Chapter 13
KYLE
My head throbbed as the sound of crashing waves pulled me back from the darkness. Cold water tickled my ankles, startling me back to reality. My eyes snapped open, and I immediately closed them.
Bright sunshine warmed me, but it also blinded me. My head pounded as I sucked in a sharp breath. My hand instinctively went to my head, finding a knot. “What the hell?”
Sand scraped against my fingers as I pushed myself up to sit. I searched around the area, my heart rising into my throat. “Nattie?”
My voice broke as panic swirled inside me, sending my blood pressure through the roof. I could feel my heart working overtime, the tension building in my shoulders and at my temples.
Fear narrowed my vision as I frantically tried to find Nattie. But it was useless. She wasn’t here.
I dug into my memory, trying to recall what had happened in the last moments I could recall. Someone had shot at us. I’d went to check, but Nattie had pulled me into a kiss.
“Then what?”
As much as I wanted to keep that kiss in the forefront of my mind, I had to push past it. What happened next?
My eyes widened as I realized someone had knocked me out from behind. My lower lip trembled as I pushed myself up to stand on wobbly knees. Whoever did this must have taken Nattie.
The salty air filled my nose, but there was another scent lingering—something metallic.
My heart raced as I scanned the beach, spotting faint tracks in the sand leading away from where I’d lain.
Footprints—small ones, paired with larger ones.
My pulse thundered in my ears. Someone had been here. Someone had taken Nattie.
“No,” I breathed, my fingers curling into fists.
I swallowed hard, fear, worry, and determination roiling in a confusing mix inside me. I needed to find her. But I needed help.
I twisted around and ran headlong back toward Alex and Ava’s. My lungs hurt, struggling to suck in breath, but I pushed myself hard. I couldn’t afford to lose time.
Every step back to the house felt like an eternity. I stumbled twice, my bare feet catching on uneven ground, but I couldn’t stop. My chest burned, and the sharp tang of fear filled my mouth. If I wasted one more second, I might lose her forever.
I’d already lost enough time unconscious in the sand. I hadn’t even checked to see how long that had been. Sweat beaded on my brow as I pushed my body to its limits, completely ignoring the head injury I’d sustained.
When I reached the house, I doubled over for a second to catch my breath and collect my shoes before I hurried up the boardwalk to their pool and straight into the living room, not stopping to rinse off the sand clinging to my toes.
Alex and Ava lounged on the couch, coffees in hand. They froze as I came inside, barely able to breathe.
Ava sat up straighter, her features pinching. “Doc?”
I doubled over, balancing my hands on my thighs. “I need help.”
Scrambling to their feet, they both hurried toward me.
Ava wrapped her arm around my shoulders. “What’s going on? What happened?”
“Someone took Nattie,” I gasped out.
“What?” Alex asked, his voice incredulous. “Who?”
I waved a hand in the air, straightening. “I don’t know. I’ll explain once you start tracking her phone.”
“Yeah,” Alex murmured, hurrying across the room to grab his device as Ava guided me toward a chair.
I didn’t want to sit down, but I allowed her to ease me into the chair. “Tell us what happened.”
“We were walking. She stopped to tell me something, and then…someone shot at us.”
Ava’s eyes widened. “What?”
I bobbed my head. “I pushed her down, and then she didn’t want me to leave her.”
My voice broke as I wrung my hands. “She looked so scared.”
“It’s okay, Doc,” Ava said with a rub of my back, “we’ll find her. Alex is tracking her phone.”
“Did you see who took her?” Alex asked, concern etched into every line of his face.
“No. She…she was afraid, she wanted me to stay with her. And then…she kissed me. And while we were kissing, someone knocked me out.”
Ava’s hand went automatically to the back of my head. “You were knocked out? Doc, we need to get you to the hospital to have that checked.”
I bounced out of my seat, shaking my head and making myself dizzy. “No. No way. I’m fine. We need to find her.”
“Yeah, I’ve got the phone tracking right now.”
My features pinched. “She must be so scared.”
“We’ll find her,” Ava promised.
Alex stared at his phone, his features crinkling. “Yeah, it may take some doing, though.”
My stomach plummeted, my lips parting. “What? Why? Is it not working?”
“No, it’s working.” Alex tugged one corner of his lips back. “But she’s moving fast.”
“Where?” I asked, my voice breathless as I tried to peer over the top of his phone. “Are they already out of the Hamptons? Are they heading to New York? South? Where?”
“Yeah,” Alex said with a bob of his head. “She’s out of the Hamptons, all right. Moving at like…”
He tapped a few times on his phone. “Five hundred miles per hour.”
“She’s on a plane,” Ava answered as the massive number settled over me.
My stomach plummeted again as lightheadedness swept over me. I sank onto the armchair, covering my face in my hands. Someone–probably the people she was running from–had taken Nattie, and now they had her on a plane heading to who knows where.
Bile crept up my throat as the idea that I’d never see her again tormented me.
What if this was it? What if I never got the chance to tell her how I felt, or hear what she was about to say before it all fell apart? The thought of never seeing her again was like a weight on my chest, crushing me with every breath.
“Can you pull up flight plans?” Ava asked Alex.
I uncovered my face, snapping my gaze to him. “Is that possible?”
Alex plopped into his seat on the couch, grabbing his laptop. “I’ll try, but if these people aren’t exactly playing by the rules, they may have filed a bogus plan or skipped it entirely. It’ll take a few minutes because I have no idea who this plane belongs to or even where it originated.”
“It had to come from the private airstrip,” Ava said. “It hasn’t been that long that they could drive to another and already be that far.”
My stomach clenched as she said the words “that far.” Knowing Nattie was already so far from me made my physically ill. And knowing she was probably terrified compounded that. I was supposed to protect her, and I failed.
Even my father had managed to protect Julia more or less. But I’d fallen down on the job on day one.
I shook my head as Alex slammed his laptop closed. “Nothing. But I’m calling my pilot. We’ll get the jet fueled and ready to follow them.”
I leapt from my seat, my eyes wide. “Really?”
“Really,” Alex said. “Pack a few things, we’re going after your girl.”
“Oh, yes, thank you.” I pressed my hands together, grateful for my friends wanting to take action to help me find her.
“Wait, wait,” Ava said with a shake of her head. “You have a head injury. I’m not sure you should be getting on a plane.”
I balled my fingers into fists, my jaw tightening. “Look, Ava…I’m a doctor, okay? I can monitor my own symptoms. I’m under way more stress worrying about Nattie than I am from this head injury, okay?”
“How do we know that? You need a CT scan.”
“And if I present with any symptoms that back that up, I will get one. Until then, we need to get on that plane and follow her.”
“Doc, we’ll be at thirty-thousand feet. You can’t get a CT scan from a plane.”
I set my hands on my hips. “Ava, we were in a plane crash, and you trekked through the jungle and then injected yourself–against my better judgement, by the way–with an untested drug. I think I can get on a plane after getting a bump on the head.”
“I just think–“
“Look, are my pupils equal and reactive?”
Ava narrowed her eyes at me, flicking on her flashlight and using it to check them. “Yeah.”
“Okay, and is my speech slurred or am I exhibiting any decline in motor skills?”
“No,” she answered.
“Well, until I do, I’m fine. You monitor me, and if I show any signs of decline, I give you full permission to haul me to a hospital. Until then, we need to follow her.”
Ava hesitated for a moment, her eyelashes fluttering, before giving me a nod. “All right. We’ll follow her. Just let me grab a few things and call the dog sitter for Gizmo.”
Before she finished her statement, I was already heading for the door. I climbed the stairs and raced to my room, grabbing a few necessities like my phone charger. I stuffed everything inside my bag, my heart hammering against my ribs and hurried from my room.
I expected to stand in the foyer, waiting for Alex and Ava, but instead, they met me at the top of the stairs.
Alex glanced at his phone. “Looks like she’s headed for Europe, but that’s a completely uneducated guess.”
I swallowed hard. Why Europe?
“Come on, let’s get to the airport and see if we can follow her,” Alex said, tossing his and Ava’s bags over his shoulder.
Ava slid her arm around me as we descended the stairs. “How are you holding up?”
“My head’s fine,” I answered.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “You clearly care about this woman.”
We stepped into the bright sunshine and crossed to Alex’s car. “I do care about her a lot. And I know how completely crazy that sounds, but…I fall in love fast, I guess.”
She offered me a smile that bordered on consoling as we climbed into the SUV.
“Don’t give me that look.”
“I have no such look,” she said with a grin as she slid on her seat belt.
“You do so. You’re giving me that ‘poor Kyle, he thinks he’s in love but he’s not’ look.”
Ava shook her head as Alex fired the engine. “That’s not true. If you have a connection with her, who am I to knock it. You’re an adult. Maybe love at first sight exists for you. And honestly, if it does, I hope we find her, and she feels the same way.”
The car lurched forward as we started down the driveway. “She says she does. And she was about to tell me what was going on with her when all the chaos broke out.”