Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
Where the hell was she?
Josiah stared from the empty closet to the scattered piles of sheets, blankets, pillows, and towels. There was nowhere else she could be and yet his mind seemed to refuse to accept that.
She was supposed to be there.
She’d promised she’d be there.
It was practically the last words he’d spoken to her.
Yet she was nowhere to be seen.
A horrifying thought seeped into his mind, and barely aware of the shouting voices of the SEAL team, he took off at a dead run to the room he’d shared with Chelsea.
Just an hour ago he was lying in bed, her warm, soft body snuggled against his side, not hating the idea of being married to her anywhere near as much as he should.
She could have been …
No.
He couldn’t allow himself to think it.
And yet … the alarm in Dr. Gant’s room had gone off less than fifteen minutes after he’d left their room. Fifteen minutes was the agreed-upon time for Chelsea to sneak out and hide in the linen closet.
Which meant she could have still been in the room when the guards had fired those shots.
If she were dead, he was going to rain down punishment on this ring the likes they couldn’t even comprehend.
Flinging open the door, his gaze drove straight toward the bed. She couldn’t be lying dead there, bleeding out like his team had. He couldn’t lose another person he cared about.
Couldn’t.
Was as simple as that.
There was no lump in the bed that indicated a body beneath the covers. He scanned the room because Chelsea shouldn’t have been in the bed anyway when the door was opened and a shot fired.
But there was no body anywhere in the room.
No puddles of blood.
Nothing.
It appeared empty.
If Chelsea had heard the shots, maybe she’d had time to hide before they’d come into the room. Running for the bathroom, he threw on the lights, scanned the room, but it was empty too.
Unable to stop, the need to find Chelsea so strong he could barely breathe, he turned back to the bedroom and began tearing it apart. Every cover stripped off the bed, he checked under it and in the closet, but Chelsea wasn't anywhere to be found.
“Don’t think she’s here, brother,” Rocco said, his voice far too calm for Josiah’s liking.
“Then where the hell is she?” he roared again.
“She wasn't in here when the shots were fired,” Gumby said from the bed. The man had picked up some of the covers Josiah had thrown on the ground, and he was sticking his fingers through two holes.
Bullet holes.
Ace knelt and picked up one of the pillows, pulling out some of the stuffing through another bullet hole. “Two shots. They thought you were both in here.”
“Means your cover wasn't broken,” Phantom added. “If they knew it was you two specifically, they would have made sure you were both dead. Instead, it looks like they just opened the door and fired head shots and chest shots, then moved on to the next room.”
“No signs of a struggle either,” Gumby added, dropping the blanket back onto the bed.
“So I don’t think they shot, realized she wasn't in the bed, saw her, and then tried to grab her.
If they tried, she would have gone down swinging.
Besides, if she hadn't been in the bed, they likely would have just shot her.”
“I don’t think Chelsea was in this room when they fired the shots,” Ace agreed.
“She was supposed to hide in the linen closet, that was the plan,” he muttered as though repeating it might make it more true. It was obvious that Chelsea had disregarded the plan, but that didn't help him figure out where she was.
“What would make her change her mind?” Rocco asked.
Josiah just shrugged as he paced anxiously around the room.
The fear brewing inside him was too much, and add in anger that Chelsea might have decided to just walk out of there, knowing the risks, knowing it would kill him to lose her, and he was pretty close to losing his tentative grip on control.
“There has to be something,” Rocco pushed. “Chelsea is a smart woman. She’s not reckless, and she cares about you. If you two had worked out your plan, she wouldn't have done something different unless she had to.”
“What would she have done if she realized what the guards were doing?” Ace asked.
“Hidden,” he said immediately. She had no weapon, so it was really her only option.
“If they were going room to room, they had to have used a silencer, though. Otherwise, they would have set off a panic, had frantic couples running everywhere. Unless Chelsea was already in the hall when the shots were fired, I doubt she would have realized anything was wrong. Even if she’d hidden when the door opened, she wouldn't have just gone running off.
If she was looking for a place to hide, then she had one.
The linen closet. Only we all saw she wasn't in it.”
They were going in circles and not doing anything to find Chelsea.
She had to be somewhere.
“Has Desiree Tilly been located yet?” Josiah asked.
“No,” Rocco replied. “Alpha Team is rounding up all the medical personnel. We took out the guards on the way in. They might have been able to shoot sleeping people, but give them people who shoot back and they were useless.”
“Could Chelsea have gone looking for you?” Gumby asked.
“She knew to hide until I came to her,” he answered. “I know she wanted to do more, but she understood that without a weapon there wasn't much she could do. She didn't like the plan, but she wouldn't have just thrown it away for no reason.”
“Yet she’s not in the room or the closet,” Ace said, stating the obvious and holding up his hands, palms out in a placating gesture when Josiah growled at him.
“I know, dude. You're scared. But she has to be here somewhere. Like Rocco said, Chelsea is smart, whatever she did, she did for a reason. All we have to do is figure out what that reason is.”
Dragging his fingers through his hair, Josiah stormed over to the window, trying to rack his brain to figure out something that would have been so important to Chelsea that she would abandon their plans, knowing he’d be terrified for her when he got to the closet and didn't find her waiting in it.
“You said that so far Desiree Tilly hasn’t been found,” he said.
“Right,” Rocco agreed.
“But you took out the guards, and Alpha Team is dealing with the medical personnel,” he said, more to himself this time than the others.
“Guards started shooting at us as soon as we approached the mansion. Rex and Bubba are still clearing rooms, but we haven’t had a chance to check every single place someone could hide. If Chelsea felt the linen closet had been compromised, she could be anywhere in here,” Gumby said.
Actually, he wasn't so sure Chelsea was anywhere in the mansion.
The guys were right, something had Chelsea change course tonight.
While Chelsea was smart, she had one pretty big weakness. Her heart. She loved too much sometimes, cared too much.
Desiree Tilly couldn’t be in the mansion because if she was, the guys would already have her in custody. That meant she had to be in another property on the estate because both he and Chelsea had seen her with their own eyes.
There was only one thing he could think of that would draw Chelsea out of the relative safety of the mansion and the linen closet.
“The little girl,” he murmured, his gaze landing on the maze.
“What girl?” Ace asked.
“Bridget Tilly. Chelsea would leave for the kid,” he explained.
He’d told Chelsea that one day her big heart could get her into trouble, and he’d been right.
Instead of being safe with him right now, surrounded by an entire team of SEALs, she was out there somewhere.
“That doesn’t help us find her, though.”
Chelsea would absolutely have risked her safety for the little girl, but how would she know where to look for the kid? What would have made her think that the child needed her?
It was only because he was still staring out the window at the maze down below, trying to figure out what could have led Chelsea to think that Bridget needed her, that he saw it.
Light.
In the maze.
Yesterday, Chelsea had spent hours staring down at that maze, hoping for a glimpse of Bridget’s mother. If she’d been staring out the window tonight, she might have spotted the little girl looking for a safe place to hide when the shooting started.
“I know where she is,” he announced, already running for the door, desperate to get to his girl, because the head of the trafficking ring was still out there and Chelsea had gone after the woman’s daughter.
May 18th
1:35 A.M.
Chelsea waited for the burning pain.
While she’d never been shot before, that’s what she imagined it would feel like.
Like someone had sent a flaming projectile searing through your flesh.
Well, that basically was what was happening, the bullet might not be on fire, but its temperature after being shot simulated that same sort of heat.
Only no white-hot agony ever came.
Glancing down at herself, Chelsea didn't see any dark red blood glistening in the beam of the flashlight, and …
The flashlight.
It was now on the ground, and so was Desiree Tilly.
That made no sense. She didn't have a gun, she hadn't fired any shots, the only one with a weapon was Desiree. Had the woman shot herself?
About to take a step forward, Chelsea froze when she saw it.
Another shadowy figure.
Harsh breathing and a borderline hysterical giggle cut through the deathly silence.
“That felt really good,” a scratchy voice spoke, and the figure stepped closer into the beam of the flashlight now lying on the ground by Desiree’s presumably dead body.
With the light illuminating the other person, Chelsea sucked in a breath when she recognized them. It was the woman. The one who had been chosen as her donor. The woman they’d seen tied to the bed, with the ball gag in her mouth, shooting daggers at them with her eyes.