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“Fine,” Roman said. It was going to take every last one of them to find Camila, and they were running out of time. “Let’s go.”
Now all he could do was hope they got to her before it was too late.
* * *
Camila’s headfelt like it weighed conservatively seven hundred pounds. She had a fuzzy awareness that she needed to wake up, although she couldn’t quite remember why. It was important, though. Something major had happened—a bank robbery? No. No, that had already happened. But there had been a gun, the same wet, dark fear swallowing her whole, and no time for Roman to tell her to breathe.
Wait. Roman hadn’t been there. He’d been waiting for her. She was supposed to meet him, but there had been a lady. A dog?
Oh,God.
Camila forced herself to focus, although it took all of her effort to get halfway there. Her head was spinning, lights swirling around her head, cutting through the darkness. It took longer than it should for her to realize she was moving—was she lying across the backseat of a car? Yes. Yes, that was it, she thought, and her stomach tilted along with her vision. She must’ve made a noise, because the woman driving the car let out a soft laugh in the shadows.
“Oh, good. You’re waking up. I was starting to think I’d given you too much sufentanil. Although, I guess that would’ve maybe saved me some trouble in the long run.”
Camila blinked slowly, her memory coming back to her in a slow trickle. Portia Whitlock, luring her into the alley. Pointing a gun at her. Telling her she’d murdered her own brother.
Telling her she was going to do the same to her.
Camila opened her mouth, although to say what, she had no idea. Dread slithered through her on a fresh wave of nausea as she realized she’d been not only gagged, but her hands had been bound behind her. Panic grew in her chest, compressing her lungs like a steel vise and making her breath arrive in fast, shallow gasps. She couldn’t see anything other than the lights intermittently flashing over her head, had no sense of how long she’d been knocked out or where she was, and oh, God, Portia was going to kill her.
Breathe, came the voice, calm and clear as a morning sunrise in her mind.Breathe, Camila. Breathe…
She did. Marshaling all of her strength, she inhaled for a count of five, holding it for three beats before slowly releasing it all past the fabric tied over her mouth. The oxygen gave her clarity, and she repeated the cycle two more times. She turned over on the backseat to try and get a better sense of her surroundings, and something small and cold pressed against the hollow at her throat.
The tracker. Oh.Oh. Portia had taken her phone, but she’d completely missed the lavalier.
“Yeah, sorry,” Portia said, her tone betraying the lie. “Guess by now you’re realizing I had to tie you up and gag you. I had to make sure no one heard you, just in case you woke up while we were still downtown. Thank God my car was on the other side of the alley. Getting you into that backseat after I knocked you out was a pain in the ass. Shit like that makes me miss having Thorn around, although it’s theonlything.”
The comment cut through the fog in Camila’s brain even further, honing her focus. She wasn’t going to get out of this by fighting—Portia had a gun, and Camila had been drugged, both tactical advantages that made trying to fight or run horrible ideas. Portia also knew where they were, along with where they were headed. Who knew how long Camila would have to run in order to escape, or if there was anywhere she could hide undetected? If she screwed this up, Portia would kill her and be done with it. She was going to have to stall, to keep Portia busy until Roman and the Intelligence Unit could find her.
She couldn’t die. She couldn’t leave Roman.
Camila grunted against the gag. Portia slowed to a stop, put the car in park and turned around to the backseat, gun in hand.
“I suppose this is close enough,” she said, tugging the bandana from Camila’s mouth. She gulped for air, swallowing past her parched lips and tissue-paper tongue to test out her throat.
“What…what are you going to do now?” Camila croaked. She blinked at the dashboard, pretending to regain her focus. 7:58. Roman had to know she was in danger by now. All she needed was a little more time to get herself out of this.
Portia lifted one shoulder. “My brother might’ve been a double-crossing bastard, but he did have some pretty great fucking ideas. You’ll go out just like Thorn did. With four in the chest and a blaze of glory.”
Terror threatened to commandeer Camila’s brain, just as it had on that bank floor. In that instant, she tumbled back, the memory of being in the vault as sharp as if it had just happened, the fear that she would die just as real.
Wait. The vault. Thevault.
That was it.
She needed to dig deep for every scrap of bravery she possessed.
Mustering as much confidence as she could, Camila said, “You’re right. Thorn was an asshole, and he got what he deserved.”
Portia laughed. She looked so much different than her photo, with her cropped dark hair and what Camila guessed were contacts, her stare so flat and cold that it sent a shiver racing down Camila’s spine. “You have no idea.”
“You could tell me,” Camila said, and please, please, please let this work.
Another laugh. “What do you care?”
“I kind of don’t,” Camila said, her heart kicking faster when Portia started at the bald-faced admission. “But it looks like you pulled off one hell of a fuck you to both of them. Seems kind of a shame that you’ll never be able to tell anyone what you did. I mean, unless you want to risk that person possibly telling the cops, one day. You’re going to kill me anyway, right? You might as well let it fly. I’d sure want to brag about getting the better of those two assholes, if I were you.”
