Blake couldn’t breathe. Air literally wasn’t making it from his throat to his lungs.
Where were they? What did that asshole plan to do to them? And how the hell could he get them back?
Aidan reentered the Blue Halo conference room, phone in hand. “Flynn’s stable. A lot of blood loss, but Jason and Callum are there now, donating.”
Good. One small reprieve. While the three of them were at the hospital, Logan, Tyler, Aidan, and Liam were with him at Blue Halo, trying to find his family. Steve was also on the screen, his team working from their end.
“It’s been too long,” Blake growled to everyone in the room. “Eight and a half damn hours have passed!”
The police had been called to the crash and witnesses had reported the car plate, but that same car had been found on the side of a road two towns away. The assholes had switched vehicles. Who knew what they were driving now or where they were heading?
Hell, the guy could have boarded a private jet and flown them out of the goddamn country by now.
Blake scrubbed his hands over his face. His heart was racing at that possibility.
So many years he’d been taught how to handle his emotions in this kind of situation. How to switch off the fear and tune into his training. But this was different. It was too close to home. He’d never felt terror like this before.
It was debilitating and all-consuming, spiraling through every inch of his body, suffocating him.
The Blue Halo phone rang. Tyler lifted it. “Tyler speaking.”
“Put Blake Cross on.”
Everyone in the room stilled, a murderous rage thickening the air. Blake’s body turned to stone, fear and fury warring at the sound of Ahmad’s thick accent.
Tyler’s jaw clenched as he put the phone on speaker.
“Ahmad.” Blake growled the man’s name just loud enough for it to reach the phone.
“Hello, Blake.”
“Where are they?”
“Did you really think there would be no retribution for what you did?”
Blake’s hands slammed against the table. “Where the fuck are they?”
Ahmad’s voice lowered. “You came into my home. You took my wife and child. The fate of your family was sealed the second I saw you on that roof.”
Blake only just controlled the breaths hissing from his chest. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to feel the loss of your family, and to know that it was at my hands. I want you to mourn them, knowing you did this. I want it to tear you to fucking shreds!”
The line went dead.
Blake straightened, turning, and punching his fist through the wall. Pain exploded in his hand. His arm. It wasn’t enough. Not to take away the internal pain. Nothing would be.
His chest heaved. The room was silent bar his anguished breaths.
They needed something, anything. But right now, they had nothing.
He was just turning back around to face his team when his cell started to vibrate in his pocket. He pulled it out, noticing it was an unknown number. He put the phone on speaker.
“What?” Another growl he couldn’t control.
“Daddy!”
For a moment, the world around him fell away. Everything blurred and darkened except that voice.
“Mila! Where are you, baby? Is Mama with you?”
“No, Mama isn’t here.” Thick emotion clogged his daughter’s voice. “She’s still with the bad men. I got my zip-ties off the way you taught me, but her hands were behind her back and the trunk wouldn’t open far enough for her to fit.”
His eyes shuttered as his daughter spoke too fast, a part of his chest cracking wide open. Mila had gotten away. But Willow hadn’t. She was still with them. Still with him. “Where are you, honey?”
“Um…” Mila paused as a male voice sounded in the background. “Lindeman, Washington, near Ellensburg.”
His team started moving around him, opening cupboards and taking out weapons and supplies.
“Who’s that with you?” Blake asked.
“Jackson. He let me use his phone and said he might be able to help Mama.”
“Can you put him on, baby?” It killed him to ask. His daughter’s voice was the only connection to his family. Hell, it was just about the only thing keeping him sane right now.
“Okay.”
There was a slight shuffling sound. “Hello.”
“Who are you?” Blake didn’t have the time or energy for niceties.
“My name’s Jackson Ford. Your daughter approached me and my two friends at a cafe here in Lindeman.”
“Is Mila safe with you?”
“Yes.”
God, he wished he could see the man in person to ensure that single word was true. “Why did she say you might be able to help?”
“My friends and I are former Delta Force.” Blake immediately lifted a chin to Steve to look the guy up. “Your daughter thinks her mother is being taken to Seattle. She’s only been with us for about ten minutes. We can start driving now and be there within a couple of hours.”
Steve nodded once, confirming the guy was a former Delta. Almost immediately, Steve turned to one of his guys, no doubt organizing transport for Blake and his team to Seattle.
“Why would they take her to Seattle?” Blake asked.
“Mila’s mother heard them mention baseball and Seattle. My guess would be the game tonight between the Mariners and the New York Yankees. It starts in about an hour. The game’s supposed to be a big one, with a full house. That means over fifty thousand spectators. Although why anyone would take her there, I have no idea.”
Blake’s chest seized. He could only think of one reason a man like Ahmad—a man who was wanted by the FBI for terrorism and suicide bombings—would be headed to a place with such a dense crowd.
Fuck.
Now people were moving even faster around Blake. Packing equipment. Finalizing details with Steve. He gave Jackson his full attention, knowing the team had everything else covered. “Her kidnapper’s a terrorist.”
Jackson cursed. “We’re trained in bomb disposal. Dec and I can head to T-Mobile Park now. Cole’s great with kids, so he can stay with Mila.”
“I need your friend to protect Mila with his life.”
“Already planning on it.” It was another man who spoke. Presumably Cole.
“Can you put her back on for a sec? Then we’ll organize details.”
As the phone was passed over, Blake heard snippets of his team talking about a military aircraft and communication with T-Mobile Park.
“Daddy?”
His team started moving out of the room, and Blake moved with them, his focus on the voice on the phone. “Baby, I need you to wait with Jackson’s friend Cole for a bit. You’ll be safe with him. Can you do that?”
“Are you going to save Mama?”
“Yes.”
Willow’s eyes were closed when the car came to a stop. The vehicle had stopped a few times since Mila had gotten out, but this time was different. The engine turned off. Then the sound of movement from the men inside.
She opened her eyes slowly, swallowing against the beginnings of her migraine.
Noises sounded around the car. Doors opened and closed. Footsteps. Willow sucked in a sharp breath, fear attempting to crawl into her throat.
The lid opened, and she scrunched her eyes against the sudden light. It blasted her skull, shocking her system after being in darkness for so long.
The voices above her turned loud and angry. She scrunched her eyes tighter, this time in a weak attempt to ward off the noise.
Rough hands latched onto her upper arms, dragging her from the trunk. Every movement had fresh pain shooting into her head. If the hands hadn’t been holding her, she was sure she would have tumbled to the ground.
She blinked three times before her vision was clear enough to see. She scanned the large space slowly. A garage. A huge one, with cars and tools scattered around the place, the smell of oil and gas permeating the air.
When her eyes finally focused on the men in front of her, her skin prickled and chilled. There were six of them, all watching her, plus the two guys holding her arms, one on each side.
She squinted at one of the men. He had a bandage over half his face, but that wasn’t what had her looking twice. It was his eyes.
Eyes she recognized.
Her insides jolted. He was the man who’d been in Mila’s room. The one who’d drugged her with chloroform and tried to take her.
Sucking in a quick breath, she looked at the other men. It was easy to see who was in charge. He was a bit older, maybe mid-fifties. And even though he was shorter and less muscular, there was a hardness about him. An authority that had the air around him thickening.
He stepped forward, and she was struck by an overwhelming urge to move back. To run.
“Where is she?” His accented voice was quiet and deadly, sending shards of ice up her spine.
Willow swallowed. “Not here.”
His fists clenched and the veins on his neck popped out. That probably should have sent her fear spiraling. It didn’t—because all she could feel was an overwhelming relief that they didn’t have her daughter. That whatever these men had planned for Mila would never transpire.
She’d take whatever punishment they shelled out again and again if it meant Mila was safe.
The man stopped in front of her. Rough fingers grabbed her jaw, bruising her. “How did you get her out? Your hands are tied behind your back!”
Willow met his furious gaze calmly. “I didn’t get her out. She did. She broke her zip-ties with her shoelace. Then escaped through a crack in the trunk.” She hoped the men felt the weight of embarrassment, knowing that a five-year-old girl had bested them.
The man’s fingers tightened, the pain rivaling the throb in her head. But she forced the last words out, needing him to hear.
“She’s gone. And you won’t be getting your hands on her. Ever.”
The strike came fast, snapping her head to the side and blasting a fresh wave of pain through her head.
His hand returned to her chin, forcing her face up again. His head lowered. “I wanted you both! I wanted him to feel the loss of his wife and child, like I felt the loss of mine!”
Willow gave a small frown. Even that hurt. “He took your wife and child?”
“Yes.” His eyes flashed black. “He came into my home, killed my men, and took my family. That day, I committed his face to memory. Vowed to find him. To take from him like he took from me.”
She was glad Blake took the man’s family. She couldn’t see a scrap of humanity in him. There was no softness. No kindness. Anyone forced to live with him wasn’t safe. She’d only just met him, yet she knew it as well as she knew anything.
He took a small step closer. “At seven thirty tonight, you will die. And not just you. Tens of thousands of people will die with you. Then tomorrow, I will hunt your daughter. And I will not stop until she dies, too.”
Rage swept like a tidal wave through her body, washing out the pain. The fear. “If you think Blake will ever let you touch our daughter again, then you know nothing about him. You won’t so much as see her face, let alone touch a hair on her head.” She paused for a moment. “And if you kill me, he will dedicate every second of the rest of his life to tracking you down and destroying you.”
The man stepped forward again, so close that she could feel his breath on her face. “You’re wrong. About all of it. You will die. Your daughter will die. And Blake will have no doubt who took his family from him—and why.”
The next hit was harder than the first, the metal of his ring cutting into her cheek and sending her world back into familiar darkness.
