Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Jake burst into the bar. “Wren!”
He could hear sirens in the distance. He and Hunter had called Honey on their way back to the bar. He’d hoped Honey and her team could get there before him, but when he’d pulled into the lot, it had been empty.
No cars at all.
Only…Tom’s silver Lexus had been there earlier.
His gaze landed on the broken table. The shattered table legs. His breath heaved in and out. “Wren! Eb!”
A groan caught his attention. It came from behind the bar. Jake leapt over that bar and slammed down on the floor right beside his brother.
Another groan as Eb’s eyes fluttered open. “J-Jake?”
“Where is Wren?” He heard Hunter’s footsteps. They’d zip-tied Jennifer’s hands and left her in the backseat of the SUV. He knew Hunter would be searching the bar. Find Wren. Find Wren alive. “Eb, where is our Wren?”
“I’m so…s-sorry…”
No. No.
He carried her up the stairs. He’d duct-taped her hands in front of her. Duct-taped her feet. Dumped her in the backseat of his car, and when she’d screamed—well, surprise, surprise, Tom had slapped duct tape over her mouth.
For someone who kept apologizing about what he was doing, Tom sure had zero hesitation when it came to kidnapping.
Her body bounced against his shoulder as he climbed the stairs. He grunted and swore but still got her up the familiar steps. She knew the steps all too well. Knew the house well. After all, it was her Uncle Milo’s place. The place she’d lived in for her last two years of high school.
The yellow police tape flew in the wind when he tore it in half and lurched with her toward the back door. “I’ve got her!” Tom called out. He shifted a bit, left one arm locked around the back of her thighs as he kept her over his shoulder, and his other hand knocked against the closed door. “Let Makayla go! I brought Wren?—”
The hinges groaned as the door opened. “Get inside.” A low, snarling order. A man’s voice. One she did not recognize.
Tom hurriedly rushed over the threshold, then he dropped Wren onto the floor. Her elbow rapped into the wood, and her ass hit hard. She shook her head, sending the hair flying out of her way so she could see just who it was that she faced.
Only as her gaze lifted, it collided with Makayla’s. Makayla’s stunned eyes as Makayla sat in a chair near Uncle Milo’s kitchen table. Makayla’s arms were behind her back. Her nightgown stained with blood.
“Makayla!” Tom held his arms out to her. “Baby, you’re safe, let’s go?—”
The man stepped between Tom and Makayla. A few inches shorter than Tom. Maybe around five ten? Muscular build. Black hair. Hard eyes. A faint scar slashed over his left cheek while a spider tattoo crawled up the right side of his neck.
“Where do you think you’re gonna go?” the man asked.
Tom didn’t back away. “I brought Wren to you. You said it would be a trade. Wren for Makayla. You said?—”
The man’s hand moved in a flash. It flew up, and he sank a blade deep into Tom’s chest. Behind the duct tape, a scream trapped in Wren’s mouth.
Blood poured from the wound.
Tom glanced down at his own chest.
“I lied,” the man with the spider tattoo said. He yanked the knife out of Tom’s chest. Tom’s hands slapped over his chest as he tried to stop the blood flow. Only the blood pumped right through his fingers. It soaked his shirt. Covered his chest. Tom fell onto the floor beside Wren.
Blood poured from him.
And Wren realized Makayla had just watched the entire scene, and she hadn’t said a word. Makayla had not screamed in horror and fear.
But…but Makayla was smiling.
She was also rising from the chair. Wren had thought that Makayla’s arms were tied behind her, but they weren’t. They slid to Makayla’s sides, and…
She still has all ten fingers.
“You lied, too, Tom,” Makayla announced. She took the bloody knife from the stranger. Then she bent in front of Tom. Crouched between Tom and a bound Wren. Makayla shot a disgusted glance at Tom, then peered at Wren. “Do you know what he did?”
He’d done all sorts of shitty things so far. Makayla would need to be a whole lot more specific?—
“He fucked that cunt Jennifer. That bitchy cunt with the bad, bottled hair. A woman who pretended she was my friend.”
Not the big reveal Wren had expected.
Makayla put the knife to Tom’s throat. “You said you loved me, but you fucked my friend.”
His breath heaved. In…out…In…
So much blood.
“You lied to me,” Makayla said. She pressed the knife against his throat a bit harder.
“I…l-love…”
“You love me?” Makayla asked him. She smiled at him. “Prove it. Die for me.”
He blinked. His lips parted.
Makayla slit his throat. Pretty, sweet, bubbly Makayla slit her fiancé’s throat.
“I’m not going in a damn ambulance!” Eb shoved away from the EMTs who were trying to force him onto a stretcher. “I’m finding Wren. Now. ”
“Your heart needs to be examined,” one of the EMTs stated as he stubbornly held his ground. A hard task in the face of Eb’s glower, but Hayden Washington had always been up to the challenge of facing off against Eb, even in their high school days. “You said you blacked out.”
“ Because I was fucking tased!”
“Right near your heart!” Hayden fired back. “We need to make sure you didn’t suffer a cardiac incident, that you are stable, that you are?—”
“Trust me, I am exceedingly unstable at the moment.” His hands had fisted. “I’m going to find Tom Hadden, and I am going to kill the bastard. He’ll be begging before I am done with him.”
“Ebenezer,” Honey snarled. “ You get your control back, and you get it now. ”
Jake didn’t move. He didn’t say a word. He was battling a rage that threatened to swallow him whole. Wren was gone. He didn’t know where Tom had taken her. He didn’t even know if Wren was still alive.
She has to be alive. The world wouldn’t still be turning if Wren wasn’t alive.
At least, his world wouldn’t be. His world would stop.
“I’ve got an APB out for Tom and his car. Every deputy I have is on the hunt. We will find the man, understand?” Her glare bounced between Jake and Eb. “You two should have called me immediately. As soon as Tom appeared pounding at the bar.” She waved away Hayden. “Eb’s not going to the hospital because he’s too freaking stubborn! I need to talk to the twins alone, now. ”
Hayden reluctantly backed away.
Eb and Jake moved closer to her in the bar.
Her glare grew hotter. “You left me out of this.”
Jake didn’t speak. He couldn’t. Too much rage choked him.
“What did you think would happen? That you’d find the mastermind and kill him, so you didn’t want to involve a sheriff who might stop you from going off the deep end?” Her low voice quaked with her anger. “What. The. Hell?”
Jake one hundred percent intended to find the mastermind and still kill him. Done deal. The only question was…how much pain would Jake administer before he sent the SOB to the devil?
“You can’t pull this vigilante crap with me,” she snapped.
They had. They were. They would. “When I find the bastard who has Wren, he’s dead.” Simple fact.
Her eyes widened. “Don’t say shit like that to me.” She whacked him on the back of the head.
Jake blinked at her. “Did you just hit?—”
“A sheriff assaulted you,” Eb agreed before Jake could even finish his question. “I saw it. With my own eyes.”
“A woman who loves you idiots like a mother just tried to whack some sense into you. Don’t announce your intentions. That’s called premeditation.” A long exhale as she looked anxiously around. “Feds made it to town about thirty minutes ago. They are gonna be putting their noses in where they don’t belong. You can’t screw up in front of them.” The diamond studs at her ears winked as she turned her head to take in the scene again and to make sure the wrong people couldn’t hear their conversation. “Don’t leave evidence behind.” Even lower. Just for their ears. “If it needs to go down as self-defense, make sure that is the way the scene reads, you got me? You hear what I’m telling you?”
Jake understood exactly what she was saying.
“I got a hit on a potential partner for the dead guy in the morgue,” she added. “I was coming to tell you about that development when the world blew up in our faces. The guy in the morgue? Colin Miller? Turns out, he generally tends to work with a partner. A partner higher-up on the food chain. His buddy Vander Henley is a suspected hitman. Pay him the right price, and he’ll eliminate your problems. Colin had been texting Vander. He’d tried to delete the messages, but they were recovered.”
Vander could have been the second attacker on the beach. “So who is paying them?”
“Got people digging into their bank accounts now. Have to be careful. Not exactly going through the legal channels,” she muttered. “Aw, hell, look alive. Company’s arriving.”
That company was just Hunter. Exactly the man Jake needed. “Vander Henley,” he immediately announced the man’s name when Hunter closed in. “We think he might have been partnering with the bastard I took out at Milo’s place, Colin Miller. We have to get Declan on the line and have him use his people to tear into Vander’s and Colin’s bank accounts. Someone is paying them, and we have to know who that person is.”
“Uh, excuse me…” Honey growled.
“Declan’s non-legal channels are a hell of lot faster than yours.” Declan had his tech stretched out like tentacles in the world. With a few clicks, the man could find any information. And he could destroy just about anyone, too.
Case in point, he took out the killer who tormented my sister Marley. Erased him from the world with barely a blink. Meanwhile, Eb and Jake had been working for months in order to get close to that particularly savage SOB. Eb had even pulled strings to be sent into the prison undercover, just so he could get close enough to take out the predator who’d hurt Marley.
But Declan and his tech had beaten them to the kill.
Literally.
Hunter immediately pulled out his phone.
“The fucker tased me. Bad enough that I once let Hunter get the drop on me. At least he’s a former Ranger.” Eb rolled back his shoulders. “But Tom? Freaking Tom Hadden? He’s a pencil pusher, dick neck, pain-in-my-ass who couldn’t even make the JV team back in the day. And I let him tase me. Never even thought that he might have swiped something from Milo’s safe. Oh, I am going to make that guy pay.”
Hunter had sidled away.
And Jake was standing there, doing nothing.
Fear and fury rolled through him. He had to think. Think . The first attack had come just outside of this very bar. Wren had been on her way back to Milo’s place. The pricks had been lying in wait for her.
They’d escaped by boat.
Are they somewhere with a boat right now? Because that would be a nightmare. They could be out on the water, and they’d be putting more distance between Jake and Wren with every second that passed. Or, fuck forbid, they could dump Wren’s body in the water. She’d sink beneath the waves, and he would never, ever see her beautiful face again. Never hear her voice. Never stare into her eyes and find his heaven waiting.
“What are you thinking right now?” Eb wanted to know. “Because you look like you’re ready to murder someone.”
Jake spun and drove his fist into the wall.
The second attack. It had come inside Milo’s house. And Wren had said—she’d said that the prick told her his partner was waiting at Milo’s bar.
Why were all the attacks centered around places that belonged to Milo? Jake’s fist hit the wall again.
“I don’t know what that particular wall has done to you,” Honey muttered. “But, yeah, sure, kick its ass if it helps you feel better.”
If Wren hadn’t gotten away from her attacker at Milo’s beach house, if she hadn’t managed to get out and signal to Jake, she would have died in that house.
Died in Milo’s house.
Milo.
Milo…who was a former Fed. Milo, who knew all about Wren’s past. Who’d hidden her for so many years.
Milo…who had worked with Jake and Eb a few years ago on a special task force case that had come up in the area. Some assholes had been drug smuggling in Hilton Head. Jake had just stopped working for the CIA back then. He’d been bumming around before getting heavily involved in hostage rescue. And Eb—Eb had signed on to help because the man loved danger. They’d teamed up with Milo and a firefight had erupted. Turned out the bastards on the boat had been bringing in weapons and guns and…
Three of the bastards on the boat died. He didn’t even recall all their names.
The whole thing had mostly been covered up because one of those guys had been the nephew of the governor. The man had been running for re-election and had tolerated zero scandal. More BS that Jake hadn’t been in the mood to stomach. The governor had been Andrew Tate, and the nephew? Gregory. The leader on the crew they’d taken out. Jake definitely remembered him.
The bar’s front door flew open and banged against the wall. “What in the hell is happening here?” A big, redheaded bear of a man stood in the doorway. His curly hair shoved back from a broad face, a face lined with a thick, red beard along the jaw. His green gaze took in the scene. Seemed to count the people, the faces he knew…
Honey.
Eb.
Jake.
“ Where is my niece?” Milo O’Shaw bellowed. Fear flashed on his face. Milo wasn’t a man given to fear.
As Milo stalked toward him, Jake understood exactly what had been happening all along. “It’s not just about hurting me and my brother. It’s about hurting you, too.”
“Where is Wren?” Milo demanded.
Because Milo O’Shaw loved Wren like a daughter.
That’s why she was chosen. She’s the link that the three of us share. The one way to destroy three men, all at once. The plan had been to kill her at Milo’s. To leave her body there and maybe Milo would have found her, if Jake hadn’t arrived in time to stop her attacker.
Only Wren had been taken again.
Where would be the perfect place to hide her? The perfect place to, God forbid, hurt her?
The answer was right there. Spinning through Jake’s mind. A place that was already a crime scene. A place the cops wouldn’t be searching right now.
A place…where Milo O’Shaw could eventually find Wren’s broken body. “I know where she is.”
Milo’s bright green eyes narrowed. The lines on his face deepened as he asked, “Then why the hell are we just standing here? And, somebody, give me a fuckin’ gun!”