Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
The second Remi said he might have fucked up, Gunnar just knew. His stomach roiled as a swarm of angry wasps took flight inside it. “Explain, now, Remi. How did you fuck up?”
“Jorja…”
I fucking knew it.
“Jorja took my truck to go to the store and didn’t come back,” Remi said. “I only realized when Dory came out of the interrogation room. I’m on my way down there now.”
His first instinct was, she’d run. His second, a mental boot in the ass that they had a deal, and she had the balls to face him as no one else ever would.
She wouldn’t run.
He stalked into the dining room, poured himself a shot of Jack, tossed it back, and took the bottle out to the pool. “How long?”
“Hours,” Remi replied, then swore softly at what Gunnar assumed was traffic. “You were still in the room when she left.”
“Shit.” He placed the glass on the edge of the pool and took a deep swig from the bottle instead and turned toward the house to find his guys all waiting behind him. “Jorja’s missing,” he told them flatly. “Colt, organize the jet. We fly as soon as the dots are dotted with relevant authorities.”
“Yes, Sir.” Colt turned, then paused and looked over his shoulder. “She didn’t run. Something’s wrong.”
Gunnar swallowed hard and nodded. “I know.”
“Shit,” Remi muttered softly. “The truck is here. It looks like it hasn’t been touched.”
“I’ll be wheels up ASAP,” Gunnar told him.
“Find what you can and call the Carabinieri and the embassy in case we need them involved.” There was no way this wasn’t somehow connected to the people who put his name on that list. “Dory, squeeze every scrap of intel out of that fucker down below. I want everything by the time I hit Italy.”
“You got it.” His face darkened. “We’ll find your girl, Grizzly. I’ll send…”
“No.” Gunnar shook his head. “I’ll call if I need more people on the ground. You have less rules to fly out of here than I do from Italy. If I need a team somewhere before I can get a plane in the air, I’m gonna need you to be able to fly on short notice.”
“I’ll put my guy on alert. We can be wheels up within thirty minutes of your call,” Dory agreed.
The man whose woman was missing was at war with the warrior inside him.
The first wanted to go down to the holding cell and beat the shit out of their prisoner until they had every scrap of information he had yet to tell them.
The warrior knew this was not the optimal way to go.
They needed reliable intel, not something given up under his fists.
The only way to get that was to hope Jorja was still in Europe.
“No stone unturned, Remi,” he said into the phone as Colt returned and nodded in his direction.
“I want everything as soon as I get home.”
“I’m sorry…”
The urge to snap at his brother was strong, but Gunnar beat it back. “It’s on me, not you,” he said flatly. “We can blame each other when we have her back.” Because he would find those responsible and he would get her back. Any other option was not acceptable to him… to any of them.
“Okay.”
He could hear the sound of sirens in the background and realized Remi must have reached out to them even as they were talking. “I’ll let you deal with them. I’m headed out.”
“See you in a couple of hours.”
“Plane will be ready as soon as we get to the airport,” Colt said as soon as Gunnar ended the call with Remi. “Trucks are waiting at the front door,” he added.
“Thanks.” Gunnar refused to allow his brain to go down the ‘what-if’ road.
‘Maybe’ and ‘I fucked up’ streets were off the agenda too.
He headed for the trucks, knowing the guys would ensure everything they needed was onboard.
They couldn’t fly weapons into Italy—not without a shitload of paperwork.
Paperwork he didn’t have time to deal with right now.
He sat behind the wheel of the lead truck; all he could do was hope like hell Jorja survived this and didn’t hate him when he got her back. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Almost four hours later, as he drove through the gates of the compound, Gunnar silently prayed Remi had something—anything which would point them to who had taken Jorja.
The time on the flight had given him the opportunity to rehash every single word they’d exchanged.
Every whisper, every promise repeated inside his head reenforced that she wouldn’t leave just because she could.
And she definitely wouldn’t do it this way.
How he’d managed to maintain his composure as they’d gone through security at the airport and had to deal with delays was not something he understood.
The chains on that composure stretched to their limits when he saw Remi waiting for him on the steps.
Gunnar clenched down hard enough on the inside of his mouth to draw blood and switched off the engine. That Colt had to pull up the handbrake he forgot made him wince. So much for the locked down emotions vibe he’d been going for. “Tell me you got something?”
“Not much…”
Not much means something and not nothing.
“Spill.” He followed Remi through the house and into the war-room.
He paused in the doorway transfixed by the image of Jorja on the screen.
Clearly, she was walking toward the store.
He recognized the parking lot and could make out the shape of one of the company trucks in a spot not far behind her. “Remi?”
“I stopped talking when you stopped listening,” Remi muttered. “That’s from just after she arrived. Timestamps match up with you still being in the interrogation room in Morocco,” Remi continued as he sat down and hit play on what was most likely video footage from the store.
Someone nudged his back, urging him further into the room, and Gunnar sat heavily into the first seat at the war-table.
He wasn’t entirely sure how he hadn’t lost his shit yet, but he could feel the fear, rage, and a desperate need to punch something simmering.
He’d never really struggled with waiting like some of the others.
Hurry up and wait was a fact of life when you worked for the military.
Waiting came with the job. But this wasn’t military, this wasn’t a job…
this was Jorja. His Jorja; it didn’t get more personal than that.
Thankfully, no one commented on him taking Marco’s seat.
Instead they took a seat and watched the scene on the screen play out in front of them.
Remi split the screen in two. One of them focused on the truck in the parking lot. The other followed Jorja to the pharmacy and from there into the grocery store.
Gunnar was so focused on Jorja he almost missed the van pulling in next to the truck.
Why is it always a fucking white van?
He had an idea of what was about to happen. Both his heart and stomach clenched as he watched Jorja come out of the store and walk toward the truck. She hesitated not far from it.
Good girl. Your gut is right, listen to it, he urged her silently. He could read the hesitation written all over her. Then his girl turned around and went back toward the store, searching in her purse as she went as if she’d forgotten something. A thought occurred to him. “Did she have a phone?”
Remi shook his head. “It’s charging next to the fridge at your place.”
“Fuck.”
Remi paused the videos. “My best guess is something felt off to her, and she was going back into the store. Probably to see if there was a way to call me.”
His words warned of what was to come. Still, watching the van speed out of the parking spot, stop next to Jorja, blocking her from view, before speeding off and leaving an empty space where she once had been scalded him right to the bone.
“Fuck,” Gunnar ground out the words through gritted teeth.
The guys didn’t need to know he had his hands balled into fists under the desk or that he was imagining invisible chains keeping him in place so he didn’t completely lose it.
Remi rewound the footage and played it again.
And then did it again. Every time a stab in the heart; Gunnar imagined hearing her scream, or feeling her struggle as she tried to get away.
Behind his closed eyelids, like a damn movie on repeat, he could see the scene play out.
Those invisible chains he’d worked to have in place reached their breaking point.
Ping.
Ping.
And PING!
He bolted out of the chair, through the door into the courtyard, and slammed his open palm off the stone column which held up the covered walkway. “Fuuuccck.” Breathing through his nose, he stalked forward toward the fountain.
“Gun—”
“I need a fucking minute.” If anyone, even Talon, came near him, he’d be sending them home to their mom with a busted nose.
A light pressure against his knee warned him there was one member of his team who wasn’t afraid he’d lose his mind on their approach.
He dropped his hand down into fur and silently accepted the comfort Zombie offered while he struggled to get enough air into his lungs. Breathing hurt, everything hurt.
I failed.
I fucking didn’t keep her safe.
It took longer than he would have liked to find the warrior inside the man, and longer again to allow him to surface past the pain.
Once he did, Gunnar was able to lock his shit down.
“I’m good, Zombie… I swear.” He sucked in one last breath and let it out slowly, then turned on his heel and went back to work.
“Find me that van and its driver,” he ordered as he strode in the door of the war-room.
“Burn the whole damn country to the ground. I don’t give a fuck.
Bring me the asshole who took her from me. ”
“Hooyah,” someone muttered softly.
For a few minutes, he’d forgotten who he was. He could melt down nuclear style when they got Jorja back. Until then, he would work until he dropped. “Damn straight, brother. Hooyah!”
* * *
Oh, God.
Please stop.
Jorja’s nightmare finally scared her enough to jerk her awake.
She opened her eyes to blackness and tried to move the blankets out of her way.
All kinds of confused as to why her hands wouldn’t move, she struggled with the blankets until a strange man’s heavily accented voice spoke next to her head.
“Stop kicking.”
Who is that?
The memory of the van which had just seemed all kinds of wrong in the parking lot ticked at the edge of her memory. Panic made her flail about, kicking harder than ever until she felt a sharp pain on her neck, and even the darkness behind her eyes faded as she lost consciousness again.
Gunnar.