Chapter 53 Borrow Her
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Borrow Her
HENRY
Her thin cry was like a dagger to the heart. I forced back the wave of panic at how weak it sounded and raced in that direction, the phone-torch zigzagging the hallway, light licking the closed doors of once-luxury hotel rooms.
Two down, there was one door sitting ajar.
“Should we take this a bit—”
I ignored River, shoving the door open with so much strength it crashed against the wall inside.
My phone beamed into the space, landing on a pair of pale legs …
Ri’s legs. Tremors in my hands, I trailed the torch up, up her body, tied immobile to a chair in the dark room.
The light caught on a blood smear at the neckline of her pale pink oversized T-shirt. My heart stopped.
“Ri!” I gasped, staggering inside. My wife was a mess. The blood was on her neck and chin too. She flinched from the harsh light, eyes squeezed shut as the torch hit her face.
Where had the blood come from? My heartbeat thundered in my ears as I took two teetering steps towards her. “Ri … can you—”
“Take another step, and I shoot.”
Only then I registered the glint of metal—a gun—pressed to her temple. With a sinking heart I recognised that voice and pointed the torch at him.
“Atlas …” The word tore from my lungs, taking with it the piece of me that had been concerned for this man.
“Been worried about me, have you?” Atlas scoffed. “I listened to your frantic voicemails. It must get fucking exhausting, always taking responsibility for others.”
I kept my eyes locked on the gun at Ri’s head.
“Put the gun down, Atlas,” My voice was as calm as my thundering heart, my too-tight chest, the tension seizing every muscle in my body would allow.
“Yeah, nah, I don’t think I will,” he replied conversationally. “Not until I get what I need from you. It didn’t have to come to this, but you’ve forced my hand, Chewy.”
White-hot rage almost blinded me. How could he so casually drop his nickname for me while he threatened my wife?
Don’t lose your cool. Keep your wits about you. Get her safe. That’s all that matters.
“What do you want?” I asked through gritted teeth, fingers pulsing in and out of fists by my sides. “Is this about the algo?”
Atlas grinned, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Bingo. You give me the decryption key to the algorithm, and I won’t shoot your mail-order bride.”
Ri let out a whimper.
“It’s okay, Catnip,” I reassured her with as much confidence as I could muster.
“Just hold tight. I won’t let him hurt you.
” I lifted my attention to Atlas. “Does our silent partner really want it so badly you’d stoop to threats of murder, Atlas?
” I was shocked at how steady my voice was.
But my brain was ticking. I could fix this so everyone walked away from this with what they wanted.
Or at least thinking they had what they wanted. Atlas might be desperate, but he wasn’t canny.
Atlas scoffed. “They couldn’t care less, as long as the Tickle numbers keep growing.” Atlas caressed Ri’s head. She flinched, a weak yelp erupting from her.
A head injury.
Fuck. I didn’t have time to stall him. I needed to get her to the mainland. With my phone still trained on them, I surreptitiously opened my text thread, thumb flying over the screen.
Henry: Get a chopper out here immediately!
I hoped that Lucian would obey. It was a two-hour flight from the mainland. Four hours at best until I could get Ri medical care. She looked woozy, pale and unwell. Would she even last that long?
I had to believe she would.
“… when Dorian and Jules could make us so much more money selling that algo to every social media platform around the world?” Atlas asked, and despite having missed the first half of the question, I balked.
“What? SynAPPsee?” I spluttered. “They’re the ones you’re trying to get it for?”
Atlas rolled his eyes. “You never thought big enough, mate. We’re sitting on potentially the most profitable code ever written, and you want to hoard it for our silly little porn app?
Be fucking for real. I could have cut you in on the deal, but you never showed any interest in growing beyond Tickle.
So …” He caressed Ri’s temple with the gun.
Her eyes squeezed shut, and I ached to run to her, to shove him away from her, to take her in my arms and make all of this go away.
He could kill her before I took so much as a step. I locked myself to the spot.
“So, I give you the decryption information, and you let her go.”
He grinned. “That’s the spirit! Now, just let me get Beau on the phone. He’s sitting at home on his laptop, waiting for me to call in with the details.”
Beau. I should have known. I should have fired him weeks ago. But it wouldn’t have stopped Atlas from this insanity, anyway. This was all him.
“Ri … are you okay?” I asked as Atlas fumbled with his phone.
“No.” Her voice was barely more than a breath of air. “I feel …” Her eyes slid shut, her head lolling to the side.
“She’s fainted! She needs medical attention!”
“She’s fine, she’s been doing that on and off all evening. She’ll wake up again soon.” His dismissive tone filled me with sick fury, but there was nothing I could do—not while he had a gun to her head.
Better a slowly progressing head injury than a bullet through the brain, I told myself through the waves of anxiety.
“Beau!” Atlas crowed, holding his phone in front of him. “Henry’s here, and he’s ready to play nice. What do you need from him?”
The line crackled. “I … uh … hi Henry. I just need the decryption key. It’s probably easiest if you text it to me, so I can copy paste.”
“I’ll send it via CatChat,” I muttered, fingers a blur on the screen. What I was about to do was so inherently risky … but wasn’t this the exact reason I’d set up encryption on the algorithm to begin with?
“Done.” I swiped out of the app, my phone torch still trained on Ri. Her chest was rising and falling. As long as she was breathing, there was hope. “You can untie her now.”
Atlas tsked. “Let’s not be too hasty. Ri’s staying right where she is until Beau confirms he’s been able to access the algo.” Atlas scooped his hand under Ri’s chin, lifted her head until he could look down at her face. “See, she’s so unfazed by all this she’s literally sleeping through it.”
My vision blurred, the burning in my lungs begging me to hyperventilate. I sucked in a deep breath through my nose, squeezing my fists and counting my inhale. If there ever was a time to use all the simple strategies for preventing overwhelm that I’d learnt in primary school, now was it.
“Got it!” Beau cried through the crackly phone connection.
“Perfect. Send it to Dorian.” Atlas hung up the phone, smirking. I bit the inside of my cheek. There were so many things I was desperate to say to Atlas, but none of them mattered.
Only Ri mattered.
He lowered the gun, releasing Ri’s face. Her head lolled forwards, her neck at a painful angle. I lurched towards her, my phone falling from my grasp, clattering to the floor. Dropping to my knees in front of the chair, I cupped her face in my hands. Her eyelids fluttered, and my heart stopped.
“Ri … Catnip, can you—”
“Now, this is a bit presumptuous of you, Chewy.”
The barrel of that gun pressed between my eyes, forcing me back onto my heels. My hands slipped from her cheeks. My heart dropped deep into my abdomen as her chin fell back to her chest.
“I promised I’d let her go. I didn’t promise that I’d let her go with you.” In the dark, I could barely make out his face above me. Panic gripped me. He wouldn’t shoot me. Not when he thought he had exactly what he wanted from me.
“Atlas … let’s just think about this rationally,” River’s voice rang out from behind us, and torchlight spilled into the room. I’d forgotten about him out in the hallway the second I’d clapped eyes on Ri.
“Well, hello River. Of course you’d be here.
You’ve hitched your washed-up YouTuber arse to a billionaire in search of your next big thing,” Atlas sneered.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to do away with your meal ticket.
Henry will walk out of here unharmed. Everyone will, as long as you’re all compliant. ”
Ri wouldn’t. The only thing holding her upright was the ropes snaked around her middle. I choked back a scream.
“Irina’s lovely fiancé will make sure she’s well taken care of.”
“Don’t you mean husband?” River asked, perplexed.
Atlas shook his head. “Seems like Irina’s been playing her own little game of why choose. You see, she was already engaged to someone else when she married Henry. C?lin, you can come out now!”
The creak of a door, and I lifted my gaze as a middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair and a neat beard appeared in the torch glow like a leading man taking the spotlight. He smirked down at me.
“No hard feelings, youngster,” he said in heavily accented English. “But I need Irina to come home with me.”
He clicked his fingers, and another man appeared. My chest constricted when I recognised Cockerels Cap. I gaped as he worked to untie the ropes binding Ri to the chair. So Ri had been right. He hadn’t been working for Rumi when she saw them together. No. He’d been employed by someone far worse.
“Thanks for letting me borrow her, C?lin mate,” Atlas said, the gun still grazing my forehead. “I got—”
“Let’s get one thing straight, you pathetic little man,” C?lin growled. “I am not your mate. I will never be your mate. And you remember that you owe me.”
Atlas was silent, but the gun shook against my head. I tried to take a slow, steadying breath, but my trachea felt like it was the diameter of a pin.
C?lin turned back to Cockerels Cap, who had extricated Irina from the ropes, holding her dead weight against his chest. “Take her to the helicopter pad; I’ve organised our transport back to the airport.”
A surge of adrenaline pulsed through me.