Chapter 14 Rowan
FOURTEEN
ROWAN
The first thing I taste is panic. It’s metallic, sharp, like I bit my tongue and swallowed fear instead of blood. My lungs burn from the gas. My wrists ache from the way they yanked me. My heart slams so hard I can feel it in my teeth.
The van smells like rubber mats and chemical clean. A harsh disinfectant that doesn’t hide the underlying stink of sweat and old fuel. The interior lights are off, but the city glow flickers through the small rear windows as we tear away from the newspaper building.
I twist, straining against the grip around my upper arms. My mouth opens on a scream, but a hand clamps over it again, hard enough to press my cheeks into my teeth.
“Quiet,” a man growls near my ear.
I bite him.
He jerks back with a curse and smacks the side of my head.
Pain flashes bright, stars exploding behind my eyes.
My breath comes in ragged pulls. I fight anyway, because my body refuses to accept what’s happening.
Then the image hits me, sharp as glass. Sin on the floor.
His hand losing mine. The way his eyes looked when they dragged me away.
I turn, trying to see through the darkness, trying to find him even though I know I can’t.
Did they hurt him?
Did they tase him again?
Did they take him too?
My chest tightens so hard it feels like something is breaking inside. “Sin,” I rasp, voice scraped raw.
Someone laughs. “He’ll live,” a calm voice says from the front of the van. “Men like that usually do.”
That voice is wrong in a way my instincts recognize immediately.
Smooth. Polished. Controlled.
It’s the same voice that said my name in the hallway like he’d already decided I belonged to him. The van jostles over a pothole, and the man’s face comes into view as he turns slightly in his seat.
Alexander Grant.
The name’s like a curse in my mind.
I’ve written about men like him. Not directly, because men like him don’t like their names in print.
But I know his reputation. The corporate fixer who shows up when companies want problems erased.
He’s rumored to have ties to private security firms, offshore accounts, and legal teams that crush whistleblowers like bugs under a shoe.
A few months ago, a source slid his name into my notes with shaking hands and said, “If you find Grant in the paper trail, walk away.”
I didn’t.
Now he’s sitting ten feet from me in the dark, relaxed like he’s in the back of a town car, not a kidnapping van.
My stomach churns with a sick, twisted satisfaction. One of my leads was real. One of my instincts was right. That should feel like victory. Instead it feels like a death sentence.
Grant turns further, and the dashboard light catches his face. Clean-cut. Expensive coat. Hair perfect. Eyes cold and amused. He studies me like I’m an object he’s deciding whether to keep.
“Well,” he says softly, “you’re persistent.”
I spit blood and saliva onto the floor by his shoes, because I refuse to give him a polite response.
One of the men at my side jerks my arm painfully. “Watch it.”
Grant lifts a hand. “Easy. She’s earned her attitude.”
I glare at him, breathing hard. “Where’s Sin?”
Grant’s smile barely shifts. “The bodyguard?”
“He has a name,” I snap.
“Does he,” Grant says, as if the concept is adorable. “He’ll recover. The gas was unpleasant, but effective. Your lover interfered. That was inconvenient.”
My pulse spikes. “Lover?”
Grant’s eyes flick over me. “Don’t pretend. You’re glowing with it.”
My throat tightens, and I hate that he can see anything. I hate that he’s reading me like a file he already opened.
“Did you take him?” I demand.
Grant looks bored for half a second. “No. We didn’t need him.”
Relief hits me so hard it makes me dizzy. Then dread follows right behind it. If they didn’t need him, then they didn’t care if he lived. I swallow hard. “You’re making a mistake.”
Grant laughs softly. “That’s what everyone says.”
“You don’t understand what you’ve done,” I say, voice shaking with anger now. “You think you can scare me into shutting up. You think you can make me disappear.”
Grant’s eyes sharpen. “You were already disappearing. You just didn’t know it.”
My stomach drops. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Grant says, voice almost gentle, “that your boss did what he was told. He contained you. He tried to redirect you. When that failed, he helped us locate you. And now you’re contained.”
I lunge forward as far as the men holding me will allow. “Randy didn’t contain me. He betrayed me.”
Grant’s expression doesn’t change. “Betrayal is such an emotional word. He made a choice. We gave him options. He chose himself.”
I grit my teeth. “He’ll burn for it.”
Grant smiles. “Perhaps. But not today.”
The van takes a hard turn, and I slam against the side wall. My shoulder protests with a sharp pain. A man grips me tighter, fingers digging into muscle. I fight the nausea rising in my throat, forcing my mind to focus.
Airport.
Grant’s presence, the direction we’re heading, the way he said “contained.” They’re taking me out.
If I go on a plane, I’m gone. No cell signal.
No cameras I can access. No familiar roads.
No chance of slipping into a crowd. Once the wheels leave the ground, I will become a missing person file.
If I’m lucky. If I’m unlucky, I’ll become nothing at all.
The van slows, then turns again. Light flashes through the windows. A gate. A guard booth. The sound of a code being punched in.
My mouth goes dry. We’re at an airfield. A private one.
The van rolls forward and stops. The door slides open, and cold night air floods in, sharp and salty.
I blink against the sudden light from the tarmac.
A small private jet sits ahead, stairs down, engine humming.
Its windows are dark. My knees threaten to buckle as they haul me out. I dig my heels in.
“Don’t,” I rasp.
A man yanks my arm. “Move.”
I twist, fighting, and catch Grant’s eye. “You’re going to regret this,” I say, voice hoarse.
Grant steps closer, calm as a man ordering room service. “Regret is for people with consequences.”
He leans in slightly. “You should have written a softer story, Ms. Sands. Something safe. Something pretty.”
My chest burns. “The truth isn’t safe.”
His smile is thin. “No. It’s expensive.”
They drag me toward the plane. The tarmac is wide and open.
No one else in sight except the men around me.
The air smells like jet fuel and night wind.
The runway lights glow distant and indifferent.
I scan for exits, for hiding places, for anything.
There’s nowhere to go. One of the men pushes me up the stairs.
I stumble, catch myself, and a wave of despair hits so hard I almost choke.
I think of Sin. The way he looked at me in the safe house kitchen, tired but steady. The way he kissed me like he hated himself for wanting it. The way his arms felt around me when I woke up, safe and warm, like nothing could hurt me. The way he said, Nobody touches you.
I swallow hard, throat thick. Maybe he’ll come.
Maybe he’ll track us. Maybe Cal’s team will follow the lead.
But hope feels thin out here, stretched over miles of darkness and corporate money.
I’ve seen what money does. It buys silence.
It buys lies. It buys time. It buys graves.
And for the first time since this started, the fear isn’t just fear of dying.
It’s fear of never seeing him again. It’s fear of losing the one person who made me believe there might be an after.
I love him. The word sits heavy in my chest, shocking in its clarity. I love him, and I don’t even know what that means yet. I don’t know what we would have been when this ended. I don’t know if he would have stayed, or if his rules would have pushed him away.
But I could picture a life with him. Coffee in the morning. His quiet presence at my back. His smile that he pretends doesn’t exist. His hand on my waist as if he’s reminding me I’m real. I could picture it, and now it feels like a cruel joke.
They shove me toward the plane and I glance over my shoulder, hoping this won’t be it for me.
Sin, I think, fierce and desperate. Please be alive. Please be angry. And please come for me.