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Tate swore. “We’re almost there.”
Deke ended the call just as he reached the lobby. “They have Bailey,” he announced to no one in particular. “Whoever did this has her.”
Luke gaped. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” Deke bit out, shoving his cell back in his pocket. “She’s gone. Her phone is still there. And a scrambler was used—its trail ended in the side alley.”
“Son of a bitch.” Luke reached back to clasp his nape. “The cameras—”
“Were all turned off,” Deke finished, putting his hands to his head. “I switched them back on.”
“So, what, this was supposed to be a distraction?” Luke asked, waving a hand toward Dayna—who was now healed but still unconscious. “A way to keep us focused on something else so they could take Bailey?”
“That was more than a distraction. It was personal.” Dayna had taken some brutal hits … and whoever did it to her might well do the same to Bailey.
Deke swallowed around the hard lump of dread in his throat. He wanted to race outside, hop in his car, and find her … But driving aimlessly would achieve nothing. It wouldn’t help her.
“Bailey being gone only adds weight to the idea that she did this to Dayna,” claimed Vera. “She could have set this up to look like she’d been taken.”
Grinding his teeth as a wave of anger washed over him, Deke glared at the woman. “If Bailey wanted to hurt Dayna, she’d do it. But she wouldn’t do it on the sly. That’s not who she is. She’d own what she’d done.”
“Like it or not, this stinks of Bailey,” Vera persisted. “Mambas are merciless creatures. They always get even. No one else would want to hurt Dayna this way.”
Growling, Deke made a move toward the woman. He halted when Luke slid between them and said, “Vera, you’re letting your personal issues with Bailey color your opinions here. If you’ve got nothing helpful to say, get the hell out of here.”
Her back snapping straight, the woman marched out of the building.
Dragging in a breath that should have been calming but failed, Deke rubbed at his face. “She’s probably not the only one who’ll think that way.”
“Probably not,” agreed Isaiah. “But the majority won’t. It’s a well-known fact that Bailey owns her shit. Someone else has beef with Dayna. Someone who also has an issue with Bailey. Who?”
Deke crossed to the male still kneeling at Dayna’s feet. “Gerard? Gerard?” Finally, the male looked up at him. “Do you have any idea who did this?”
He shook his head, but his eyes flickered.
Deke tensed. “You know something. You do.”
Gerard licked his lips. “I-I’m not sure—”
“Who would have done it?”
He dropped his head. “It can’t have been her,” he said more to himself.
“Who?”
“She was pissed when I told her, but she wouldn’t have done something like this.”
“Who?” Deke growled.
“The plan was simple. So simple. The results were supposed to be simple. But no one reacted how they should have. Nothing went as it should have.”
Deke fisted the back of the guy’s long-sleeved tee and yanked him to his feet, pinning his gaze. “What fucking plan?”
The front door swung open and slammed into the wall.
The Alphas rushed inside with Aspen and Camden on their heels.
Tate took in the scene. “What happened here?”
“I don’t know,” replied Deke through his teeth. “But Gerard here knows something.”
Havana folded her arms, her face a mask of rage. “Spill.”
And then Gerard began to talk.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The curdling of Bailey’s stomach nudged her out of sleep. She felt her forehead crease. Jesus, she felt awful. Dizzy. Off. Her throat was dry as a bone, and her head pounded like a drum.
More, she ached in too many places to count, more particularly her wrists and the back of her neck. But that wasn’t what set off her inner alarms and brought awareness racing back to her, it was the fact that her snake was going nuts—hissing, striking, whipping her tail.
Her pulse doing a little hop, Bailey resisted the urge to freeze. She knew she wasn’t alone. She could hear soft breathing coming from across the room.
Tranqs, she remembered. She’d apparently been not only drugged but taken. And now she was bound by her wrists and ankles to what felt like a chair.
Oh, someone’s ass was getting caned.
Her mind jumped to Deke. Had he realized she was missing yet? Would he know who’d taken her?
If their imprinting had been a little more advanced, he’d have felt her lose consciousness.
Her snake sprang, pushing at Bailey’s skin, wanting out; wanting to kill.
Zero point in that.
Bailey recognized the smell oozing from her as that of a shift-suppressant drug. Its stench almost overrode the scents of dust, mildew, stale air, and the woodsy scent of a familiar female. A traitorous female.
Bailey probably would have panicked if this was the first time she’d found herself bound to a chair. It wasn’t even the second. And if there was one thing she was good at, it was getting out of shit. Which was fantastic, considering she had a habit of getting herself into shit.
