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My legs kicked as I screamed, furious that my attack was thwarted. Belatedly I realized it must have been the giant holding me back because Jacob was now standing in front of my target, gun raised and aimed at me.
“You stay away from her, you piece of shit! I’ll kill you! If you touch her, I. Will. Kill. You!” My sore throat cracked as I screamed the words but no matter how much I fought, I couldn’t break the hold the other man had on me.
Ashwood, realizing I was trapped, placed his palm on his bodyguard’s shoulder to get him to move aside and then he was facing me once again. “Have you asked yourself how I found you again? You managed to stay hidden all this time but yet here you are.” He started talking again like the one-sided conversation hadn’t almost ended with me strangling him.
“It’s really quite serendipitous. Your soldier was investigating someone very close to me, he was making my life quite difficult and had people looking my way when I’d been free to do as I pleased for a long time. I’d made plans to take his daughter as a warning that I was not a man he could cross. Imagine my surprise when I was told that he had a girlfriend as well and she happened to look strikingly similar to the pet I’d lost four years ago.”
All the fight left me and my body hung limply, suspended inches off the ground. How could life be so cruel that in finding the love of my life, I was led right back to my nightmare?
“It really is the cruelest of ironies,” his words echoed my thoughts. “Now, I’m afraid I have somewhere I need to be.” He straightened his shirt sleeves and brushed invisible dirt off his pristine pants.
“I’ll be leaving you in the care of my associate. Murphy is going to begin your punishments for your disgraceful actions. But don’t fret, I’ll return soon to check on your progress.”
Ashwood spun on his designer loafers and ascended the stairs, his lackey following closely behind him. The door closed with a finality that had terror making goosebumps prickle all over my skin.
The strong arms that had been banded around my torso lowered my body to the floor and released me. I used the final reserves of courage that I had left and slowly turned toward my newest captor. He was bigger up close and his chest seemed to double in size when he breathed. His face that had been filled with hatred was now impassive and the change both confused and scared me.
“We need to talk,” the giant, Murphy, said and I tried to mentally prepare myself for whatever terror came next.
29
GRAY
Istared at the decrepit house across the street. Broken windows, the front door boarded up with obscene graffiti splashed across it, a chain-link fence the only aspect of the lot that looked new.
Maybe a family used to live there and took care of it, but that was a long time ago, back before the entire neighborhood became infested with drug dealers and the product they pushed on its residents. It looked completely unlivable and it currently held one of my reasons for living.
“How much longer do we have to wait?” I scowled at Agent Greggs who’d turned the abandoned house across the street from where Lily was into a command center in the few hours since we’d last spoken. It was impressive, what he’d done in a short time, but I was tired of waiting.
His sharp eyes pinned me into place, “We can’t rush this. I know you want her back but you have to trust that we’re doing this in the best possible way to ensure that she walks out of there alive. If you aren’t on board then I’ll have to rethink my decision of letting you be here.”
“I understand,” I practically snarled, fucking hating every second that I couldn’t charge across the street and get to Lily. I’d promised myself I’d play nice with him, if it weren’t for his undercover field agent, we probably wouldn’t even know where she was being held.
By a stroke of pure fucking luck, the agent had called in to Greggs shortly after I’d asked for his help. According to him, Lily and another woman were in the exact house I’d been staring at and Ashwood and Lucas had left around an hour ago with promises to return later tonight. Our window was short and I’d have to trust that Greggs’ team knew what they were doing.
“Good, now get away from the fucking window and look over what we’ve come up with.”
The table that he’d been hunched over was littered with paper cups of stale coffee and a large set of blueprints for the house. An open laptop was feeding us live footage of the front and back entrances as well as the back alley that led to the driveway. These fuckers were paranoid and had their own cameras covering the entire property which Greggs had tapped into.
Half a dozen men were patrolling the property, none of them bothering to hide the automatic weapons they carried, not that anyone in this neighborhood would ask. I could tell from the size of them and the way they moved that they’d been well trained, probably ex-military turned mercenaries. There was no way for me to go over, grab Lily and the other woman, then get us all out of there safely.
“According to my agent, there aren’t any men inside. Which means, if we can subdue the guards in the back quickly, we can get inside while my team engages the ones stationed in the front before they even know there’s something wrong.”
I grunted, agreeing with his assessment. Kane dropped his hand on my shoulder, giving me a small amount of reassurance. My whole team was in the room, something I wouldn’t back down on, it was going a long way to help settle the anxiety that was crawling under my skin.
“Uh, boss man, we got a problem.” Roe strode over, dropping his own laptop in front of us. He had a crisper view of the back alley, thankfully Greggs didn’t ask how and just gave him a disapproving look. Roe shrugged his shoulders, clearly not giving a shit. I wasn’t concerned with his methods though, what had my attention was the blacked-out SUV moving up the alley toward the house.
“Fuck, is that Ashwood? I thought he wasn’t returning for a few more hours.” Sam spoke my exact thoughts. My heart had dropped into my stomach the second I’d spotted the vehicle.
“He’s not.” Greggs looked concerned and I didn’t fucking like that at all.
“Call your guy, find out,” I urged.
“I can’t,” we all stared at the screen as Jacob Lucas exited the SUV opening the back door, for Ashwood to climb out. Then the two of them walked into the house behind one of the guards. “If I contact him now, it could make them suspicious and we don’t know what they’d do then. Let me see how far out the tactical team is.” His fingers flew over his phone.
“We should go in,” this from Gage. He practically vibrated with nervous energy.
He liked working with Greggs even less than I did. Gage hated having to ask permission before he acted, it was one of the main reasons I was so surprised when he’d accepted my offer to join Falls Security. I trusted his judgment and because of that I always gave him the freedom to make his own decisions when he was on a case. Which was probably why he didn’t glower at me the way he was Greggs.
