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“Done,” the woman said, her voice soft and breathy.
Oh. Wow. “Deal,” I said before they could change their mind. “Cash up front.”
“Done.”
I hadn’t had a clue when I smiled in relief and sank back against the seat and ten minutes later followed them up to their penthouse apartment that I was voluntarily walking into hell, or that “Victoria” was the goddamned devil herself.
My eyes jerked open and my breath stuttered to find I wasn’t in Victoria’s nightmare of a playroom, but somewhere small and dark and musty, with a weight on my chest and my hands—
My wrists were tied painfully tight behind my back.
Fuck!
I blinked drowsy, heavy eyes, struggling to figure out what the fuck was going on. Everything felt heavy, even as a familiar panic raced through my blood.
How had she found me? The first thing I’d done as soon as I’d gotten free of her was find Reece and then get on a bus and run as far away from San Francisco as I could get—
The weight on my chest moved and I tried to lift my head to look down. Oh fuck, my head was a thousand pounds, I could barely lift it an inch off the ground, barely lift my eyes open.
And what I saw made no sense.
Ruth. Ruth, tied to a chair that had been knocked over sideways on top of me. It was dark, but moonlight came in from a high window. Enough so I could see tape over her mouth. And I could feel her wriggling and hear her inaudible noises as she tried to say something even though the tape muffled her words.
I blinked again, even though each time it felt like lifting a mountain.
Ruth.
I was here with Ruth.
Ruth.
The wedding. We were at the wedding, and I’d proposed to Ruth, and she’d said yes. But then, then something had happened—
I shut my eyes, trying to concentrate and recall.
And then it all hit with a flood. The wedding. Charlie’s mom figuring out she was pregnant. Me being an asshole and my brother calling me out on it.
Going after Ruth and finding—
Oh shit!
My eyes popped back open. I’d followed the tracker I’d put on Ruth’s phone, because after what had happened to me so long ago, I’d always been hypervigilant. I knew the evil people were capable of, no matter how happy-go-lucky my twin was, how good he wanted to believe humanity was.
I knew better. So I put a tracker on everyone I loved.
And I loved Ruth.
The second I’d stepped in the door and seen her tied up, my heart had sunk through the floor, but like a fucking idiot, I hadn’t gone on alert fast enough and someone had gotten the drop on me.
Judging by how goddamned drowsy I felt, they’d used some powerful shit too.
It felt like it took every ounce of strength to move my head from side to side to check out the room and evaluate the situation.
A shed, we were in a small shed. More memories hit. Me walking toward the shed. The small, out of the way swimming hole at the little dam.
And how I hadn’t told a fucking soul where I was going.
Like a total goddamned idiot. Of course I hadn’t expected this, but hikers never expected to get lost either. They still told people where they were going. It was a basic of going into a situation where unexpected things could happen. Reece and I always had a hard and fast rule that we never went anywhere without letting the other know. Especially after Victoria. I was worse than ever.
