing.”
“You don’t even sound worried. She could be dying in there right now, and you’re—what are you doing?” I stop short at the edge of the kitchen, having just crossed over to it ready to throw Ian off his stool.
Until I see the mess of wiring spread on the table before him. What looks like a short-range radio, attached to his computer, and a few other bits of metal equipment everywhere.
“Of course I’m worried. She’s my sister, Stone. I’m scared to death right now. But flying off the handle isn’t going to help her—not now.”
I grit my teeth. Mostly because there isn’t a way to help her, not that I can figure. Short of going back to Rich now and pulling some sort of wild, desperate stunt. I could trade myself for her. My life for hers.
I’m not sure Rich would take that deal.
I could bust in there guns blazing, but I wouldn’t make it farther than the front door. I clench my fists, because I hate feeling so helpless. Especially when it’s her at risk.
“Help me with this?” Ian says, and I finally realize what he’s doing.
“Is that…?”
“The wire radio the FBI gave me. Skye stole the wire this morning from my car. Left me a note at the motel that I found when I brought back lunch for both of us. It’s transmitting.”
“Let me hear her.”
Ian shakes his head. “There’s nothing now. I think they’ve gagged her.”
I shut my eyes tight. It takes me several
slow, deep breaths to recover from that memory. The sight of her on the couch, eyes wide and frightened. “They had her gagged from the minute I got there.”
“Well, they had one conversation, between gaggings, then.” Ian hits a few buttons on the computer, and her voice pours through the speakers.
I wrench a chair around and drop into it beside him, leaning over the laptop to listen to every word she says.
And every word Rich says.
