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“Fuck!” Zig curses when we find it empty.
Moving closer to the bed, we find the sheet on the floor and the cart beside it lying on its side.
“She didn’t want to go with whoever took her, that’s for sure,” I say as I spot something peeking out from under the pillow and find a cell phone that looks like the ones Apex uses. “What the hell?”
Zig turns at my words and yanks the phone from my hand. Typing in a number, he unlocks it and grins. “Well done, little witch.”
“You mind telling me what the fuck is happening? How the fuck did Salem get her hands on that?”
“I gave it to her.”
I open my mouth to call bullshit when I remember him groping her before he said goodbye. “You knew something was wrong even then?”
“I thought I was being a paranoid bastard. But just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean I’m wrong. I stole Cooper’s cell phone and slipped it into Salem’s pocket and gave her a clue I hoped she wouldn’t brush off.”
“A clue?” I frown, then laugh. “Scorpion, Oranges, Scorpion. I thought it was an inside joke I wasn’t getting. Scorpion, Orange, Scorpion, SOS.”
Zig nods.
“You’re a fucking genius. The SOS would contact all the Apex teams like it does for all of us.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, you have the cell phone now, call them.”
“I can’t. We don’t know if the phone calls are being monitored. Apex teams know the protocol. We don’t initiate the SOS unless everything has hit the fan. They’ll send a team. All we have to do is survive until they get here.”
I blow out a breath. “I hate to ask this, but given everything that’s gone down, can we trust the others?”
He hesitates for a minute before nodding. “I won’t let Cooper ruin what we’ve built. I trust all the Apex men with my life, and I will until they give me a reason not to.”
“I hear that, but let me put it another way. Do you trust Apex with Salem?” I ask him quietly as we make our way back to the doors.
“The only person I trust her with is you. I know what you feel for her because I feel the same way. You’d fight for her, kill for her, die for her.”
“Did you just quote Bryan Adams to me?”
“What?”
“Never mind. Let’s just find our girl, okay?”
This time I take the lead as we leave the room, and Zig watches our six. It’s quiet, almost too quiet. It’s a fucking clinic. Surely there should be more people here. I turn the corner and head down the hall, stopping when I hear the squeak of a wheel that needs greasing. I put my hand up, halting Zig, and we both fall back until the person is close enough for me to grab.
A nurse, pushing a cart, gasps as I pull her to me and wrap my hand around her throat. I recognize her as one of the nurses from Salem’s room. “Pika, right? Where is the girl we came in with?”
She starts squawking in Spanish, waving her arms around so much that I wonder if she’ll take off. I turn to Zig, who speaks back to her in fluent Spanish, wishing I had the same affinity for the language he does. I know the basics—probably a little more than that—but when someone speaks too fast, I find it too hard to keep up. I’d be sad about the fact that he has a bigger brain than me, but then I remember I have a bigger dick, so I figure it all balances out in the end.
Her chest is heaving by the time she has finished. Zig looks at me. “Knock her out. We don’t want her raising the alarm.”
“I hate hitting women. It makes my balls shrivel up inside.”
“In this case, it’s a necessary evil to keep our woman safe. She’ll sing like a canary, like she just did to me.”
With a sigh, I pull my gun, ignoring her shout of alarm as she struggles against me. I pull my arm back and cold-clock her hard enough to knock her out, hopefully without leaving any serious damage. I swing her up into my arms and jog back to the room Salem was in and lay her gently on the now empty bed before returning to Zig. He takes a look at my face and shakes his head.
“Don’t bother. I know what you’re gonna say. It’s not that I don’t agree with you, but it changes fuck all. Hitting a woman goes against every instinct I have. Tell me you don’t feel sick when you have to do it.”
“You know I can’t. But that’s the difference between us and them. It’s our remorse that stops us from becoming monsters. Though the longer it takes to find Salem, the harder it will be for me to leash my temper,” he admits as we start to move again.
