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A few seconds later, her phone dinged with an incoming message.
“Track this GPS locator, Jake,” she ordered, reading off the numbers del Fuego had just sent.
Cam eyed her, a look on his face that promised a reckoning, but he nodded at Jake.
Jake tapped away furiously at his keys, a tight expression on his face. “Okay, I’ve got a signal. It’s moving.”
“Let’s go. We’ll gear up on the way,” Cam said.
The group rushed out of the room, clomping down the stairwell to the parking garage. They split up into two SUV’s. Maria rode with Cam, Tank, and Marco. Before they slid into their seats, Tank handed out Kevlar vests.
Cam drove this time, handing Maria a tablet. The screen showed a blinking green dot moving west. “We need to get on the 836,” Maria said, her voice shaky.
“Maria,” Cam said softly.
She turned, swallowing down the lump in her throat. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“We’ll get to him in time.”
The conviction in Cam’s voice bolstered her, but fear squeezed her chest like a vice, and she couldn’t gather enough breath to answer.
**
Teag didn’t want to die, especially now that he’d found Maria. Despite the danger, or maybe because of it, he’d found his person. Despite the extraordinary circumstances, he’d fallen in love. He had really fallen in love, no doubt about it. This wasn’t some romantic notion of love at first sight either. No, he’d been orbiting Maria and learning what made her tick months before they’d been thrust together into this nightmare. That she’d finally opened herself up and allowed him to get close still blew his mind.
She’d see his leaving as a betrayal. She wouldn’t understand why he hadn’t trusted her, and the team, with having his back this one last time. The team would come up with a plan, he knew, but the chances of all of them coming out alive, especially Annabelle if Ivanovich caught wind of anyone else’s involvement, were slim. Ivanovich might kill her anyway, but Teag had to try. He had to at least be there with her.
He couldn’t fathom a world without Annabelle’s bright light. The idea that his talented, stubborn, generous, beautiful baby sister was in the hands of this Russian psycho had Teag pressing the gas pedal. Turning himself over to Ivanovich scared the shit out of him, but he couldn’t live with any other option.
The cold-blooded killer had conveniently loaded directions into the map feature of the phone, so Teag knew he was headed toward the Everglades. With each passing mile, civilization seemed to give way to the eerie majesty of the forest swampland. He could have been driving into a horror movie, nearing the part where normally he’d yell at the dingbats on screen to fucking run already. Instead, he stayed his course.
While he had an address, he had no idea what awaited him at the end of it. His mind conjured everything from an old cabin to an abandoned campground to a van on a deserted road. The reality of what he found around the last corner was much stranger and definitely much creepier.
The crumbling structure at the end of the long dirt road looked like it might have been a hotel at one time. Now, in the shadowy moonlight, Teag could see vines climbing the walls and weaving through the broken windows as if pulling the building into the marshes.
“Bloody perfect,” he muttered under his breath.
His headlights reflected off another car, parked along the far-left side of the empty lot. Teag slowed down and stopped beside it. Florida plates and a rental sticker. He wondered if this was Annabelle’s car. If Ivanovich had forced her to drive here. If she’d been as terrified when she’d seen this place as he was right now.
No one would ever find them here. No one would know to look for them in this house of horrors. Ivanovich could dump their bodies and they’d be claimed by the swamp as if they’d never existed.
Cold sweat trickled down Teag’s neck. With shaking hands, he opened the door and stepped onto the cracked pavement. The thick night air smelled of moss and rancid water and rot. His footsteps crunched as he walked toward what appeared to be the main entrance of the building. He clicked on the flashlight feature of the phone and held it up. The beam captured graffiti on the rough walls.
He sucked in a breath and pushed open the door. Hanging by its hinges, the wooden monstrosity groaned in protest. Teag stepped into a large open space, the original lobby he thought, and took in the two-story dilapidated room. Broken furniture littered the space, and more graffiti covered the walls and floor. In the far corner, a camp light illuminated a small circle.
On a worn, dirty blanket, a small female figure lay curled on the ground.
“Annabelle!” Teag shouted and ran toward her.
He slid to a stop in front of her and fell to his knees. The figure lifted a hooded head and whimpered.
“Teag,” a small voice said, muffled by the cloth covering her face.
“Annabelle, honey, I’m here,” Teag said, pulling her into his arms.
“Teag, no,” she sobbed. “No.
“I’ve got you.”
