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Jenna’s head began buzzing with potential ways to find it. She needed to get Kendrick Foster and his wife Neo on this too. It was going to take all of them working around the clock to get the intel they needed before the deadline.
She didn’t want to get up when she heard the tap on the door a few minutes later, but she knew she had to. She checked the exterior cameras and saw Mark scanning the parking lot with a cup carrier in one hand and a bag of food in the other, and she pressed the open button.
“Here you go,” Mark said, handing her the cup carrier.
He stumbled and fell, the cups falling onto the stairs between them, spilling.
“Mark!” Oh God, was it his legs again? He was halfway in the bus and halfway on the ground, and even though her skin was crawling being so close to the door, she crouched next to him—
There was a dart in his neck.
Terror tore through her. “Mark!”
She shoved her hands under his arms, trying to pull him inside, but he was dead weight. Completely unconscious.
She knew this meant they were being attacked, but no way in hell was she shoving him out of the bus to save herself.
“Come on.” She strained. She was strong, but he had nearly a hundred pounds on her. That and the awkward angle of trying to pull him up the bus stairs made getting him inside impossible.
She’d have to go outside if she wanted to save him.
Adrenaline slammed through her veins, but she refused to let panic take over. Hunching her shoulders and taking a deep breath, she leaped over Mark, not focusing on anything but pushing him inside.
Up, up, up. Come on.
She wasn’t sure if the heavy footsteps she heard were real or only in her head, but either way, she was out of time.
“Please.” She didn’t know who she was begging—Mark, her muscles, or the enemy closing in. “Please.”
She got him up another stair. She was almost there. Just a couple more inches—
She felt a pinch in her neck, and a few seconds later, her hands went slack, Mark slipping from her grasp. She fell hard onto the steps.
As her vision spiraled into darkness, the last thing she saw was three men grabbing Mark and hauling him away—chicken fingers spilling onto the dark asphalt.
Chapter 23
Mark’s head pounded with pain, and he swore. What the fuck happened? His legs had been tingling, but he hadn’t felt them go out. He’d been holding out the drinks to Jenna, and then…the ground. That was all he remembered.
Right now, it felt like he had the biggest hangover known to man. What the hell? He tried to move but couldn’t. This definitely had to be his neuropathy.
Forcing his eyes open, he tried to move again, and realized it wasn’t his neuropathy at all. He was in a room he didn’t recognize, in a chair like the one Emily had described. It wasn’t a dentist’s chair, but it seemed like it. His arms and legs were strapped down.
Across from him, Jenna was in a similar chair, also tied down. There was nothing else about the room to tell him where they were.
He closed his eyes again for a brief moment.
When he’d scanned the parking lot, they’d been alone. How the fuck did Joaquin find them? There wasn’t a question of who it was. The only person with a motive to take Jenna was Joaquin—Mark wasn’t arrogant enough to think he was the reason they were taken.
Her eyes were closed, and she was still except for the slow, rhythmic motion of one hand. He recognized it for what it was, some sort of stress-release movement.
“Jenna.”
His voice was rough, and her eyes flew open. “Mark. Thank God.” As she looked at him, a tear leaked out of one eye. “You’re okay. I wasn’t sure if they’d…”
She trailed off, but he knew what she didn’t say. She’d been afraid they’d given him something stronger than a tranquilizer. He wouldn’t point out that if they’d killed him, they wouldn’t have bothered to bring him here.
“My head hurts like a bitch,” he said. “What happened?”
