Authors: Nowlan,Anya,Dale,Rory
S
tone grabbed
a rag and wiped the blood off his hands, as the red liquid was making the handle of his scalpel too slippery to hold. Tom was unconscious on the ground, but Will was still awake.
That was not by accident.
Stone had a feeling Will would be the weak link, so he started on Tom to show the man what he was in for. And now, with his higher-up out cold, bleeding on the ground, Will could talk freely. Stone turned to the man with his most menacing smile.
“Will, is there something you want to tell me?”
Will looked at the mangled mess of a man on the floor next to him, clearly terrified.
“I don’t know much, I swear. I just drive people around and run errands,” he stuttered.
“Start talking and let me be the one to determine if it’s important or not,” Stone commanded, putting down the scalpel and picking up some other toys Kate had left him.
He was picking between a good old-fashioned hammer a pair of pliers at the moment. Will gulped, eyeing the tools nervously.
“The big boss is not happy with Parker. I’ve heard them on the phone, arguing about money. I think out of the lieutenants, Parker is the one most involved in managing the finances. Big boss thinks he is using too much of their resources to find Selina,” he said, sneaking glances at Tom as he spoke, as if fearing the man might suddenly spring to consciousness through his injuries and hurl himself at Tom in a fit of rage.
“So Parker’s the money man. How does he launder their illegal income?” Stone asked, picking up the pliers with absent interest and clicking the jaws together a few times as if to test them.
He hadn’t really expected the man to have valuable information, so this was a pleasant surprise. It was something he could actually use.
“He waits until we gather up a large enough sum and then he hands it over to Tom to have the cash transported to Indiana. Big boss has a friend there who has controlling interest in a local bank. Money gets deposited without anyone getting nosy, and that’s that.”
Will was rushing over his words, eyes darting between Stone and Tom.
Goes to show you can’t buy loyalty.
A plan started forming in Stone’s head.
“And where’s the money held before transport?” he asked.
“They don’t tell me those kinds of things. Parker knows, of course, maybe he tells Tom, I don’t know.”
A growl started as Tom’s eyes popped open. By the yellow tint to his eyes, Stone guessed he had been awake for a while.
“You little weasel. You better hope I die here before I get a chance to rip your throat out,” he snarled, unable to do more than attempt to crawl to Will because of his injuries.
Will scooted away from him, looking pleadingly at Stone. He almost felt bad for the man. But not quite.
“I told you what you wanted to know. Please, I don’t want to die,” Will whimpered.
Stone’s lion roused at the pathetic sight.
Shameful.
Even so, he couldn’t risk the men tearing each other apart. Stone may still have a use for them. He dropped the pliers on the metal platter and walked up the stairs and knocked on the door, prompting James to step in.
“Keep an eye on these two until I get back. Tom’s being snippy. Kick him if he misbehaves.”
The large, bald man only nodded and moved to sit on a chair by the wall.
Stone made his way to the living room, excited to have some news for Selina. He shook his hands loose, feeling them cramp up slightly. Twisting bones to their shattering point in the limbs of a grown predator shifter took a lot of work. Stone had almost forgotten about that.
She wasn’t there, though, so he went to her bedroom next. He didn’t find her there either. Frowning, Stone stilled and listened, sniffing the air, but the whole house seemed to be quiet and he could smell her everywhere, her maddening scent playing tricks on his senses.
He stuck his head in the kitchen, but it was empty. Even Linda wasn’t there, seeing it was her day off. He headed to Kate’s study, growing more nervous by the moment, but there was no one there either.
“Selina! Kate!” Stone called out, roaming the spacious villa.
Worry started to gnaw at him, deep and alarming. He picked up one of his burners and dialed Kate’s number. Since both of the women were gone, maybe they just stepped out together to have some girl time?
That’s stupid. Half the city is looking for Selina and Kate wouldn’t be caught dead with her in public.
Panic started to set in as thoughts of Selina in trouble crowded his mind.
“Yes?”
Kate asked after answering the phone, her voice dull.
“Where are you?” Stone asked, anxious, still pacing the villa.
“Looking for you, of course. Have to earn my keep. Didn’t Selina tell you?”
A cold feeling settled in the pit of Stone’s stomach.
“So she’s not with you?” he stated, his voice flat.
“Why would she be? What’s going on?”
Kate asked, annoyance swiftly replaced by concern.
“She’s not at the house. I don’t know where she went,” he answered, running a hand through his hair.
Where could she have gone? Did she change her mind and decide to give herself up to Parker after all? Would she be that reckless?
“I’m on my way back. Don’t do anything stupid,”
Kate said curtly before hanging up.
Stone followed Selina’s scent around the house, his lion growling. It was spread out in all the places he would expect to find it, her bedroom, the living room, the kitchen.
There was only one trail that caught him as strange. It led to the weapons room, Kate’s secret armory that she rarely showed anyone. He knew it could only be accessed by a key card, which Selina definitely did not have.
Stone went outside and called out for one of the guards on duty on the perimeter that day. A tall man in a suit came running, hand already on his gun. Stone just snatched the keycard from his neck and slammed the door shut in his face, a cold look on his face.
He ran to the weapons room, trundling through the villa, hoping against hope he would find her safe and sound, ready to throw her arms around him.
Stepping inside, disappointment hit him like a punch to the gut. The room was empty. But he could immediately tell Selina had been there. Her sweet scent swirled in his head, an aching reminder she was now gone.
Through his mounting terror, he studied the room. Tom’s phone was on the table in the middle of the room, everything else looked like it had always looked. Nothing was out of place, no signs of a struggle.
Someone had to let her in here. Why?
He heard the front door slam open, followed by a busy clicking of heels.
Kate.
Stone rushed to meet her in the living room, hoping she had any news or ideas on how to find Selina. By now, he was in full-blown panic mode, his military instincts battling with those of a concerned mate.
“Have you learned something?” was the first thing she asked.
“No,” he answered, his lion pacing anxiously, waiting to maul someone for taking his mate away.
“Someone let her in the weapons room,” Stone added, trying to hold it together.
If anything happens to her…
“Okay, try to stay calm,” Kate said, giving him a stern look that was surprisingly effective.
She really had a handle on that cold bucket of water to the face kind of glare that some women of her caliber perfected over the years.
“I’ll talk to the team outside, someone had to have seen something,” Kate said, hurrying back outside.
Stone paced in the living room until he couldn’t take it anymore. Scouring through Kate’s security feeds was next on his list, but he knew she had them locked down behind endless crypto walls.
Instead, he picked up Selina’s scent once again, trying to distinguish fresh from old. The trail from the weapons room seemed to head towards the garage. He followed it, checking the inside of each car in the process. With a frown, he noticed one of the spots was empty.
Kate stepped into the garage, eyes tight.
“The Ford is missing,” Stone informed her, pointing at a vacant space.
Did she really leave on her own? Was she already with Parker? How could he get in here?
A thousand thoughts flitted through Stone’s head, each more unpleasant than the last. They were getting too close to beating Parker for this to happen.
If this has anything to do with me calling her mine, I’m going to rip Tom to shreds with my bare hands.
“I know. The guards outside saw Richard leave in it about thirty minutes ago,” Kate responded.
“So Selina didn’t take it? Where would she hope to get on foot?” he asked, confused, refusing to believe what his rational mind was telling him.
“I checked the logs,” she said, mouth thinning into a harsh line.
“Richard was also the last one to access the weapons room.”
Son of a bitch. I’ll tear
him
to shreds instead.
F
ighting
through the fog in her brain, Selina slowly realized she was in the backseat of a car. She tried to move, but her hands and legs were bound. Craning her neck, she saw that the front seat was empty. Through the windshield, she could see Richard talking on a payphone.
It took a few tries for her hazy mind to pinpoint that it was Richard. The little sliver of her brain that was still hoping for a happy outcome kept imagining Stone standing there instead.
Those things still exist?
she wondered idly.
So not important right now,
she reminded herself.
She tried to wriggle out of her restraints to no avail. Kate wouldn’t make someone with subpar knot skills her head of security, clearly.
I am getting really tired of being kidnapped. And being shoved in the back of cars.
Richard hung up the phone and Selina ducked her head back down. Maybe if she pretended to be unconscious, he’d let his guard down and she’d have a shot at escaping.
The man got back in the car and she could hear him shift in his seat. She tried her best to remain completely still.
“I can tell from your breathing that you’re awake,” he said, his voice deathly calm.
Selina opened her eyes, annoyed. So that plan didn’t work. No problem, she would just have to come up with a new one.
“Yeah, well, fuck you, too,” she replied, her words slurring.
Richard didn’t grace her with a response.
He drove them to a small motel, not that different from the one she had stayed at with Stone. He parked in the back and disappeared for a while. All the while, Selina kept trying to force herself to focus, to fight against the effects of the admittedly weakening drug in her system. Nausea swirled in her stomach, probably another side effect of whatever Richard had used to knock her out.
Returning, he untied her feet and got her out of the car and into the building through a staff entrance. He shoved a gag in her mouth for safekeeping before yanking her out of the car, though, so she couldn’t scream.
He unlocked one of the rooms and gently pushed her inside. She sat down on the grimy-looking bed, hoping she wouldn’t catch scabies or something. He locked the door, checking the outside through a slit in the curtains before crossing over to Selina.
For a moment, she thought he would hit her, or do something worse. Instinctively, she shied away from his hand, but he only pulled the rag out of her mouth.
That too was becoming too commonplace for her to really look upon kindly these days.
Everything about the situation felt unreal. Why would Richard of all people kidnap her? He had rambled something about keeping Kate safe, but Selina hadn’t really been paying attention.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, gathering her thoughts.
“I have nothing against you, you seem like a nice person,” he started. “But Parker isn’t stupid. I had to make the tough call. Kate has gone too soft and I have to protect her.”
The way Richard talked about Kate had Selina guessing she was more than just an employer to him. The look in his eyes seemed to confirm that. Still, being in love didn’t give him the right to make decisions over Selina’s life and disobey Kate’s orders. She shook her head at him, hoping her eyes made her disdain evident.
Kate would gut him like a fish for making decisions like that for her, Selina wagered.
Not that it’ll help me much.
Selina didn’t really know Parker all that well, but what she had seen didn’t give her much hope he was a man who would honor his word. Whatever deal Richard had made with Parker, she was almost certain it was going to blow up in his face. Selina briefly considered screaming again, but decided against it.
Looking around the room, with its barely-holding-together furniture and what looked like bullet holes in the walls, she had a feeling no one would come running. Even if someone did rush in to rescue her, the gun attached to Richard’s belt told her it would not end well for that person. She wasn’t going to put anyone’s life in danger.
“Whatever Parker promised you, you can’t believe him,” she said, trying to appeal to Richard’s reasonable side instead.
The man didn’t seem very inclined to listen to her.
“He just wants you back,” he mused out loud, remaining where he was standing by the window. “Stone’s death is a close second on the wish list, but Kate is irrelevant to him. Sure, she lied, but she didn’t actively go against him. Once I hand you over, she’ll be forgiven,” he explained.
“You can’t possibly believe it’s that easy. My family didn’t pay Parker’s goons and his response was to
kill
me. Kate hid his potential mate and aided his new number one enemy and you think he’s just going to let her walk away? Love has made you stupid,” Selina spat out, hoping the words connected.
“You’re just trying to make me let you go,” Richard replied dully, but he seemed a little less confident in his plan than before.
“All you’ve done is implicate her. Parker probably didn’t even know she was involved until you struck your little bargain,” Selina continued, voice rising, hoping to rattle Richard.
“Oh, he was a lot more suspicious than you think. When Kate was meeting with him and we waited in the lobby, one of Parker’s guards approached me. He offered me a lot of money to keep an eye on Kate and inform him if I saw her with Stone. I declined, of course, but it gave me the idea for a better arrangement.”
Could Richard really be this stupid?
“He was fishing! You served Kate up to them on a silver platter, you moron! God, I bet Linda would be a better head of security than you.”
If Selina’s hands weren’t bound, she would probably be throttling the man. Even
she
knew enough to see through that harebrained plan, and her spy career had lasted all but a few days now.
“That’s enough,” Richard said, running a frustrated hand down the back of his neck.
Selina kept at it, reiterating reason after reason why Richard’s little scheme wasn’t going to work. Richard kept quiet, but she could tell she was getting to him.
“I can’t think like this!” he finally exclaimed, rushing over to her and shoving the gag back in her mouth mid-objection.
Richard grabbed some rope and started re-tying her feet together. Selina kept her knees pressed together, angling them towards Richard’s line of sight and hiding the fact that she was holding her ankles slightly apart.
When he was done, Richard ran out, locking the door after him.
Selina immediately shot up and started hopping around the room, spluttering out the gag after a couple of failed tries.
There has to be something in here I can use to cut this rope.
If the payphone call Richard had made earlier was to set up a meet, her time was limited. She had to act fast. Stone might not have even realized she was missing yet and even if he did, Richard probably didn’t leave a lot of clues behind. She couldn’t count on another daring rescue, but she could count on herself.
She started by twisting her wrists, that were luckily bound in front of her and not behind her back, trying to stretch and loosen the rope. That gave her enough slack after a while that she could move her fingers around more freely.
Scanning the room, nothing jumped out at her. She even looked around on the floor, seeing if maybe someone had dropped something sharp there. In the process, she glanced at her feet and something her brother had once told her sparked in her mind.
I’ll have to get my feet free first, though.
Sitting back on the bed, she managed to shrug off her sneakers. That gave her a little wiggle room and she rubbed her ankles together, twisting and pulling, ignoring the pain of the rope burning against her bare skin. With one good final yank, she finally managed to slip her foot out.
Yes!
She sat down on the floor and removed a lace from her sneakers, tying two knots on either side of the string. It was an arduously slow process, but she got it done.
Next, she slipped one knotted end around her left foot and tucked the middle part of the string through the gap between her bound wrists, before looping the other knot around her right foot. Leaning on her lower back, she adjusted herself so that the lace was pulled taut against the rope holding her hands together.
I hope you weren’t just messing with me, Joe, and this actually works.
Hesitantly at first, she started moving her legs in a bicycling motion, the string from her shoes sawing against the rope around her wrists. Slowly but surely, the lace started to eat through the bindings.
Tears of relief sprang to her eyes as she noted the progress.
She took small breaks to listen for sounds from the hallway, not wanting Richard to catch her in the middle of an escape attempt.
Just as she was halfway through the restraints, the shoelace snapped in half.
No!
she yelled in her mind, desperation creeping in.
But she couldn’t give in to hopelessness. She quickly unlaced her other sneaker and repeated the process.
The rope frayed, turning to ragged strands. A small yelp escaped Selina as her bindings fell away, releasing her hands moments before the other shoelace would have given in as well.
What now?
she wondered, rubbing her wrists to get some blood back into them.
The windows all had bars on them and Richard had locked the door. That left her with only one option, and not one she particularly liked.
I’ll just have to wait until he opens the door for me
, Selina thought, steeling herself.
Fuck, I wish Stone was here right now.
But she couldn’t be a damsel in need of saving this time. No, she had to figure this one out on her own.
So far, so good.
She grabbed a filthy lamp from the bedside table and stood next to the door, ready to strike. As her hands started to shake, she forced herself to grip even harder, knuckles turning white.
When she heard footsteps nearing the door, her heart leapt to her throat.
This is it, do or die.
There was a jingle, then a sound of a key being slid into the lock. The door flew open. Richard looked at the bed, eyes widening. Before he could do anything else, Selina swung the lamp with all the strength she could muster, slamming it against Richard’s forehead. He stumbled and hit the wall, but didn’t go down.
With a frenzied cry, Selina struck again.
This time, Richard slumped to the ground, falling like a sack of flour.
He won’t be out for long
, Selina thought, shaking herself out of her shocked stillness, dropping the lamp.
She quickly rummaged through Richard’s pockets, grabbing his car keys. Still only in her socks, she made a mad dash to the parking lot and jumped in the car.
I have to warn Stone and Kate,
was all she could think as she sped off, her hands shaking on the wheel and her whole body pumping from the rush of adrenaline.