by Rachel Grant
Josh had spent his whole life regretting where he came from and believing he couldn’t have a relationship because he’d repeat the patterns of his father and brother. He’d spent his adult years wishing he could fix his brother and childhood years wanting to save his mother. He probably even wanted to fix his father, but he’d always known he was a lost cause. Still, Josh had blamed himself for those failures.
He’d found himself in the Navy and the SEALs. Hell, he had an ego as big as any of them, but ego wasn’t the same as centeredness, and Maddie was a perfect dot in the middle of the most perfect sphere.
He didn’t deserve her. Not at all. But he wanted her just the same, and for once in his life, he wasn’t going to get in his own way. Or, at least, he’d stop getting in his own way, considering he’d already screwed up royally. But he’d get her back. Convince her he was worthy, even though he didn’t believe it.
All those years he’d thought he was in love with Trina? That had been a fantasy. He’d idealized her in the extreme, probably because she was unobtainable.
Safe.
She couldn’t reject him, so he could never be hurt.
Plus, since he couldn’t have her, he could never hurt her. Not in the way Ari hurt Lori or his father hurt his mother.
And those feelings for Trina were nothing compared to how Josh felt about the very human and attainable Maddie.
He walked two more floors, noting potential security flaws, getting the vibe of the employees and building. He’d bring in ten guys to do the initial security work, then slowly roll in new hires as they worked out the kinks and patched the holes.
There were a ridiculous number of holes in this company’s security. Josh had managed to hack the computer system on his lunch break, which meant they’d have to start with a tech upgrade. He’d get Mothman here to comb through the system and weed out the backdoors. They’d standardize the name badges and RFID tags. Get rid of the app that unlocked doors and allowed elevator access to the upper floors. The app was a piece of crap that could be hacked by a bored fifteen-year-old or a security consultant while enjoying a pastrami on rye.
Simon Barstow and Apex had gotten dangerously lax. No wonder C-IV wanted a new private security firm. Josh might even be able to poach a few of Apex’s better employees in the process. They weren’t all bad, and Josh needed guards who knew the building and business.
Rav and Keith would get a kick out of that, after all the employees Barstow had poached from the Alaska compound a few years ago. Turnabout was fair play.
Josh glanced at the floor number. Twenty-one, at last. He couldn’t suppress a smile as he walked the floor as he had all the others. When he reached the archive suite, he came to a dead stop.
The lights behind the glass panels that flanked the door were off. The room was dark.
Closed-for-business dark.
Maddie couldn’t have left. She still had his phone. She could be waiting for him in the lobby, but Chase would have spotted her and radioed. Unless she gave Chase the phone and took off?
Which was entirely possible. Even reasonable.
But his gut offered up a hard no.
The back of his neck tingled. There was something off here. He’d entered the archives, and the guy behind the desk—who must be the archivist—had immediately turned, dropped his head. Like he was grabbing something behind the counter that was urgent.
What the hell could be urgent for a guy whose job it was to guard boxes of old papers? Had he been hiding his face?
And why the hell hadn’t Josh picked up on that before?
Because his focus had been on how good Maddie’s ass looked in that pantsuit, and he’d never considered a pantsuit hot before. He’d screwed up because he was thinking with the wrong head.
He tapped his headset to make a private call to Chase. “Chase, has Maddie passed through the lobby in the last hour?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Check and see if her phone is in the safe at the check-in desk.”
“Will do.”
Josh swiped his key card through the reader to unlock the door. He had a master key that would open every door except C-IV’s office. He’d get that key once he was officially hired.
The door didn’t unlock.
He swiped it again. Nothing.
He radioed Gretchen at the front desk. “My master key isn’t unlocking the archives.”
“That’s odd. It should work.”
Worry coursed through him, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from snapping at her. “Unlock it from the console. Use the emergency code.”
“I’m not authorized to do that unless it’s an actual emergency.”
“It is an emergency.”
“Mr. Warner, I know you might take over security, but you aren’t in charge yet, and I would be remiss in my job if I unlock that door without proper authorization. For all I know, this could be some sort of test you’ve devised and if I open the door, I fail.”
She wasn’t wrong. Dammit.
“Josh,” Chase said, “I’m at the desk, and Maddie’s phone isn’t here.”
To Gretchen, Josh asked, “Did Madeline Foster collect her phone and sign out?”
Her words sounded as if they were directed at Chase, but she answered his question just the same. “She must’ve taken it, because it’s not here.”
“But the log doesn’t show her signature. That scribble could be anything. Did you give her the phone?” Chase asked.
“She must’ve gotten it when I was on break. One of the security guards covered the front desk.”
“Who?” Josh asked.
“Karl Hoffman.”
“Where is Hoffman now? I need to talk to him.”
“His shift was over when my break ended. He left.”
Josh wanted to bash his head against the wall. He tried his key one more time in the reader. Nothing. He turned and bolted for the elevator, choosing the service one because it was closer and faster with less traffic.
Two minutes later, he was in the lobby. He went straight into the security room behind the front desk and shouted orders. “I want to see video feed for the twenty-first floor for the last hour, and the front desk for the same time period.”
The man monitoring the bank of screens cocked his head. “Is this some sort of test?”
“No. Every camera on twenty-one. From the moment I left Madeline Foster in the archives, on the left bank of monitors. The front desk and lobby entrance for the last hour on the right.”
“I’ll watch the front desk videos,” Chase said.
Josh watched six screens while Chase watched four.
“Pause front desk,” Chase said, adding, “Hoffman is alone at the desk.”
“Pause all screens,” Josh said so he could watch the video of Karl Hoffman. “Rewind front desk to when Hoffman first takes over.”
They watched the video at triple speed. A few minutes after Gretchen left, Hoffman reached under the desk and remained bent over long enough to retrieve something from the safe.
“He took the phone,” Chase said.
Josh nodded. “And there, he’s scribbling on the tablet, logging her out.”
“Resume twenty-first floor feed.” Several minutes in, the video showed the archivist pushing a cart carrying a giant box through the entrance to the archive. Cameras tracked his progress to the same freight elevator Josh had taken minutes ago. His entire body went cold. “Maddie’s in that box.” He turned to see Gretchen in the doorway. “What can you tell me about the archivist?”
She stepped closer to the screen. “For starters, that’s not the archivist. That’s Peyton Hoffman, another security guard. He’s Karl’s brother.” She shook her head. “Shit, I didn’t think Ben—the archivist—was working today. I was surprised when he responded to my message, agreeing to the appointment with Foster.”
“Were Karl or Peyton at the front desk when Maddie’s request to research in the archives came in?”
“Peyton wasn’
t working today.”
That explained why Josh hadn’t met him yet.
“But he looks familiar,” Chase said. “I’ve seen him before.”
“Was Karl at the desk?” Josh persisted.
The woman closed her eyes in thought; finally, she nodded. “I think so.”
“So Karl could have heard the request and sent his brother a message to come in and pretend to be the archivist for an hour. With his security credentials, he could breeze right through after Karl changed the access code to block my master key card from working on the archives.”
She nodded. “But why would he do that? What’s the point?”
“Josh,” Chase said, “I know why.” He held up his cell phone. On the screen was a news article about the White Patriots rally from weeks ago. Peyton Hoffman was right there, next to Troy Kocher.
21
Everything ached. Her head, her back, her hips. Why was she contorted into such a tight position?
Understanding came several steps slower than consciousness had.
She was in a box, if the scent of cardboard and the texture against her cheek were any indication. Her hands were bound. Zip tie? Maybe. It didn’t feel like metal or rope fiber.
Her feet were bound too, and the restraints for both were tied together at her front. She was trussed tight in a box, and the sounds and vibrations told her she was in a moving vehicle.
Panic swamped her the moment her brain wrapped around these facts. The archivist had drugged her, put her in a box, and now she was in a car going who knows where.
Why? What did he want with her?
Hundred-year-old land records weren’t this important.
She felt around in the box for her purse. It wasn’t there.
Damn. She had a pocket knife that would’ve made quick work of the ties.
At home, she had a bracelet she wore in the field, in case of emergencies. Braided paracord with tools hiding in the weave, including a razor blade.
If she survived today, she’d never take that damn bracelet off again.
Her eyes teared at that.
If I survive.
Another wave of panic hit. Breathe deep. One step at a time.
First, hurdle, the box.
She’d put on nice pumps to go with the pantsuit. They weren’t exactly stilettos, but the heels did have a reasonably narrow point.
Trussed as she was, she had to shift her entire body to get the leverage required to jab at the cardboard. It wasn’t an archive box—she was too large to fit in one of those—thankfully, because the cheap cardboard split easily.
She broke through the side, then wriggled and twisted until she was free of the box. The difference between inside and outside the box was minor, given she was in a pitch-black trunk.
But trunks also had tools in them. Jacks, tire irons. She could find them under the floorboard if she was lucky.
But first she needed to get untrussed. She felt along the seam of the trunk lid and the body of the car. There had to be some sharp edge somewhere. After a minute of rolling and slithering to get her hands and feet as close to the rear of the car as humanly possible, she found her edge. Plastic housing—maybe for the tire changing tools?—had cracked. It was just thick enough to have an edge to it and jagged enough to provide a hint of serration.
She ran her joined hands and feet over the spot, feeling the plastic on plastic catch. With the added tension of pulling the binding tight, it finally snapped under pressure.
She could now straighten her legs, almost full-length. Sometimes being short was convenient, like when trapped in the trunk of a moving vehicle.
She worked on her wrists next, but the jagged plastic was now worn down. She scooted back and tugged at the edge of the plastic housing, hoping to remove the cover to a cache of tools.
The car made a sharp turn, and she hit her head on the trunk lid. In grappling to steady herself, she caught the edge of the carpet beneath her, and it pulled free.
Under it, she felt a metal rod.
Pay dirt.
She managed to work it free even though it was partially beneath her and found herself the proud holder of a small crowbar-shaped tire iron, complete with a flat, sharp end for crowing. Or barring. Or prying.
She might use it for all of those things, but first, she’d use it for cutting.
With a real blade, it took only a moment to free hands and feet.
At last, she was unbound—still trapped, but no longer trussed—and she lay on her back in the trunk, gasping for breath, her body soaked in sweat.
She hadn’t even realized how hard she’d been breathing or how much she’d been sweating. But then, she was in an oven of a trunk. And she’d been drugged and abducted. So yeah, she was breathing and sweating like she’d just finished a marathon.
The problem was, she still had at least twenty-four more miles to run. This marathon wouldn’t be over until she was safe in her hotel room with several kinds of alcohol and five pounds of something chocolate.
She took several deep breaths as she tried to remember everything she’d ever heard about being trapped in a trunk. Like, wasn’t there an emergency latch to pull to open it? Weren’t they required by law?
Would opening the trunk help her? It felt like they were going fast. But how could she know? And what if she opened the trunk and there were no other cars around, no one to see her and call the police? The archivist would see the open trunk in the rearview, and she would have lost her chance to catch him off guard.
She struck “open the trunk with interior latch” from her list of actions. If the car stopped, she might add it back.
Next abduction fun fact: hadn’t she read somewhere that when abducted and in a trunk, kick out the taillights?
Drivers and passengers in the cars behind the abduction mobile might see the taillight fall out and realize what was happening. She had nothing to lose with that technique.
She groped the edges of the vehicle and found the housing that covered the taillight, and used the pry edge of the tire iron to remove it.
Someday—maybe tonight, maybe next week—she would have a full-on breakdown about this experience and the fear that threatened to swallow her.
But right this minute, she had to take it one panicked breath at a time. In through the nose, out through the mouth, try not to cry.
She would definitely cry later. She’d put a whole week of crying on her calendar. But right now, in the thick heat of the trunk, crying would paralyze her.
She jabbed at what she hoped and assumed was the taillight case with the tire iron.
Her hands hit the fresh broken plastic and sliced her skin. There was a reason kicking out the lights was recommended, but her shoes, while great for kicking through cardboard, weren’t up to the task of taking on plastic, metal, and wiring.
The short tire iron was her best bet.
The sound of plastic cracking and giving way was muted by the road noise. She hoped the sound was louder in the trunk than in the passenger area.
She paused. Many sedans these days had rear seats that folded down, allowing access to the trunk while inside. Could she slip through the opening and bash the archivist with the tire iron?
Considering she was in the moving vehicle too, that seemed like a risky move. And what if he wasn’t alone?
She returned to her task of destroying the taillight. Cutting her hands with abandon. Between her sweat and blood, her DNA was all over this trunk. It was a morbid, horrifying thought that her blood and sweat might be the only way she was identified when all this was over.
She bashed at the light with renewed vigor, and it popped free, opening a hole of light in the dark trunk. A hole through which the bloody, slick metal rod that was her only weapon slipped through and disappeared.
“Chase, use the Rap App to find Maddie’s phone.”
“Already on it,” Chase said, not looking up from the device in his hand. “Got it. The phone is…heading to our hotel.”
Jo
sh felt the blood drain from his body. Ava was there. Alone.
Chase met his gaze. “I’ll get Ava. You stay here and find Maddie.”
He closed his eyes. “Before you go, I need you to search for my phone.”
“Right. Thank God.” Chase must have realized why Josh was asking him to do all the searching. He tapped a few buttons and showed Josh the screen. “It appears you’re heading west, into wine country, or maybe the coast.”
He closed his eyes against the small wave of relief that it appeared she still had the phone. “That’s where I’ll find Maddie.”
Gretchen tilted her chin toward him. “Why does Miss Foster have your phone?”
“I gave it to her. She’s in danger after being doxed. Leaving her without a phone was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.”
“Bullshit. You gave her the phone so that she could take photos in the archives. When Mr. Nielsen learns of this, he won’t be pleased his new security team subverted his orders.”
“I don’t really give a damn, considering she was abducted from Nielsen’s archive and if I hadn’t given her the phone, we wouldn’t know where she is.” He turned to Chase. “Let’s go.”
On his way out the door, he said, “Gretchen, call the police and report Madeline Foster was abducted by White Patriots. Show them the videos. They’ll want to see video from the parking garage cameras too.” There was no way she could defy the order. Doing that would implicate her in the abduction, and he didn’t really believe she was involved.
He turned and ran for the parking garage. The only thing that mattered now was catching up to Peyton Hoffman and finding Maddie.
Chase took off in his rental car for the hotel, and Josh slid behind the driver’s seat of his Raptor SUV. He opened the Rap App on the dashboard computer and locked onto his phone, which was headed west outside the city, as Chase had said.
