My job had put me into some pretty interesting situations, but this was a first. Not only had he zip-tied my hands behind my back, Cereal Aisle Guy also tossed my phone, watch, and coat—with Lucian’s tracking device—in the grocery store parking lot.
Then he’d shoved me into the trunk of a late-model sedan.
So much for Lucian’s team of creepers being able to follow my signal. I closed my eyes tight and thought of Nash. He would move heaven and earth to find me. So would Knox and Nolan. Even Lucian would lend a hand. And if they couldn’t do it, my mother would hunt me down.
I just needed to keep my wits about me and find a way to escape. This asshole had kidnapped the wrong woman.
Pep talk complete, I spent the first few minutes of trunk captivity trying to find the emergency trunk release only to discover that it had been disabled.
“Damn it,” I muttered. The car took a hard right turn. I banged my head and rolled awkwardly on my back, cringing at the binding at my wrists. “Ouch! Learn to drive, jackass!” I gave the trunk lid a half-hearted kick.
Over the noise of the road, I could hear him talking to someone but couldn’t make out what he was saying.
“Plan B,” I decided.
I could kick out a taillight and signal to other motorists that the asshole driving the vehicle had a hostage in the trunk.
The road changed. Instead of the smooth glide of asphalt, I could hear the crunch of gravel under the tires as we bumped along. This wasn’t good. Either Duncan Hugo was closer than we’d thought or Cereal Aisle Guy was taking me out into the woods to give me a tour of the inside of a freshly dug shallow grave.
I was trying to feel my way to the edge of the carpeting without pulling a neck muscle when the car came to an abrupt stop.
I flopped back onto my belly. This was definitely not good.
The trunk lid opened, and before I could roll into a striking position, I was hauled out unceremoniously.
“Jesus. Where’d you learn to drive? The bumper cars?” I complained, shrugging him off.
“Quit whining and start moving,” he said, giving me a shove forward.
We were on what had once been a gravel drive but was now overtaken by nature. In front of us was a huge barn-like building ringed with tall weeds. Beyond it, I could just make out the outline of a split rail fence.
“Are we still in Knockemout?” I asked, fighting off a shiver. No coat plus a healthy dose of fear made the night air feel even colder.
The henchman didn’t bother answering me. Instead he shoved me forward again.
“If you let me go now, you probably won’t have to do any prison time,” I said as I limped along in the shadow of the barn.
“I’m committed now, sweetheart. There were witnesses. There’s no going back for me.”
In the shadowy night, my abductor no longer looked like a handsome gym-going accountant. He looked like a man who enjoyed making babies cry.
“You sound like you blame me for this.”
He shook his head. “I warned you at the bar. I said, ‘Don’t make yourself a target.’”
“I do recall something like that,” I said as he unlocked the heavy exterior door of the barn. It was the only opening I had, so I took it.
I spun around and took off into the dark, but my broken heel and the uneven gravel made running impossible. I felt like I was in the middle of one of those nightmares where you’re trying to run but you’ve forgotten how.
A big, meaty hand closed around my shoulder and I was yanked backward.
“You’re a real pain in my ass, you know that?” he told me as he threw me over his shoulder.
“I get that a lot. So you’re in real estate, aren’t you?”
“Shut up.”
He carried me back to the door, then dumped me on the floor inside.
It was pitch-black and I froze, trying to get my bearings. “You know real estate doesn’t land people in prison often. Not like abducting women from grocery stores,” I said as I got to my feet.
“Bigger the risk, the bigger the reward,” he said in the dark.
That was Pritzger Insurance’s unofficial motto.
I heard a snick and then an overhead light fixture illuminated the space. It was a fancy foyer for a barn. The floor was stamped concrete and the wood-clad walls were nicer than my place in Atlanta. Electricity. That was good. Maybe it meant there would also be a phone somewhere inside.
On the wall directly across from me was a large metal sign that said Red Dog Farm.
Realization dawned. This was the foreclosed property where Nash had found the runaway horse. Had Hugo been this close all that time?
I was only a few miles outside town. I could run that easily under normal circumstances, but I’d need different footwear and I’d have to stay off the road.
Not ideal, but definitely a possibility. I calculated my other options.
There were three doors that led in different directions and a utilitarian staircase that went up to what looked like a dark loft area. Definitely not a viable escape option, I decided.
The henchman clamped a hand on my shoulder and marched me over to one of the heavy wooden doors. “Let’s go,” he said, opening it.
It was a wooden staircase that led down a level.
“Really? A basement lair? How cliché.” It was actually kind of genius. Finding an abandoned property far enough outside town that no one would notice any activity? Maybe my captor wasn’t a complete idiot after all.
“Move,” he told me.
I took my time, hobbling down all fifteen stairs.
I had to keep my wits about me. I had to stall. The longer I kept them distracted, the more time it would give Nash to find me.
Cereal Aisle Guy guided me to the left at the foot of the stairs and through an open doorway.
There, seated with his muddy boots propped carelessly on top of a beautiful oak desk, was Tate fucking Dilton.
Shit.
“Well, well, well. Look who we have here. If it isn’t the leggy bitch from the bar.”
I’d been prepared to face down a junior organized crime lord, not a dirty, disgraced cop.
Dilton tossed his phone down on the desk and chewed his gum smugly.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart? Not who you were expecting?”
“Wait. Let me get this straight. You’re the mastermind here?” I said to Dilton, wondering how hard it would be to separate him from his phone.
“Damn straight I am.”
My kidnapper cleared his throat pointedly behind me.
Dilton’s gaze moved to him. “You got somethin’ to say, Nikos?”
Nikos the grocery store kidnapper.
“Where is he?” Nikos replied.
“That’s need to know, and you don’t need to know, son,” Dilton said.
Okay. The bad guys were in-fighting. This could either go really well for me or really, really not well. Either way, I needed a plan.
There was an ancient-looking monitor on the counter behind the desk. Unfortunately, there was no phone or laptop or conveniently placed flare gun.
On the opposite wall was a huge flat-screen TV with a couch in front of it.
“Don’t you know you seem more threatening when you pretend like you’re so in synch you can read each other’s minds? Haven’t you ever seen a James Bond movie before?”
“Go get him,” Nikos said, ignoring me.
“Fuck you,” Dilton shot back. “I’m in charge here. You go get him.”
“You can’t keep me here,” I said, drawing their attention back to me.
Dilton gleefully chomped on his gum. “Looks like I can do anything I want with you and your bitch mouth.”
“Charming. Why am I here? Is this what you do to every woman who tells you to grow up and be a man? I mean, it would explain why you need such a large facility.”
“You’re here because you and your fucking friends are done pissing me off.”
Judging from Nikos’s eye roll, that was not exactly why I was here.
“Hold on. You had me kidnapped because you got fired for being a racist misogynist? Are you one of those perpetual victims who blames everyone else for what a shitty human being you turned out to be?”
“Told you a rock through her window wasn’t gonna cut it,” Nikos muttered.
“You’re fuckin’ here because you ran your bitch mouth in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Dilton snarled. “Plan was to take the other two bitches first. Tina’s kid and her tight-assed twin. But you just had to go and make yourself a shinier target, shopping by yourself and figuring things out.”
I glanced at Nikos. He’d seen Waylay with me. He could have easily taken us both. Well, not easily. I still had another stiletto and he still had another leg. But he’d decided against kidnapping a child. Maybe he wasn’t the worst bad guy in the room.
Nikos avoided my gaze and I decided it was probably best for both of us if I didn’t mention it.
“So we’ll start with you and then take care of the other three problems,” Dilton continued. He pointed at me like his finger was a gun and mimed pulling the trigger.
“We don’t need to discuss the plan with her.”
Dilton scoffed. “Why not? Not like she’s gettin’ out of here alive.” He looked at me with a sick kind of excitement in his eyes.
“Hey, asshole, how are you gonna motivate her to lure her cop boyfriend here since you just told her you were gonna kill her no matter what?” Nikos demanded. “Jesus, do you even know how motivation works?”
“You actually work for him?” I asked Nikos, jerking my head toward Dilton. “I would have stuck with real estate.”
“I don’t work for him,” Nikos snapped.
Dilton sneered. “We’ll see about that.” He turned his attention back to me. “As for you, I’m not a man to be truffled with. Your boyfriend should have known that.”
“Trifled,” Nikos corrected. “Truffle is a goddamn mushroom, you fucking idiot.”
“Fuck you, dick.”
Dilton took his boots off the desk and made a show of wandering around to the front. He leaned casually against it, his legs stretching out toward me.
“So what now? What are you going to do with me?”
He leaned forward menacingly until I could smell the stale beer on his breath. A fat finger hooked in the neckline of my shirt and tugged. “Anything I fuckin’ want.”
Rage licked its way up my spine, making me shake.
Headbutt, knee to the balls, break the zip tie, run.
“Well, well, well…”
We all turned as a freshly showered Duncan Hugo entered the room. He was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans with a handgun tucked into the waistband. His hair, originally a fiery red, was now dyed a dark brown. But the freckles, the tattoos, everything else I’d memorized from photos was exactly the same.
“Your boy here already used that bad guy line,” I informed him.
I didn’t miss the way Hugo’s eyes narrowed at the dirty cop’s ass planted on the desk, the dried mud sprinkled across the surface. He prowled into the room and caught the bag of candy Nikos tossed at him.
“Ass off the desk, Dilton.”
Dilton took his sweet time complying.
“You’ve caused me a few headaches recently,” Hugo said to me as he took a seat behind the desk.
“Me?” I asked innocently. My wrists were starting to ache from being restrained behind my back. I needed to get loose, but there was no way I’d make it to the door with three of them in the room.
“Not only did you follow my men, you got one of them arrested. We don’t need that kind of attention right now. Yet you failed to heed the warning.”
“Like I told your pal in the candy aisle, that arrest wasn’t my fault. Your guy was the one who tried to murder his own brother in broad daylight. Naked.”
“Good help is hard to find,” Hugo said with a careless shrug.
“Yeah, not sure what you’re paying this one over here, but you should demand a refund,” I said, nodding in Dilton’s direction.
I saw the backhand coming and braced. Dilton’s knuckles connected with my cheekbone, snapping my head back. My face felt like it was on fire, but I refused to make a sound.
I focused instead on adding concealer to my mental shopping list and imagining what Nash was going to do to Dilton’s face soon.
“Time you learned some manners,” he snarled in my face, his eyes wild and his lip curled under the mustache. An unpredictable madman with something to prove was worse than a calculating bad guy any day.
“Does that make you feel like a big man?” I hissed through clenched teeth.
“Enough,” Hugo snapped. He peeled open a piece of candy and popped it into his mouth. “We have work to do. Nikos, make sure we’re ready for our friend Chief Morgan’s arrival.”
With an ominous nod, Nikos left the room.
I was down to two bad guys, but I still didn’t like those odds.
“You’re on cleanup,” Hugo said to Dilton.
“I fuckin’ know.”
“Get your shit together. Once you’re in position, call me, then wait for my signal. You don’t get to fuck this one up.”
“Least I had the balls to pull the trigger,” Dilton spat.
“You fucked up is what you did. You’re lucky you’re getting another chance.”
“You might have to pull your own trigger someday,” Dilton warned him.
“And when I do, I’ll make sure I finish the fucking job,” Hugo said ominously.
They glared at each other for a long beat before Dilton backed down. He flashed me one last lecherous look before storming out of the room.
“Fruit Gem?” Hugo offered, tilting the open bag my way.
“It was Dilton, wasn’t it?” I said quietly.
“What was?”
“You hired Dilton to shoot Nash.” The dashcam footage was grainy and the shooter was wearing a hoodie and gloves. But Tate Dilton and Duncan Hugo had similar builds, came in at similar heights.
Hugo shrugged. “Leaders delegate. And that’s what I plan on being.”
“Good help is hard to find,” I said, repeating his words.
“I stole the car, gave him the gun, and told him when and where to do it. He was supposed to lure your cop boyfriend farther out of town, do the deed somewhere quiet.”
“Instead he shot him in cold blood on the highway,” I filled in.
“Can’t be helped now. He’s got one shot at redemption, and if he doesn’t get this right, he’ll be done,” Hugo said, unwrapping another candy.
Nervous eater.
“You’re planning to use me to lure Nash here. And then what?”
He looked at me and said nothing. He didn’t have to.
I shook my head as a tidal wave of nausea hit me. “Naomi is getting married tomorrow and Waylay is a child. You don’t have to do this.”
He shrugged. “Look, it’s nothing personal. Well, Dilton’s hard-on for your boyfriend is very personal. Apparently he didn’t like your boy’s brand of law and order. I think he would have shot him for free. But everything else? That’s not personal. You’re all just collateral.”
Naomi, Waylay, Liza J, Amanda… Even if Hugo managed to lure Nash here, everyone else would be at that house. In the line of fire.
Panic was rising in my throat. “All this so you can what? Push your father out of the way and take over the family business? Why not start your own? Build something yourself?”
His fist slammed into the desk. “Because I’m going to take everything my father owes me and watch him rot behind bars while I enjoy it all. I want him to know that the ‘sensitive pussy son,’ the ‘waste of DNA,’ was the one who manned up and stole everything from him.”
My brain was scrambling for ways out of this. “You can’t trust Dilton. He’s hotheaded and thinks he’s the one who should be calling the shots. He tried to start shit with an entire bar full of women and Nikos had to stop him. You need to call him off.”
Hugo got up from behind the desk. “What I need is for you to sit down and shut up until it’s time to be useful.”
I was going to be sick. And then I was going to be dead.
“Why Nash? Why was his name on that list? He didn’t have anything to do with your father’s business.”
Hugo shrugged. “Maybe he pissed off the wrong person.”
“Meaning your father or the person who made the list?”
“Guess you’ll never know for sure.” He crossed to the worn couch in front of the TV and looped a gaming headset around his neck. “Might as well make yourself comfortable.”
The TV screen bathed the room in a nuclear green.
I leaned against the desk, my knees quaking, stomach churning.
It had to be now. I had to find a way to warn Nash before Dilton left. Before he got anywhere near Naomi and Waylay.
“Happy fuckin’ Friday. Let’s shoot the shit out of some cowboys,” Hugo said.
I blinked and stared hard at the screen. He was playing online…which meant he was talking to other players.
My heart was slamming against the walls of my chest. He was wearing the headset, but I still needed to be quiet. I had one shot to get this exactly right.
I blew out a breath slowly and watched the screen for my opening.
“On your left. No! Your left, dumbass. Didn’t you learn that in kindergarten?” Hugo said, dodging and weaving on the cushion with the controller.
The characters on screen were battling a snot-shooting ogre and a fire-breathing dragon. This was as good an opportunity as I was going to get. I couldn’t screw it up.
I raised my hands away from my back as high as they could go and hinged forward.
Adrenaline spiked and I brought my wrists down as hard and fast as I could. The plastic tie snapped, freeing my hands.
“Quit fucking around, Brecklin, and stab him in the fucking foot,” Hugo said as I charged him from behind.
