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I skim back through the recording a few minutes and my blood runs cold. Maisy has her head bent over her phone, unaware of the big burly guy trailing her. He’s good, a professional that knows to keep back far enough that no one would suspect anything. Unless you’ve learned to see this shit like I have.
He goes for her and my heart jumps into my throat as my knuckles turn white from how tightly my fists ball. I gave her my gun to protect herself, but it’s probably stashed in the glove compartment of the car. She gives him hell, kicking out, but his fist rams something in her arm and the fight seeps out of her as he uses his thick muscled arms to trap her against his chest until her body slumps. He pockets her phone and adjusts to distribute her weight.
“Fuck!”
Horror grips me by the throat as I watch the man drag Maisy to a blacked out SUV parked nearby. This can’t be fucking happening. We’ve avoided them so many times and the minute I drop my guard, she’s taken right off the street.
There’s no time to waste. Jumping up, I rush around the apartment, grabbing anything I can that will help. I have to improvise and work with what I have on hand because nothing will keep me from getting her back and keeping her safe.
I send out a prayer to whatever might be listening as I throw my leg over the motorcycle. The gravel kicks up behind me as I tear out onto the road with my phone attached to the mount and a map tracing the location of her phone.
Hold on, Maisy. I’m coming.
Two blacked out SUVs are parked at Stalenko Corp’s shell company warehouse where Maisy and I met Ethan Hannigan. I don’t want to tip them off, so I cut the engine and walk the bike along the tree line. I keep low once I find a spot to leave it, calling on everything I’ve learned from Wren, Colton, and the rest of the Crows in the last few years. My gaze constantly sweeps for any threat. I freeze and crouch low behind a concrete loading slab at one side of the warehouse as a guy comes out of a nearby door, phone pressed to his ear as he slips sunglasses on.
“We’ll make sure she understands what’s at stake. Either she pays the ransom, or we kill the girl. Yeah. Yeah. Got it.”
My heart drums a furious beat in my chest. It takes everything in me to stay hidden as the guy gets in one of the SUVs and pulls out. Hopefully that means they’ve left Maisy with a light detail inside. I will raze this fucking place to the ground before I let them harm her.
It takes more time than I’d like to case the perimeter to check for where the surveillance cameras are, taking their feeds out one by one with a methodical focus. When I make it to a door at the back, I use a knife from my kitchen to pick the lock.
A set of metal stairs leads up to a catwalk. I take them to get a better vantage to find where they’re keeping Maisy. It’s bigger inside than we first thought, but we barely had time before. From the catwalk that wraps around the perimeter and cuts across the middle, I can see they have several uses for this place to keep an eye on their operation under everyone’s noses.
On the lower level, a man smoking a cigarette crosses to a door where the glow of a monitor spills out from the room. I start there, creeping down silently. Pausing outside the door, I listen.
“Is something up with the feed? What’s all over the screen?”
“Dunno. They’re all like that. Bird shit?”
Guess again. I sprayed WD-40 on the lenses. Their cameras will be toast and it keeps the feed blurry. Keeping low, I move into the room. A bank of computers shows the exterior security feed and a sports game on mute. Two guys are at the desk, the one with the cigarette leaning over the one seated.
This would be easier if I didn’t have to take them out at the same time before they alert anyone else. While they’re occupied, I peer around and find a brick propping the door open. Perfect, distraction and a weapon. I heft it and adjust my stance. Taking aim, I fling the brick at the guy with the cigarette and it catches him in the back of the neck.
“What the—”
Before either of them process the attack, I’m moving in. I smash the first guy’s head to the desk to finish what the brick started and catch the seated guy around the neck in a stranglehold. The cigarette drops from the other guy’s lips as his eyes roll back. He crumples to the floor while I clap my hand over the guy in the chair’s mouth, tightening my arm until he goes slack.
Wasting no time, I drag their unconscious bodies to the floor and search them. I take their cell phones and smash them with the brick. On the cigarette guy, I find plastic ties in his pocket and use them to secure their wrists behind their backs, looping them both together. When I step back, I rake a hand through my hair and move to the bank of monitors. Nothing seems out of order. I tap a keyboard shortcut sequence Colt showed me and the monitors cut out, then reboot with blue screens of scrolling computer code.
My insides burn with the need to get to Maisy, but she wasn’t on the screens before I cut them. I slip out of the room and head down a dimly lit hall. I freeze, pulse jumping when a grizzly looking guy with a beard exits a room ahead. He doesn’t see me, turning away to head further into the hall. His head is bent like he’s busy texting.
As quiet as I can be, I rush him from behind and use the momentum to shove him against a doorframe of an open door. At the same time, I sink a fist into his side. The man groans, doubling over where I hit him, instinctively swiping in defense. He lands a hit, catching me in the side with an elbow, throwing my footing off.
While he’s still reeling, I grab the back of his shirt and drive my knee into his gut. He grunts, fingers scrabbling. One more blow to the head takes him down. Panting more from adrenaline than exertion, I catch him and lower him to the floor.
The hall has nothing useful, but inside the open door there’s a room with pipes running up the exterior wall. I drag the guy over to them and pull his hands behind his back before I secure him to the pipes with the zip ties.
My thirst for destruction isn’t over
. It won’t be until I find Maisy and get her out of here. At the end of the hall, I find I’m at the other end of the warehouse. There’s another room built inside the space that looks like an office.
When I silently crack the door, I find Maisy inside and burning hot fury rockets through me. The guy who attacked her on the street is all over her. She’s tied to a metal chair with rope around her legs. His hands lift her tank top while she juts her chin, face turned away.
My grip turns deadly on the door handle. It’s only because he’s within range to hurt Maisy that I don’t charge him like my instincts scream at me to do. If I had my gun, I’d empty every single bullet into him. He’s a dead man.
“Just want to look at what I get to play with later,” he says gleefully, squeezing himself through his jeans. “Gonna bite those perky little tits until you scream, sweet thing.”
She grits her teeth and takes measured breaths through her nose, ignoring his unwanted touches. Searing fire races through my veins. I want to rip this fucking asshole’s head off with my bare hands for touching her.
