by Rachel Grant
Chase spoke to him through the headset. “What do you think they want with Maddie?”
“Either it has to do with her research into the Nielsens, or they want to stop us from going to the rally on Sunday.” After all, threatening Ava or Maddie was the only thing that would convince Josh to stand down.
Another wave of fear ripped through him. This wasn’t a combat mission with Keith and the rest of their SEAL team. This wasn’t a Raptor operation extracting hostages from places the US government couldn’t go. This was his family being targeted. “Tell me when you lay eyes on Ava.”
“Will do.” After a long silence, Chase spoke again. “Why was Maddie at the archives?”
“She said she wanted to look at property records. I don’t know why, but it has to do with her Kocher contract.”
It was his own damn fault he didn’t know why she was here. He’d ghosted her the day she’d been doxed. Now he didn’t know what was going on with her project.
He hadn’t known he was capable of being such a first-class asshole. He wasn’t even sure what had come over him, how he could dig in and sink so deep.
It made him realize he was neglecting his own mental health, pretending he didn’t have a problem, while Chase and Owen dealt with their issues openly and without shame.
He respected the hell out of both men and needed to tell them that. Later. After he had Maddie back in his arms.
He hit the gas, breaking several traffic laws as he wove through downtown streets heading to the nearest freeway entrance. But the map on the computer indicated the freeway was a traffic snarl of cars inching along, which meant whoever had taken Maddie hadn’t taken the freeway or they’d still be downtown. Portland on a Friday afternoon was a nightmare of gridlock.
He would stick to surface streets. If a cop stopped him, all the better. Then he’d have a car with sirens to run down Peyton Hoffman.
From the red dot on the map, Josh guessed the guy had a thirty-minute head start, but Hoffman probably hadn’t realized Maddie had a phone that could be tracked and was taking his time. After all, he didn’t want to draw attention from police.
Josh called Gretchen with his headset. “What kind of car does Peyton Hoffman drive? Did you get video of him in the garage?”
“There’s video of him rolling the cart through the garage and loading it in the trunk of a sedan.”
“Vehicle make and model?”
“We don’t have that. He parked as far from the cameras as possible, and it’s dark—it looks like the ceiling lights are out in that area.”
That made sense. Both Hoffmans worked security; they knew all the blind spots and how to make them wider by taking out lights. Their caution told Josh the men weren’t fools. They might have seized a surprising opportunity, but they’d been methodical in execution.
“No hope you got a license plate, then?”
“None. We can’t even be sure of the color, but it’s dark—gray, maybe blue.”
“Do you have a vehicle on file for him?”
“Yes. A red pickup truck.”
“Thanks, Gretchen.”
“Mr. Warner,” she said, reverting to his last name for the first time since they’d met this morning. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand the seriousness of this earlier. I spoke before it really sank in what had happened.”
“Thank you, Gretchen. Duly noted.” Josh had no idea if he’d take this job with Nielsen or not, but if he did, this apology told him it would be possible to have a decent working relationship with the woman who ran the front desk during primary business hours.
He clicked off from the call and tapped the gas, darting between vehicles and earning honks from other drivers, but his sole focus was catching up to Peyton Hoffman and Maddie.
He reached a six-lane highway and was able to push his speed up to seventy for short stretches as he darted and weaved.
Chase’s voice came over the headset. “Ava’s fine. She’s with me. She wants to talk to you.”
“Thank God. Tell her I can’t talk right now, but I love her. Pack our things and Maddie’s. We’ll move to another hotel until we can arrange a safe house for all of us.” He clicked off and pressed the accelerator again. Knowing Ava was safe freed up another part of his mind.
He was closing the distance between him and Hoffman.
“I’m coming for you, Maddie.” The words were a whisper. A solemn vow. “Believe in me. Hold on to hope. I will find you.”
22
The car took a sharp turn at speed, causing Maddie to bang her head on the rear panel as she was tossed about. The vehicle slowed, but the new road didn’t seem to be paved and was rutted with sizable potholes if the jerky motions of the car were any indication. She tried to brace herself in place with a hand pressed to the hood above her, one hand on the driver’s side panel, and her feet braced against the passenger side panel, but she was no match for a bumpy road and a speeding driver.
Where was he taking her, and why?
Had Josh even realized she was missing?
Josh. She’d turned him away when he apologized. She’d assumed they’d have time to work things out. Regret pummeled her along with the bumpy ride.
She tamped down those thoughts. She needed to focus on what she could do, not actions that were out of her hands.
She’d been in the trunk for at least an hour and thanked her decision to wear her grandmother’s watch for having any concept of time. Once she’d kicked out the taillight, allowing light to seep in, she’d contorted herself to put the antique wristwatch in the faint shine and read the tiny Roman numerals.
Her struggle to read the time had made her wonder where her glasses had gone. She’d worn them in the archives. Her vision was adequate without glasses—she had progressive lenses that she wore for driving and work situations like archives and creepy crypts—so she wasn’t crippled without them, but wondered if the archivist had taken them hoping to disable her with lack of vision.
And really, what was the purpose of all this? What did he hope to gain? Did he think no one would notice she was gone?
She’d been doxed after being photographed with Josh and Cliff. The article had mentioned her brother was Congressman Alan Tisdale. Could this have to do with Alan and his Senate run? Or was this about her work, or to stop Josh from doing his? If she was still missing on Sunday, would Josh and his team from Bond Ironworks be at the rally?
If it was to stop Josh, she hoped they failed. She didn’t want Josh to cave because of her. If he did, then Ava would be next. They’d go after everyone who mattered to him. Hell, they’d probably expand to Raptor as a whole, and Trina would be in danger too.
Well, that was a hornet’s nest they’d be sorry they stirred. Raptor was basically a private army of special forces operators, and from what Trina had told her, they protected their own.
She held on to that thought as the car bounced along the rutted road. Even if Josh didn’t claim her, Trina did. She was one of Raptor’s own by association. A close friend of the CEO’s wife.
She would survive this. She grabbed that hope and held on to it, envisioning it like a ball of blue fire she could hold in her hands, beautiful and light and warm.
If she was going to get through these next hours, she needed hope more than anything, because otherwise, she’d fall into panic.
The car came to an abrupt halt, and the hope slid from her grasp, no longer light and fire, but a slippery hand-caught fish determined to be free.
Had they arrived wherever it was they were going? What would happen to her now?
A car door opened and slammed. Footsteps sounded alongside the car.
As panic threatened to suffuse her, she remembered the plan she’d formed after she lost the tire iron, and found the trunk release. She might not have a weapon, but if she timed this right, she could still have the upper hand.
She had to act fast, before he realized what the broken taillight meant. As the footsteps reached the rear of the car, she pulled the cord
and shoved the hood up, then launched herself as best she could from her position on her back, thankful for the lessons she’d gotten on Sunday.
She cleared the trunk, and her body hit the archivist, causing him to fall back, but she couldn’t get her feet beneath her in time and stumbled to the ground.
He landed on his ass a few feet from her, glared at her, then seemed to remember the gun in his hand. He raised it, pointing the short barrel at her head.
The car was a dark gray Ford Taurus. Late model. In his first glimpse—miles before it turned off the highway and onto a rutted private road—even from a distance, he could see the right taillight was flapping in the wind, hanging by the thick connecting cable.
A quick call to Gretchen confirmed that the taillight had been intact in the garage video. They didn’t have footage of the vehicle leaving the parking garage because, not surprisingly, the camera monitoring the employee section had been shut off at the source. Karl had probably disabled it when he did his rounds in the garage about twenty minutes before his brother arrived.
It appeared the Hoffman brothers expected to get away with this crime and had covered their tracks accordingly. They’d probably planned to plant Maddie’s phone in her hotel room and make it look like she’d disappeared from there. No one had expected Josh to discover her missing so soon—nor had they expected her to have Josh’s phone—which begged the question, did they somehow know that Maddie and Josh had been estranged this week, or did they just assume Josh would focus on his job of going over all the building systems and not pay attention to Maddie’s presence in the building?
Whatever their thoughts had been, they’d been careful, but fools to think Josh wouldn’t check on Maddie.
Once he’d seen the dangling taillight, he’d dropped back, trying to figure out what to do. He could hardly ram the car with Maddie in the trunk, and any maneuver designed to run Hoffman off the road could injure her. She might still be bound, but she had enough movement to kick out the taillight.
His Maddie was brave and smart. She had to be utterly terrified, but she’d been able to take action anyway.
Now that the car had left the highway, he had to wonder if Hoffman had spotted Josh on his tail, or if his destination was at the end of the road. The map offered little information, but the team at Raptor were diving into their databases and digging up what they could.
Josh turned onto the road and tucked his vehicle into the trees while he waited for intel. Chasing Hoffman down the road blindly could get Maddie killed.
Police were scrambling to join this hunt, but they wouldn’t come sirens blaring. No one wanted to tip off Hoffman unnecessarily. That could turn into a standoff. Better to catch the asshole unaware and extract Maddie, then arrest Peyton Hoffman.
Maddie came first. The hostage always came first.
“Okay, Warner,” a tech at Raptor HQ said, “it appears the road connects up with an old logging road that may or may not be passable. If it is, it in turn connects to a road on the other side of the foothill and meets up with a highway that offers a straight shot to the coast or north to the Columbia.”
“Logging road,” Josh said, repeating the word that had stuck out in his mind. “When was it logged?”
“Decades ago, as far as we can tell. It was replanted but never harvested again because the logging company went bankrupt.”
“Who owns the land now?”
“The state, I think, but only parts. It was checkerboarded.”
Josh knew about checkerboarding from growing up near a reservation in eastern Oregon. The government kept some parcels, and either the tribe or railroad or logging companies got the rest.
“How much you wanna bet the logging company was a subsidiary of Kocher Lumber Mills?” Josh said.
“I don’t have that information,” the tech said, “but I wouldn’t bet against you.”
If Kocher’s family once owned this land, Troy would have old maps and data. He might even know of old abandoned—or not abandoned—buildings that were perfect for White Patriot meetings.
Had Peyton Hoffman led them right to the heart of the White Patriot group?
Why bring Maddie here?
Josh stared at the red dot on the satellite map in the middle of a sea of evergreens, no hint of road visible from space. “The car has stopped,” he noted aloud.
“Yeah. Thirty seconds in the same spot. Could be a big pothole he can’t get around.”
“Or they’ve arrived at their destination.” His gut churned. He had a feeling this stop wasn’t good for Maddie.
On the screen, the red dot disappeared.
Shit. What happened to the signal?
“I’m going in,” he said.
“The police ordered you to wait and let them handle it.”
“Duly noted.” It was the tech’s job to remind him of legalities. Covering Raptor’s ass. Right now, Josh only cared about one thing: Maddie.
He hit the gas. The Taurus was a mile and a half down the rutted road. It would take several minutes to drive that distance in these conditions. He shouldn’t have played by the rules and waited for so long to follow.
Maddie was in trouble. He knew it just like he knew Earth was round. Like he knew he was falling in love with her. The feeling went all the way to his bones.
And he might have hesitated too long. With his heart and with her life.
“Get up and start walking, bitch.” The archivist’s eyes were hard and angry, and Maddie had no doubt he wanted to pull the trigger.
What had she done to make him so angry? Aside from knocking him to the ground, of course. But he’d drugged and abducted her, so he really didn’t have room to complain about that.
She rose to her feet slowly. Resisting his commands would only hurt her. She’d bide her time, look for an opportunity. Maybe she could get her hands on a branch or a rock and bash him in the head.
He gestured with the gun toward a path that disappeared into the forest. “Walk.”
“Where are we going?”
“The fuck away from here. Your Jew boy managed to track us. You weren’t supposed to have a fucking phone.”
He must’ve had her purse with him in the car and found it. That would explain his anger. “Your anti-Semitism is showing,” she said.
“Like I give a damn.”
“How long have you worked in Nielsen’s archives?”
He let out a bark of a laugh. “You still think I’m the dumbass archivist? Hell no, that twat is a fucking—” He used a slur no white person should ever say.
This man owned his racism in a chilling, outward way that triggered primal fear. He had no pretense to uphold, which made her think he didn’t plan for her to live through this. He probably expected to get away with the abduction altogether. But Josh had given her his phone, and Raptor had tracked them.
That meant help was coming.
But it also meant whoever this man was, he needed to get rid of her. And they were heading deep into an overgrown forest. She stumbled as her heels caught on a root.
“Take your shoes off.”
“No,” she said. The shoes were terrible for walking in, but bare feet would be worse.
He gripped her arm and swung her around to face him, then backhanded her. Her head snapped to the side as pain exploded across her cheek. “I said, take your fucking shoes off.”
She was dizzy, her head swimming, likely from the combination of blow to the face and whatever drug he’d put in the coffee. She needed to clear her head. Plan.
Josh was on his way. The closer she stayed to the car, the faster he’d find her. Her blurry gaze landed on her feet and the prints in the dirt. Her heels left distinct tracks in the woods. Plus they slowed her walking.
She remembered what the instructors had said about taking blows at the rally—that part of the lesson hadn’t been for her and Ava, but she’d listened just the same.
She pressed a hand to her throbbing face, then spit on him. “And I said no.”
&
nbsp; He backhanded her again, and this time, she moved with the blow as she’d been trained, letting it knock her to her ass.
They were only a hundred feet from the car. Josh was coming. He would find her.
“Get up and walk.”
Maddie reached for a thick branch, at least five feet long, that lay on the ground just inches from her hand.
A kick to her ribs sent her face-first into the ground. “Leave it and get up.”
“I need it. It’s the perfect size for a walking stick. I’ll be able to walk faster in the heels with support. Barefoot or in heels, I can’t walk fast in this forest.”
He glared at her, but finally said, “Fine. No sudden moves.”
No worries there. Her goal was to move as slowly as possible. She’d move backward if she could get away with it.
She clutched her ribs as she got to her feet. In truth, they didn’t hurt much—he’d likely muted the blow because he feared disabling her. She might not be tall, but she was solid, with more pounds than her small frame needed. Even a man at peak strength like Josh would have trouble hauling her on the uneven terrain, and this man looked strong, but he wasn’t in Josh’s league.
With her right hand, she planted the stick in the ground, testing the feel of it. It was a little heavy and thick for a walking stick, but just right for a club. She broke off a few thin branches that jutted out, hoping they’d leave nice, sharp barbs on the shaft. Slowly, she walked, planting the stick, then moving her feet, as if she’d been injured by her fall and his kick, when really, it was her cheek that still stung from being backhanded. The rest of her was fine.
“Get moving!” her abductor said.
She picked up her pace a little. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“None of your fucking business.”
“Actually, I think it is, considering the situation.”
He just grunted.
“How did you know we were tracked?”
He was silent a moment, then he said, “Warner said he gave you his phone, and the other Raptor guy was able to track you with it.”
