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But she knew exactly where to find him.
CHAPTER23
“MaryAnn! Time to get a move-on, little girl!” Her ten minutes was already up, plus an extra three, and he was itching to get on the road. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, he listened for the tell-tale sound of someone moving around above him.
When he heard nothing but his own breathing, he shook his head and started up the steps to her room. “As soon as we get to the new safehouse, we’re going to have a talk about following instructions, babygirl. Let’s—”
Empty. Unease settled at the base of his spine as he moved into the bathroom. Empty as well, including the counters which he knew for a fact had been covered with all manner of feminine things the day before. She’d obviously packed a bag.
Where was the bag? And where the hell was she?
“MaryAnn! This is not the time to be playing games, little girl.”
But even as he moved from room to room, searching for her, his gut told him she wasn’t there. As much as she might want another punishment, he couldn’t see her screwing around when there was so much on the line.
Which still left him with zero fucking clue about where she’d disappeared to.
That uneasy feeling had spread into his chest by the time he pulled open the front door to see if she’d stepped outside. And it blossomed into a full-blown panic when he found the driveway as empty as her bedroom had been.
“Fuck!” Yanking his phone out of his pocket, he swiped it open, his fingers far more steady than he felt in that moment. Thank god he had a tracker on the damn car, one only he had access to.
She didn’t have much of a head start, which was another thing he was thankful for. Not that it was going to save her ass when he had her back home where she belonged.
He’d already lost one woman he loved because she wouldn’t listen. He was going to make damn sure it never happened again.
* * *
When she finally parked thecar nearly an hour later, she breathed a sigh of relief. Somehow, she’d made it here without getting pulled over, or Dean working some kind of magic to turn the car off remotely. The possibility of the latter had occurred to her about halfway to her destination, when she’d been struck by a vivid image of the car shutting down with no warning in the middle of the interstate and the resulting multi-vehicle pile-up.
But either Dean didn’t possess such a capability, or he’d chosen not to use it. Equally probable options as far as she was concerned.
Even more surprising than the fact that she’d made it to her destination without any kind of interference was the fact that her panic had all but faded. For once in her life, she wasn’t terrified or worried or doing her best to breathe through a panic attack. Maybe she’d somehow transcended her fear, or maybe her brain had simply shut down that part of itself to protect her. Whatever the reason, she felt as cool as a cucumber when she stepped out of the vehicle and began her trek up the front walk to the old, abandoned row home.
If there was a pizza place near Carroll Park, she’d never been there. She sure as hell had never been there with Nate. Which meant the fake location and his reminder about how much they loved pizza had been a secret message, just for her, telling her where to meet him.
Pretty much all the homes on this street had been abandoned years ago. She’d felt like a teenager, or what she’d imagined teenagers felt like each time she and Nate had snuck inside this home in particular to share a pizza and talk about their lives. Nate had talked a big game about buying up all the homes, flipping them, and returning them to their former glory as he’d called it.
Her stomach rolled at the memory, at how she’d hung on every single word he’d ever spoken like he was her own personal messiah. God, what a naïve fool she’d been.
Standing in front of the door, she gripped the knob but didn’t turn it. Dean was going to have her ass just for leaving without talking to him, so god only knew what he would do if she went into a house unarmed to face down a murderer.
That was assuming she survived this showdown. And that Dean wanted anything to do with her after it was over.
Maybe she should just get back in the car and drive to the closest police station she could find and tell them what was going on. Like Dean said, the cops were trained to handle this kind of thing.
But if she did that, Nate might hurt Shannon even worse than he possibly already had. And the hour he’d given them was nearly up, which meant Shannon was about out of time.
No. If anyone had any hope of talking him down without casualties, it was her.
With a deep, bracing breath, she turned the knob and pushed the door open. “Hello?”
“In the living room, my love.”
Well, she’d gone from ‘traitorous whore’ to ‘my love’. That had to be a good sign, right? Shutting the door behind her, she crossed the small entryway and stepped into what probably had passed for a living area at some point.
Shannon was perched on an old couch the previous owners had left behind, looking as out of place in the decrepit old house as a brand-new chandelier. Gagged, her hands and feet bound, she glared at MaryAnn through her one good eye. The other was swollen shut, a bruise rapidly darkening the skin around it.
Though her heart broke at the sight of her friend bound and battered, MaryAnn didn’t acknowledge her. She simply let her gaze slide from the couch to the old leather recliner off to the left, where Nate sat like some kind of mad king. Back straight, a maniacal little smile playing at his lips, he watched, unblinking as she stepped further into the room.
