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“So, he’s here,” Leo said, nodding, though there was no satisfaction on his face.
“We’ve got six hours, at most,” Gabe said, “to figure out where ‘the middle of it’ is and to get Greta back. If he’s got men waiting for us in Mexico, when we don’t show up, he’ll know we’re onto him… and he’ll kill her.”
I nodded. “So, we need men to be on that plane.”
“Nacio,” Gabe said. “He might be willing to fly to Mexico with Julio and the men with them and have some of his men fly in from Colombia at the same time.”
It was a lot to ask. I didn’t know the man well enough to gauge whether it was a longshot or not, but Gabe was already on his phone, making the call.
“We need more men,” Nico said, shaking his head. “To get to Greta in time and protect our people…”
“I’ll take care of that,” I said, heading for the door. Because there might just be one other man who would burn the whole world down to find her.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Greta
It wasn’t the first time I’d been rendered unconscious. I can’t say it was one of my favorite things. Hell, it didn’t even make it onto the top ten.
My head was throbbing and my whole body felt strange, weighted down, though I could feel nothing on top of me.
I’d made it into the back of the SUV conscious, but the moment my body hit the seat, something had happened. A prick, a sneer, and then… nothing.
Come to think of it, it wasn’t my head that was throbbing; it was my jaw, way back, right where—
Shit.
They’d yanked out the tracker, probably along with my tooth.
There was definitely no way this was making it onto the top ten list now.
Contrary to my insistence that it calm down, my heartbeat sped up. My lungs tried to join in, but I clamped down with every bit of rational thinking I could muster. If I started breathing faster, it would draw attention—and attention wasn’t really what I wanted at the moment. The less attention, the better, in my opinion.
I could hear voices—two of them. They were talking in hushed tones somewhere nearby, but far enough that it was possible they weren’t watching me.
I opened my eyes just a little, barely more than slits, and tried to take stock of my surroundings without moving my head.
It was dark, but there was a dim light, like a lamp, near the sound of the voices, maybe ten or fifteen feet away. It was bright enough I could make out the ceiling above me. But it wasn’t stone or even concrete, which was a shock. It was one of those drop ceilings from the 70s. It might have been off-white originally, but it had yellowed overtime. Tobacco stains or watermarks, maybe?
The voices kept murmuring, still only two of them, still speaking in a quiet, easy cadence. Too quiet to make out what they were saying, but there’d been no change, no signs that they’d noticed their captive was awake.
Captive…it wasn’t one of my favorite things either.
But my job was the same no matter what ceiling was above me: assess my situation and try not to get killed in the process. Simple enough, right?
Carefully, I lifted one arm, just a little, just enough to determine whether they had me in restraints. But my arm moved freely, unfettered. I tried the other one, then my right ankle, then my left.
Apparently, the idiots had dropped me on an old sofa—if the lumpy surface beneath me was any indicator—and left me here like Sleeping Beauty. And that didn’t work for me one bit. If I was going to be a princess, then it was damn well going to be Princess Jasmine, because a girl with a pet tiger? Hell, yeah.
Just to make me feel better, I tried to envision a tiger bursting into the room and shredding my captors into human ribbons. But what came to mind was Brute, his massive muscles flexing as he ripped them apart, limb from limb.
The feeling was equally satisfying.
Satisfying, but not as distracting as I would have liked. Because the fact remained, even untethered and unnoticed for the time-being, they’d altered our plan. They’d removed my tracker. And that meant this princess was on her own.
Don’t think about it. Keep going,I peptalked myself silently, then shifted slowly, keeping the sofa springs from squeaking while I tried to feel for the weapons I’d had with me.
But there was no bump from a sheath against my back and no press of one against my ribs. I couldn’t be sure, but I had a feeling that if they’d taken those, they’d taken the knife that had been strapped to my ankle as well.
