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“Um.” Addy shoved her bright blue hair off her face and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember. “I don’t know. Maybe thirty minutes? She came down after I got here to do prep but before we were supposed to open.”
A loud, incessant banging on the kitchen door made Addy yelp, and James glanced up. “That’s Brogan. Let him in.”
A second later, Brogan joined him, arms crossed over his chest as he surveyed the scene. “What’s the timeline?”
“Longest he could’ve had her is thirty minutes, give or take. He could be anywhere with her in thirty minutes.”
“His jet isn’t scheduled to fly until tonight. If he’s got her, they’re still in the city.”
James pushed to his feet. “If?”
“He’s working with the PI, so it’s hard to say if he had the PI do his dirty work or he did it himself.” He gave James a long look. “What’s your gut say?”
“That he wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to find her and see for himself.” Brogan nodded in agreement. “Would he take her to where he’s staying? A hotel?”
“It’s risky if she didn’t go quietly, and it looks like she didn’t. But he did rent one. The king’s suite.”
“Then let’s go.”
Brogan laid a hand on James’s arm to stop his advance to the door. “Declan’s not allocating any resources to this. At all. No support on the ground, no cleanup, nothing. You do this, you’re on your own.”
“I didn’t suspect he would.” James shook off his cousin’s grip. “I’ll find her myself, handle it myself, and take whatever consequences Declan wants to dish out once she’s safe and this fucker’s dead.”
“No, you won’t.” Brogan held up a hand at James’s protest. “I’m going with you. Let’s start with his hotel. I downloaded the schematics to my phone. Better if we can catch him by surprise and don’t have to shoot up the place.”
ChapterThirty-Four
The first thing Delaney noticed when she came to was the smell. That sickeningly sweet scent of cologne that had haunted her nightmares for nearly a decade. The room was dark, but she could just barely hear the distant sound of movement and the low hum of what might be voices.
Unwilling to move too much and draw attention to herself but desperate to get her bearings, she opened her eyes a fraction and tried to make out her surroundings. A bedroom. Or she was on a bed, at least.
The lights were off, and the curtains were closed, but as her eyes adjusted, she noted a TV mounted to the wall and a dresser tucked into the corner. The door to the bedroom was closed, the thin strip of light at the base occasionally interrupted by the shadow of footsteps.
Pushing herself into a sitting position, she winced, fingers moving up to probe at the throbbing ache in her cheek. That’s right. He’d shoved her when she refused to go willingly.
She didn’t think there was anything else Charles could do to surprise her anymore, but she barely caught sight of his face through the glass of the pub door before his fist was through it and he was reaching in to unlock it. She would have outrun him back to the safety of the kitchen if not for Addy. He was there for her. She didn’t want to make Addy a target too.
Delaney had no intention of leaving with him, though. Not when he apologized and pleaded and told her how much he missed her. Not when he demanded and threatened and clenched his fists. He’d gotten impatient with her refusal and moved close enough to shove her into the bar, her body collapsing to the floor in a daze before she passed out.
Slipping off the bed, she crossed to the bathroom. He liked to shave with a straight razor. Maybe he’d left it tucked into his toiletries bag. She’d take that over having no weapon at all. She rummaged through it with trembling fingers. Nothing. Damn it.
She glanced up at her reflection, and the blood in her veins went to ice. He’d changed her clothes, swapping her jeans out for an expensive pair of black slacks and her Black Orchid shirt for a purple cashmere sweater. She hated the color purple. It was his favorite.
Lifting her shirt, she noticed he’d even changed her bra for his preferred brand, La Perla, and her stomach roiled at the realization he’d stripped her naked and did God knew what else while she was unconscious and vulnerable. She braced her hands on the edge of the counter and forced herself to take slow, deep breaths.
She would not leave this city with him. She would get away or die trying. Knowing Charles, she’d be dead either way, and if that was her fate, then she would get to decide the time and the method. She would never be his victim again.
Leaving the bathroom and crossing to the bedroom door, she took a steadying breath before opening it. He was sitting at the table on the far side of the room with his phone pressed to his ear, food spread out on the table before him. He sat with his back to the window, and she studied his profile. The defined outline of his jaw, always clean shaven, the elegant slope of his nose, his high, aristocratic forehead.
No one would disagree that the man was handsome and elegant, sophisticated, even. But it was everything underneath the facade he presented to the world that made him a monster.
She would never forget his full lips twisted into a sneer while he sent her sprawling to the floor with a well-timed backhand to the face. Or his long fingers wrapping around her throat and squeezing until she couldn’t breathe. Or his green eyes snapping from warm to deadly in an instant. It was always impossible to predict which imagined slight would set him off.
Ending his call, he glanced up and saw her. His smile was quick, but there was no warmth in it. There never was.
“Oh, good. You’re up.” He said it like she was taking a nap and not like he kidnapped her and dragged her here against her will. “I’ve ordered some lunch for us. Come sit.”
She stood rooted in place, crossing her arms over her chest. “How did you find me?”
