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I run on silent feet, always looking around me, wondering where she could be. I don’t hear voices. There are no footsteps. Did everybody else leave?
When I come to a windowed office in the corner of the floor, I get my answer. She’s in there with the door closed, sitting on the floor with her knees drawn to her chest and her forehead resting against them. A cry of pain almost leaks out of me, but I manage to hold it back as I try out the keys, looking for the one that will free her. It takes four tries before the key turns, and I open the door.
“What are you doing in here?” I whisper, going to her. “They locked you up, too? Why are you letting them do this?”
“How did you get out?” she demands, wide-eyed.
“Answer my questions, Mom.” I look behind me, expecting to find men running. It seems like my escape is still a secret.
“There’s not enough time to explain everything, and you wouldn’t understand, anyway,” she tells me. “You’re too far gone. You refuse to see the truth.” I would swear there’s madness shining in her eyes. It makes me want to scream and cry and hit something.
“Then convince me, but let’s do it someplace else. Come on, my car is outside. We need to go now!” I insist, tugging her arm.
An arm she viciously yanks back. “This is how it needs to be,” she insists in a cold voice. “Mason needs to die for what he took from me. This is the only way.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“But you have to help! We need you!”
I shake my head mournfully, knowing this was a waste. I should’ve run when I could. She’s already lost to me. “I’m not doing it, Mom. I can’t.”
Her gaze snaps up over my shoulder in time with the sound of footsteps ringing out behind me. “Then both of you are useless to us,” a man announces in a deep voice with a thick Russian accent.
A sharp cracking sound pierces the air, and Mom’s head snaps back, her eyes frozen wide in shock, with a bullet hole between them.
“No! Mom!” I throw myself over her, screaming, holding her lifeless body. Grief crashes into me, pulling me under and tearing me open. I scream against her shoulder in rage, pure and hot. I tried. I tried, and it wasn’t enough.
A sudden burst of pain in the back of my head blots out everything. I barely have time to understand the unseen man hit me before darkness closes in.
21
GRIFFIN
As soon as we figured out where the picture was taken, we headed to the location. Usually, I’m cool and collected before a mission. The calm before the storm, if you will. Not today. Not with Natalie in danger. My stomach is in knots, my chest is tight, and my molars hurt from grinding them. Glancing over at Dallas, I see the same turmoil in his eyes.
“We’ll find her,” I promise.
“Yeah, but we don’t know in what condition,” Dallas states. “She’s been here for hours. Anything could have happened by now.”
“I don’t think they would hurt her,” Trent says, his voice steady, unlike mine.
“I agree with Trent. When they came to the hotel, they wanted to take her, not kill her. If they wanted her dead, she?—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” Dallas warns.
“Backup is on the way,” Trent explains after looking at his phone. “Should we wait?”
“No,” Dallas and I say at the same time. At least we can agree on this much.
“I didn’t think so,” Trent remarks. “Let’s get rolling and kill some bad guys.”
“Primary mission is to get Natalie out unharmed,” I state.
“And kill bad guys in the process.”
“Saving first, killing later,” I press on. “Don’t fuck this up, Trent. You like to work alone, but we actually like our team and try to keep them alive.”
“Fuck off and grab your gun, asshole.” And with that, Trent is out of the car, with us right behind him.
