Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
The ambulance makes a three-point turn in the driveway, lumbering as it pivots. Blue and red flashing lights bathe the farmhouse in bursts of color, slicing through the night.
A grim mood fills the truck.
“They’re taking good care of him.” Allison’s hand tightens on my shoulder, but all I can do is nod stiffly. “You guys saved him. That was incredible.”
“Yeah,” I rasp. “He’s lucky he made it to the farm. Stupid jackass, he should have just called for emergency services. But as much as we did for him, he’s not out of the woods. That is a bad gut wound.”
I didn’t want to see my brother ever again after Hope died. But seeing him with a knife sticking out of his gut, the color gone from his skin was…brutal.
Beast’s face is etched with worry below his baseball cap. Levering himself into the truck, he asks, “Where would your brother have gone after he left you guys?”
His door slams, and he throws the SUV into gear, gunning the engine.
I readjust myself in the passenger seat as the ambulance blazes a path down the driveway with us hot on their rear bumper.
“I don’t know what he was doing here in Vandemora. He works for Dark Shield on some kind of black-ops missions, that’s all I know. But that’s enough to know he’s got a lot of enemies.”
He glances quickly toward me across the darkness in the cab. “You two don’t talk, do you?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“I don’t like it. All these fucking loose ends.” Gripping the wheel, his expression turns to granite. “We still don’t know who nearly killed Scout and took Aria. The only clue was that guy’s weird-ass kissing kittens tattoo which we haven’t been able to match on anything.”
There’s a gasp from the back seat. “Wait, rewind that.”
Allison shoves between the front seats. “Who had a tattoo of kissing kittens?”
The fact that she even knows someone with that goddamned tattoo if he’s a fucking kidnapper sets my teeth on edge.
I say, “The man who snatched Scout’s girl right from the compound.”
“Oh, my god,” Allison wheezes, her fingers clutching the base of her throat. “No. This can’t be…”
“What, sweetheart?’
“I need to see a picture.” She glances frantically between us. “Do you have a photograph of the tattoo?”
Beast fishes around in his cargo pocket. He passes his phone to me as he hangs a turn, hot on the ambulance’s tailgate. “Look in the image folder labeled: Evidence.”
I thumb through a few photos of Beast’s girl Camile that are kind of suggestive. “I’m not going to—oh crap—I didn’t need to see that.”
Beast reaches over and wraps his oversized hand around my neck. “Wrong folder, asshole. Evidence.”
I knock his hand away. “That folder was already open.”
“Well, forget what you saw.”
“My eyes are fucking burning. I didn’t take you for a sexter.”
“Just focus.” Beast flips me off, before locking his hand on the wheel again. “Find the damned photo of that tattoo.”
I go back to the hunt, permanently scarred by the sight of Beast’s… well, his beast .
“Okay, here you go. This tattoo was on the body of the man who kidnapped Scout’s girl. It’s a very unique identifier, as you can see, unless we don’t know about some kitten gang mark or something. Otherwise, I can’t understand why anyone would have that tattoo.”
Allison is eerily still. The pulse flutters in her neck. Finally, she licks her lips and presses them into a very hard, flat slash.
A thousand things play behind her irises.
And I hate every one of them for her.
“You know him?” I ask.
When her eyes drift away, out the window, the flashing lights from the ambulance catch on the pool of tears bordering her lower lashes. “Did you say her name was Aria?”
“Aria is correct. Why?”
“D-did he hurt her?”
“She got away. You know that guy?”
Beast’s voice is too stern. Too loud.
And I’m about to tell him that he better lay off my girl when Allison starts to talk.
“He was my personal security detail. A local man I hired. Not long ago, he went missing. Just didn’t come back. I didn’t know what happened to him. That was a few days before I came to find you.”
Beast looks over at me, a completely different look on his face.
This is it.
A piece falls into place in the fucked-up puzzle.
Allison’s guard was in our compound and stole Scout’s girl. But why?
“Go on, sweetheart. Can you tell us more?”
There’s pain in her tone as she slowly replies, “He said he was going to shake you guys from our trail.”
The combined energy washing off of Beast and my own tensing muscles is thick. With enough force to fill the entire truck cab with crackling tension.
Turning in my seat, I angle so I can grab Allison's hand. Wishing there was some way to give comfort for a conversation that’s not going to be easy.
“Did he say how he was going to do that?”
“No. And I didn’t ask.” The tears on her lashes grow thicker until one of them slips down. “I never thought he would hurt anyone.”
Every tear drives a spike across the space and into me.
“I’m sorry. We know you wouldn’t have had something to do with a bad person if you knew. Can you tell us about how you hired this guy?”
“My research partner, Fletcher, hired him. I don’t know how he found him. The guard was a local guy named Ronaldo. But my coworker left to go back to the states before I could ask him anything.”
Her voice trails off. For a beat, we’re all in our heads.
Sighing, she shifts, and her fingers flinch in my hold. “Maybe I didn’t ask. Or maybe it just didn’t seem important. That sounds terrible, but I can’t remember. I was struggling to accept the fact that my father had turned on me. So, it made sense to have a bodyguard. You know?”
What I know is that Allison has been surrounded by deceit, and she’s the victim here.
After brushing away another tear, she shudders. “I’m worried about Fletcher too because he hasn’t responded to any of my emails. It’s just not like him. We’ve been friends forever.”
Beast grimaces.
My teammates and I know why her research partner’s not answering her emails. The man was under an earthquake-rubble building the very first day our team arrived in Vandemora.
Beast mouth opens. “He is?—”
Oh, fuck no.
I hold up a hand before Beast can drop that bomb. “No. Pull over, man. Now.”
This is not how she’s going to find out that her coworker was transported to the States in a medical evacuation with him on life-support.
Our team-leader isn’t heartless, he just thinks like a man, and Allison doesn’t need to be one of the men right now.
When he continues to follow the ambulance, I drop my voice. “Pull. Over. I need to get in the back.”
He skids to a stop after giving me a puzzled look, and I leap from the Agile Security & Rescue Tundra and insert myself into the smaller back seat.
When I reach for Allison, she comes to me, crawling into my lap. “I’ve got you now, sweetheart. No matter what happens, I’ve got you.”