Chapter 31
LOCKE
My ears were still ringing when I woke.
A flash bang grenade. Murphy and Jones were unconscious—at least I hoped they were unconscious and not dead. I tried to push up off the floor, but the room tilted.
Not just a flash bang.
I shook my head, but the disorientation told me there’d been something else in the fog of the stun grenade. I tried to crawl over to my teammates, but my arms wouldn’t work.
I managed to flop onto my back. The ceiling was unfinished. I tried to focus, but the steel girders doubled and shimmered.
I felt something in my arm, then the room went black.
When I came around again, I was sitting in a chair, my arms tied down to the arms of the chair in the heavy marina rope I recognized from the night Cilla had been attacked.
I struggled against it, and something tightened around my throat.
I immediately stilled.
Like Cilla, but different.
The intricate knots of the rope created a web around me. I drew in a breath, and it slowly tightened a bit more.
Fuck.
I was alone in the room now.
My vision was still blurry. I shook my head to clear it, and the small movement tightened the ropes even more.
I froze.
There was a series of ropes around my middle in intricate knots. I couldn’t look down to check it out since that would pull the one around my neck even tighter.
I blinked until I was able to focus.
There was one light in the room—it was over me.
“Welcome back, Mr. Jordan.”
The modulated voice made me jerk around and the ropes tightened around my midsection, pulling tighter so it was difficult to expand my lungs and take a breath.
My fingers tightened on the arms of the chair.
“You found my cameras, didn’t you?”
I gritted my teeth as the masked figure came around from behind me. His eyes were comically black. The half mask hid his lower face, and the hood kept his features in shadow.
“I was hoping someone would be smart enough to find them eventually. The police officers are pitiful. Except for one. Stone got close a few times, but even he is an imbecile.”
I kept quiet, hoping he would continue to talk.
The modulator masked the timbre of the voice, but the language told me he was probably older.
“I don’t think I’m your type.”
The macabre laugh made me flex my fingers again.
“No, you’re quite right. But you make perfect bait. She’ll watch you slowly suffocate or she’ll come to me. Either way, I’ll find her. You can’t protect her forever. With you gone, it will be quite easy to get to her.”
He came closer, his footfalls silent on the cement floor.
“I like this new way to torture her.” He plucked at one of the ropes and it tightened around my neck, biting into my skin. “I wonder if it will remind her of when I had her on the dock.” He touched my neck with a leather gloved hand.
He turned around, his back to me. He lifted a small remote and pointed it at a camera in the distance.
Then waved before bending into a deep bow. “Priscilla Barlow, this is your invitation to receive your fate. You have one hour.”
He moved aside, rising to his full height. “This is my best work.” He plucked the rope attached to the series of knots around my chest, then gave it a good yank.
I had no choice but to gasp.
The ropes constricted my ribs and I had very little room to suck in oxygen. And because I jerked, the other ropes that were connected to my neck tightened as well. Whatever he’d given me left me off balance enough that black dots swam in my periphery.
I made myself go very still and take a shallow breath.
I couldn’t allow her to watch me die.
I knew all too well what that could do.
Milligan’s rage became mine.
She didn’t deserve that.
I had to believe Dom and Leo wouldn’t let that happen.
My fate could not be at the hands of this prick.