Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
A nnoyance puckered Zain’s skin.
The cop scratched his head. “We already took Mrs. Mitry’s statement. Sorry, not sure who you were talking to.” He shrugged and sidled around Zain to return to his car.
Zain grumbled and pivoted away from the driveway, heading to where he’d left Dana only moments before. The space near the sidewalk was empty.
What the —
He scanned the property, spinning toward the house. Some of the commotion had dwindled. Where the hell had she gone? “Dana!” he called.
No answer.
Angst fisted his esophagus. “Dana!” He moved across the lawn. Police cars still filled the driveway, and a firetruck was parked at the side of the road. A deflated hose was stretched across the grass. Had she wandered off? Stopped to speak with someone ?
Every step he took told him Dana wasn’t there. Panic climbed rapidly up his neck. He jogged to the cop he’d spoken with a moment before, who was now chatting with another officer. “Hey! My girlfriend’s missing. Did you see her? She was standing over there.” He pointed to where he’d left Dana.
The man removed his hat and wiped a line of sweat from his forehead. “Uh, yeah. I saw her a minute ago. She was talking to one of the firefighters when you approached.”
His gut clenched. “She’s gone.”
“I’m sure she’s not far. I’ll ask some of the other officers.” He strode away much too fucking leisurely.
Zain muttered a frustrated thanks and jogged to the firetruck. Men in heavy gear ambled around, loading up to head out. Zain searched each man’s face—there were six of them. None of them was the guy who’d told him the police wanted to speak with his mom.
He stopped one of the men. “Was there another guy here? Heavyset with a scar on his eyebrow?”
The man shook his head slowly. “Sorry. We don’t work with anyone who matches that description.”
Pain spread through Zain’s chest, but it wasn’t just crippling fear seizing his muscles. Not only was this his fucking fault—he hadn’t seen the signs. The assassin had walked right up to Zain, and he’d been too blinded by the damage to his mother’s house to put the pieces together. Dana had told him about the scar on the man who’d attacked her.
Christ.
Zain dragged his hand over his face and pulled out his phone. His first instinct was to call Rami, but since he’d just left with their mom, he dialed Taschen instead.
“Hello?” he answered, sounding half asleep.
“It’s Zain. Dana’s missing.”
“What?” Dana’s brother’s shrill yell rattled against Zain’s eardrum.
He pulled the phone away from his ear an inch. “We’re at my mom’s. There was a fire this morning. She was with me and—”
“Don’t move. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Text me the address and call the others.” Taschen hung up.
The pressure in Zain’s head multiplied. His fingers shook as he forced himself to follow Taschen’s instructions. Standing in one spot would drive him to insanity. He needed to move. To drive or run. Something. Anything but be useless when Dana was in danger. After sending the address to Taschen, he sent a group text to the team.
He needed to call Maxine. He stalked back and forth across the lawn as he dialed her office number. No answer. He muttered a curse and hit her private number. She’d be pissed he was calling it, but to hell with—
His eye caught something shiny on the sidewalk. He bent down and picked up the device. Dana’s phone. Agony pulsed against his temples as the realization hit full force. He dropped to his knees. Desperation ravaged him.
He hadn’t kept her safe.
“Hello? Zain?” Maxine’s earnest voice punched through the halo of grief circling his head.
He brought his phone to his ear. “Maxine. I need your help. She’s gone.” He spoke rapidly, describing everything that had happened to the cold, emotionless woman on the other end.
“I’ll do what I can. Just—Just don’t draw any attention to yourself, all right? There’s a lot of heat from higher-ups about how things were handled in Af—”
“I don’t give a fuck about Afghanistan!”
“Zain,” she said, cool and calm, her I-don’t-give-a-fuck rivaling his. “I understand you’re upset. Believe me, we don’t want this story getting out. Finding Ms. McAvery is my number one priority right now. I’ll get back to you in an hour.”
He hung up and nearly threw his damn phone. Only common sense made him shove it in his pocket. Just what was he supposed to do for a fucking hour? Take up knitting?
He’d given the police on the scene a rundown of the attack on Dana and explained that she had an open file, but the effort had surely been a wasted one. If Backcountry hadn’t been able to find the guy by now, the cops sure as hell wouldn’t.
Taschen pulled up and leapt out of his vehicle. His gray complexion told Zain that he was at his breaking point. “What do you have?” he demanded, as he strode toward Zain.
Zain quickly explained what’d happened. Taschen uttered a curse but didn’t pin any blame on him.
“We need to find out what vehicle he was driving.”
Zain nodded. “I didn’t get a good look at the cars on the street. I was too distracted. He probably would’ve parked close, though.” He gestured to where Dana had been standing.
“Does your mom have outdoor cameras?”
“No. None.” Sweat dampened the back of his neck. Minutes were ticking by. If they didn’t locate Dana within the next few hours, she probably wouldn’t be found at all.
He couldn’t let that happen. He also couldn’t stand outside his mom’s house a minute fucking longer.
“What about witnesses?” Taschen’s eyes shimmered with worry.
For a flicker of an instant, Zain was struck with what it must feel like to have a sibling missing. Rami had suffered. Zain had known that all along but had been helpless to do anything about it. Seeing the pain in Taschen’s eyes reminded Zain once again what he’d put his family through.
“None that I could find.” He measured Taschen for a moment. At this point, hiding that he’d worked with the CIA wouldn’t help Dana. Maxine would be pissed, but Taschen had a right to know everything. Resistance swelled on his tongue.
“What is it?” Taschen demanded. “You’re hiding something.”
Zain hung his head as paralyzing shame pulled at his knees. “Not what you think.” He cleared his throat and met Taschen’s furious stare. “I wasn’t held prisoner in Afghanistan. I was working undercover. For the CIA.”
Taschen’s head jerked back. “Huh?”
He shifted his weight and gave a brief explanation of his mission. “I reached out to my CIA contact, and she’s doing everything she can to help find Dana.”
Taschen scoffed. “How the hell’s she gonna do that from Virginia?”
“I dunno, man. Same way they find terrorists overseas. Surveillance, I’d imagine.”
“And you think they give a shit about Dana?”
A knot formed in his gut, and an undeniable, instinctive response rushed forward. No. They didn’t. He clamped his teeth down before he uttered the syllables.
They were fucked.
***
Nausea bubbled in Dana’s stomach as she came to. She squeezed her eyes tight against the vomit rising to the back of her throat. Fire licked along her side, and every muscle screamed. Pain enveloped her body.
She carefully opened her eyes. A dim room filled her vision. Even the low light streaming in from a high window made her temples scream. She closed her eyes and breathed through her nose to steady the swell of anxiety and the roiling in her stomach.
Damp, musty air touched her nostrils. She shivered and squirmed. Her hands. She couldn’t move them. A rough material held them together.
Memories hit her like the bruising balls of a paintball gun. Flames. Zain’s mom’s house. A firefighter. Pain and darkness. Being shoved into a vehicle and—
Oh god.
The silvery scar through the man’s eyebrow.
She whimpered and forced her eyes open again. Garbage and stains covered a cement floor. She lay on a small, thin, scratchy blanket. At one point, the concrete walls had been painted blue, but now they were chipped and peeling. Her eyes landed on a door across the room .
Instinct told her it’d be locked.
Determination told her to hell with that.
She pushed herself up to her elbows. The room spun. The nausea intensified and she retched. Her arms and legs shook as she vomited. Water and bile splattered the floor feet away. She gasped and wiped her mouth with her shaking, bound hands.
Inhaling rapid breaths through her nose, she waited for her heart rate to slow. Some of the nausea settled, and the room gradually steadied.
She refocused on the door. Whoever had taken her hadn’t chained her up, nor were her feet tied. She turned her wrists over as she examined the rope around her arms. He’d done a number on the knot, but the binding wasn’t overly tight. Just enough to be irritating.
She got to her feet, and her legs shook like wet noodles. She forced her feet to cooperate as she took one step after another to the door. Her pulse thundered in her ears. The wheezing of her breath was almost as loud as thunder on a quiet night.
If he was close, he’d hear her.
She didn’t give a damn. She closed her fingers around the cool doorknob and turned. It didn’t budge. A sob escaped Dana’s chest. She seized the handle harder and shook, twisting with all her strength.
Nothing.
She jammed her shoulder into the wood. It shook but didn’t give way. She slammed her body against it again, to no avail.
Footsteps thudded above her. She tilted her head back and watched as dust fluttered down with every stomp of her captor’s feet.
Terror clamped around her bones as she backed away from the door.
***
Meet you all at the office in 10 .
The message in the group chat had come from Toth. As much as the guys’ willingness to come together touched some deep part in him, something else took hold of Zain’s hope. Something sinister.
The assassin didn’t want Dana alive. He just hadn’t been able to kill her right there with firefighters and cops so close. Zain didn’t want to acknowledge that she could already be dead. Because if he did, he’d break in two.
Taschen elbowed him. “That the neighbor? Maybe he’s got footage of Dana.”
Next door, a man was getting out of his car. He paused to stare at Zain’s mom’s house. Zain quickly walked toward him.
“S’cuse me. Do you have security cameras? Someone went missing just a little while ago.”
The man jerked back his head. “Oh my. Yes, yes, I do.” He moved the bag he was holding to his other hand and pulled his cell phone out of a pocket. His eyes held the fatigue of someone who’d just worked all night. “Let me pull up my app. ”
Zain watched as the guy tapped on his screen, and a minute later, he handed over his phone. “Looks like there was a lot of commotion this morning. The sensors turn on with any activity. Go ahead and see if you can find anything useful.”
Zain swept through a handful of videos of firefighters and people milling about on the street. There was nothing that indicated who might have started the fire.
In a more recent video, there were a lot fewer people. For several seconds, there was just grass and sidewalk on the screen.
Taschen huddled in next to him.
Dana’s body entered the screen. Zain caught her profile before she turned her back to the camera. A look of confusion had been etched on her face as a man approached. She followed the guy a few paces down the sidewalk, and then he turned and she bumped into him. He jammed something into her side—a Taser.
Jesus.
The phone burned his fingers as he watched Dana get pushed into the back of a car, unable to do a damn fucking thing. Rage ricocheted through his brain. Fast and pounding. A heavy weight sat in his gut. His sinuses pulsed with unspent emotion.
The guy was large and swift; the abduction had been quick and concealed. Less than five seconds after tasing her, he had her inside the vehicle and was rounding the car to get in the driver’s seat.
As the car took off, the license plate filled the screen. Zain hit the pause button.
“Plate number,” Taschen hissed.
Zain grunted. “It’s pretty grainy.”
“Send it to me and I’ll see what we can do.”
Zain took a screenshot of the image then looked at the neighbor. “Mind if I text this to myself?”
He waved his hand. “Please.” The guy rocked back on his feet. “Anything I can do to help. Such a tragedy. First a fire, now this.” He shook his head sadly.
“Yeah, no kidding.” Zain didn’t hide the dryness in his tone. “Thanks for your help. Appreciate it. If you happen to see or hear anything else, you have my number.”
The man nodded emphatically and pushed his wire-rimmed glasses higher on his nose. “Yes, yes. Of course. Good luck.”
Zain turned and headed back to his truck. “I’ll follow you to the office.”
“Yup.” Taschen clapped his hand on Zain’s shoulder. “We’ll find her, man. If we’ve got a plate number, that makes this a helluva lot easier.”
Still, the crushing force of fear sat hard on Zain’s shoulders. Having the plate number wouldn’t do a goddamn thing if Dana was already dead.