20. Adrian
TWENTY
“She’s not entirely wrong,” Zach said haltingly, anticipating the look of betrayal I gave him in response. “Look, look, if we do what you want—” He gestured to me, and by extension, Drake, Owen, and Nate who were on the phone. “There’s a good chance he gets a slap on the wrist.”
“You can’t be fucking serious,” I snarled.
Zach and Gabe had split up for their loop, and he had been the first one back. Thus, he’d gotten to witness my embarrassing rant to Drake, Owen, and Nate, who were wisely just lending me an ear without saying anything. “I’m not saying she’s completely right,” Zach said.
“Then what are you saying?”
“Ease down, Adrian,” Drake barked over Zoom. “We’re all teammates here, right? We trust one another to be honest.”
Drake wasn’t wrong, and his tone reminded me why he was chosen as my replacement after I retired from the SEALs. He talked like a leader. Ugh. I hated that feeling of pride and exasperation beneath the anger still simmering away in my gut. “Thanks for keeping me in check, Shep,” I muttered.
“Any time, man. Now, Zach, what are you trying to say?”
“Nat’s biggest concern is that Ian Hayes will find a way to slip out of this—or he’ll face some consequences, but his company will keep doing what it’s doing.”
“Nat?” Nate asked over the phone. “You gave that woman a nickname, dude? Do we need to call and tell Marissa about that?”
Zach flushed. “Shut the hell up,” he muttered. “Gabe is the one who gave it to her, and I’ve been using it because it chaps Adrian’s ass.”
Drake smirked. “Nat it is then.”
Hearing them joke about her was like driving a red-hot poker into my face. “Can we stop talking about Nataliya?” I snapped. “Please?”
I heard one of the men on the phone say, “Oh shit, dude.” Drake and Nate were, no doubt, texting each other while the whole fight was happening. “That seemed…personal,” Owen pointed out.
“Called it,” said Nate.
“Fuck off, all of you.” I rubbed the heel of my hand into my eye; it was the only way to stem the growing headache. “There’s nothing going on between me and her.”
Especially not now, after she walked out on me. She hadn’t actually said she was done with me, but I knew how to read body language. She was as withdrawn from me as she could possibly be while still standing in the same room—and then she’d fled from the room as fast as she could. It really couldn’t be clearer she wanted nothing to do with me anymore.
I tried to tell myself that I was fine with it. Parting ways now, before anything deeper had taken root, was the way to go. This niggling disappointment would eventually go away, and I’d forget all about her.
Yeah, right, I thought. Shit, I wasn’t even good at lying to myself. How would I ever convince anyone else?
Fake it till you make it, right?
“If you let her go,” Zach said, “you’re a bigger idiot than we thought. The fact that you don’t even want to consider her point of view is already bad enough.”
I looked at my forever teammate, who had dropped everything and put himself in harm’s way to come help me, and I wanted to fight back. But the boys had this ability to hold up a mirror, metaphorically speaking, to let me see myself, flaws and all. “She’s the one who doesn’t want to try,” I said. “She doesn’t trust me to do this right, and?—”
The phone on the bedside table began to ring. The phone I thought Nataliya had taken with her to call Elias. I scooped it up and pressed the Talk button. “Hey, bud.”
“Adrian? It’s almost nine, and my mom didn’t call.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry,” I said. “She left the phone when she went out for a walk, and she hasn’t come back yet.”
“She…left the phone?” Elias sounded as confused as I felt. Calling Elias at eight thirty was sacred to Nataliya. She might call him earlier if need be, but regardless, she had made sure to call him every day we’d been gone at the same time so he would have some consistency in his life. “Was she okay when she went out for her walk?”
No, but it wasn’t like I was going to explain that to an eight-year-old. “Yeah, she was just tired of looking at me,” I said, trying to make it a joke, but it landed flat. “She just needed a little bit of space.”
“Did she say that she wasn’t going to call me on time tonight?”
“No, she should be calling any minute, okay?”
“But you have the phone.”
He had a point; I wasn’t on my game at all tonight. “Look, I’m going to go find her, okay? I’ll make sure she calls you as soon as she can.”
I heard him sniffle, and my heart ached for the boy. “She’s never not done something that she said she would,” he said. “I’m worried.”
“I know,” I said, and silently, I agreed with him. “I’ll find her and get the phone to her, all right? Just sit tight for me.”
“Okay, Adrian.”
“Your mom is going to be fine,” I reassured him. “We’ll talk to you soon.”
“Soon,” Elias echoed, and I hung up. I took a breath and let it out.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Zach said.
I nodded, but I wasn’t quite as sure. She was only meant to be gone for ten minutes, and if she knew she didn’t have a way to call Elias, she would have come back for the phone. “We need to go find her.”
Zach didn’t argue. Instead, we said our goodbyes to Drake, Owen, and Nate, who had listened to this whole exchange. “We’ll call you guys later to finish this conversation.” Once we’d hung up, I said, “Call Gabe. See if he can get eyes on her.”
Zach tried, but Gabe never picked up. We shared a look. “Let’s move.”
Out in the hallway, Zach pointed out that he’d gone one way while Gabe had gone the other. We took Gabe’s path, and it seemed pretty quiet. Nothing was amiss, except that Gabe and Nataliya were nowhere to be seen.
Then, we heard a scream, and we took off running. Around the corner, we found one of the housekeepers.
“He’s dead! He’s dead! He’s dead!”
Please, no. I let Zach deal with the shrieking woman, who was gathering quite the crowd, and I walked into the laundry facility. It looked like there had been a major fight that had ended with someone bouncing Gabe off the machines, which had been left dented.
I knelt and held my breath as I reached out and pressed my fingers to the side of Gabe’s neck. I only let that breath out when I found a pulse. “He’s not dead,” I called over my shoulder at Zach.
But he was bleeding heavily from a head wound, and he still hadn’t woken up. I patted his cheek gently. “Gabe,” I said. “Come on, man.”
His face scrunched, and he groaned as he opened his eyes. He sat up, holding his head. “It’s bright.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You want to lie back down? So we can check you for anything broken?”
He waved me off. “It’s too bright,” he repeated.
“If I can get you to the hotel room, I can turn the lights off for you.” I turned around. “Zach.”
He appeared in the doorway. “Shit,” he muttered. “What the fuck happened?” Stepping into the room, he helped me hoist Gabe to his feet. He grunted in pain, but once he was on his feet, he didn’t stumble.
“Fucker got behind me,” Gabe said as we walked out of the laundry room.
The housekeeper was still standing in the hall, crying now but looking relieved to see Gabe on his feet. “The police have probably been called,” she said. “If not, I can call them.”
I shook my head. “We’re fine.”
Her eyes flicked to Gabe. “He is not fine!”
“He’s not,” I conceded and braced Gabe so I could reach into my back pocket and pull out my wallet. I flashed her my FBI badge. “But I’ve got it handled, all right?” The housekeeper relaxed when she saw the badge, and she allowed us to walk Gabe back down the hall.
“Do we have a first aid kit?” Zach asked.
“In my bag.”
Back in the hotel room, we sat Gabe down, and I got the first aid kit for Zach. He was always good at field dressings, and he was able to quicky and efficiently clean and dress Gabe’s head wound. “You said someone grabbed you?”
Gabe nodded his head but groaned from the movement. “Two of them. They pushed me into the laundry room,” he said. “I never saw them coming. One was a big dude too.”
“Did he pull a weapon?”
“He was the weapon.”
It reminded me of the man who attacked Nataliya at the diner in St. Francisville. He probably bailed himself out of jail, if he even went at all. That’s what Nataliya was talking about, I thought. If one of his minions can escape any consequences, what do you think Ian Hayes will do for himself?
I shook it off. This wasn’t the time to get lost in hypotheticals. “Did you see Nataliya at all?” I asked. “We haven’t seen her since she went to call Elias.”
Gabe started to shake his head, but then he stopped. “I think I heard her saying my name,” he said. “But it didn’t last long, and then—” I watched him trying to remember. Horror filled his face when the memory returned. “She was taken. I heard that asshole say they were ‘going for a ride.’”
My stomach turned to ice. Hayes had her; there was no other explanation. Everything went very still for a second, and then I took a deep breath and set my shoulders, ready to go into battle mode. “We have to get her back,” I said. “Now.”
Zach clapped me on the shoulder. “We will. Let’s call the others and make a plan, okay? We’re not going to leave her to the wolves.”
I nodded. “Get Drake, Nate, and Owen on the phone. We’ve got to find my girl.”
“Yes, sir.”