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But now she has what she wants, so I guess none of that matters to her anymore.
A hand touches my arm, and I yank away instinctively. Troy doesn’t let me put any space between us though, stepping closer as he grins down at me with lust written across his face. He touches my arm again, deliberately running his hand down from my shoulder in a slow, teasing slide.
“No harm in getting the honeymoon started early, is there?” he murmurs, licking his lips. “It’s finally time for me to see if you’re worth all the trouble you’ve caused. You’ve got more fire in you than I expected, I’ll give you that. But I don’t mind.” His smile widens as he leers down at me. “Breaking you is going to be so much fun, wife.”
3
VICTOR
I gritmy teeth in the back of the car, grateful at least that Ransom is driving.
He’s the one who hot-wired the first car we found as we were walking, and he smiled his way past the border patrol as we crossed back onto US soil.
Getting back across the border was easier, since we already had our fake IDs, and the authorities aren’t watching for us to be comingfromMexico.
Thank fuck.
I shift in place, and my side aches at the movement, throbbing for a solid minute before it settles down. We raided a vet’s office for medical supplies after Ransom got us a car. The stitches are the best Malice could do, especially considering the urgency of the situation and the fact that the car was moving at the time, and they’re fine.
It still grates on me, knowing that they’re uneven. It bothers me more than the pain, honestly, but I’m able to push that aside to focus on the matter at hand.
Ransom and Malice are both in the front of the new car we stole when we ditched the first one somewhere around the Texas state line. I can hear them talking in low voices. Malice sounds agitated, another reason why he’s not allowed to drive right now. The last thing we need is to get pulled over because he’s driving with his temper.
Ransom is feeling just as frustrated and fucked up as the rest of us about Willow being gone, but at least he can obey the traffic laws while doing it.
While they talk, I use my laptop, doing what I do best. I’m supposed to be healing as best I can, but I’ve never been good at being idle, even where there’s no crisis. Plus, the longer we go without knowing where Troy took Willow, the harder it’ll be to find her.
So I search.
We’ve been able to track him to a degree, using small sightings on security cameras. We have enough to know that he brought Willow back to Detroit, but finding out where the fuck he took her to from there has been the hard part.
I’ve searched the cameras around his house and his condo in the heart of the city, but there hasn’t been any movement at either of those locations at all. Which means he’s got her somewhere else. It’s smart, all things considered. Bringing her back to one of his known properties would be fairly conspicuous. But him being smart just makes our job harder.
Something feral scratches at the inside of my ribs when I think about how long Troy has had Willow. It’s been just over thirty hours now, but a lot can happen in that time. Especially with someone like Troy fucking Copeland.
My chest aches, and I find myself tapping my fingers on the edge of my computer, reverting back to my old coping mechanisms. I can feel myself spiraling a little, and I hate it. If I let myself, I could imagine all the horrible fucking things Troy might be doing to Willow.
He probably won’t have killed her, because that would defeat the purpose of all of this, but there are things that can make a person wish they were dead. I know that fact better than most people, and I don’t have any delusions that he’s going to treat her softly just because he wants to marry her.
But letting those dark thoughts overtake my mind isn’t going to help me find Willow, so I take a deep breath, forcing myself to refocus on what I’m doing.
We have a trail of breadcrumbs leading from Mexico back to Detroit, and I go over them again, trying to pick up some hint of where Troy took Willow.
There are a few sightings of him moving through the city, but other than that, I’m drawing a blank. It’s like he took her totally off the grid or something, and the thought of that makes my skin prickle with irritation and fear.
If we can’t find her…
No.
No, I can’t afford to think like that. Troy isn’t a criminal mastermind. He’s a rich, spoiled idiot who didn’t like being told no. There’ssomethingout there that’s going to help me figure out where he took Willow. I just have to find it. For now, she’s hidden away wherever that is, and she needs me to keep digging until I find her.
I narrow my focus even more, scrolling back through all the sightings I could piece together. I open a notepad on the side of my screen and start jotting down all the points that connect these places together, anything that could form a trail that might lead to Willow.
The muttered conversation between my brothers in the front seat fades into background noise, no more than static in the back of my head as I work. This has always been my role among the three of us. It’s what I do best, and the stakes of my success have never been higher than they are now.
I don’t look up again until I hear Ransom curse bitterly from the front seat, the sound loud enough to jar me from my thoughts.
“What—”
