11

by Kylie Brant

  Gawking at his things made her feel a bit like a voyeur so she hastily averted her eyes. She had to go far back to her late teens to remember the experience of waking up with another person. Sharing a room with him. A bathroom. The memory had a name. Kevin Burnett. A guy she’d met at MIT and had—for the briefest of time—fancied herself wildly in love with.

  The recollection was tangible but fuzzy at the edges, made so not just by the passage of years but of a lifetime. Mia shook her head as she rooted around in her pack for a different shirt. She could no longer imagine ever being that comfortable with someone. That emotionally intimate. Giving the bathroom door a quick visual check she replaced her shirt and briefly considered switching pants. Decided the pockets in the ones she wore were as handy as an extra purse.

  “Okay, all yours.”

  She swung around to face him. Noted the clean-shaven jaw. His short brown hair was already dry. “While you’re getting ready I’m going to go take another look around the parking lot and the surrounding area. Lock up after I go out.” He strode to the door then turned to laser a look at her. “And Mia. I expect you here when I come back.”

  The return of his distrust might have been earned, but she still felt vaguely insulted. “I’ll be here.” Subterfuge was useless at this point anyway. He went out and she followed him to the door. Secured it behind him. Then hurried to use the bathroom before he came back. It had already been a morning of firsts. She didn’t think she was up to adding another.

  Fifteen minutes later Mia unlocked the door again to let him in. He raised a brow. “I didn’t knock.”

  “I was watching through the window.” He’d walked the parking lot like a grid, looking the cars over, subjecting anyone who happened by to a thorough visual examination. “What are we going to do about my car?” It was parked almost directly outside her front door.

  “I’ll have to send a couple people after it.” He’d parked his vehicle at a perpendicular angle to hers headed toward the exit of the lot. “Give me the keys and wait here.” Jude unlocked it with the fob, pulled open the door and dropped the keys to the floor mat before manually engaging the lock again.

  When he returned she inquired, “How do you expect them to get the keys out of a locked vehicle?”

  “If they can’t figure that out, they shouldn’t be working for me.” A door next to hers opened then, and he crowded her back inside as a man in a suit walked briskly out to the middle of the lot. They waited until he pulled away before he seemed satisfied. “Okay.”

  Mia walked close to him, her gaze darting from right and left. Last night she’d been convinced Four had followed her to this motel. In the light of day her suspicions had faded slightly. Maybe the woman had seen Jude and been scared off. Perhaps not enough time had passed for her to have trailed Mia in the first place.

  The element of danger had felt all too real just a few hours earlier. It hadn’t completely subsided. “She could be here,” she murmured. “Waiting. Watching. Maybe intending to get in her car and follow us when we leave.”

  “That would save us some time.” He rounded the hood to open the front passenger door. “Get in. We’ll discuss it while I drive.”

  At a sound behind her she turned to see a man with a ball cap pulled low come out of a room and head across the lot. He had his head down, appearing more interested in the fast food bag he was carrying than in them. She slipped into the seat. Noticed in the next instant that the man had halted at their car. Looked up and raised something in the air.

  “Get down! Get down!”

  “Gun!” Mia’s voice mingled with Jude’s simultaneously a split instant before there was a loud report and he crumpled to the pavement, his body spasming uncontrollably.

  Reaction was instantaneous and automatic. Mia rolled out of the car, digging in her pocket for the pepper spray. Pulling out the knife in a swift practiced movement. Her focus was fractured by the sight of him jerking uncontrollably on the ground—not dead not dead not dead—and the figure who was approaching, hand trembling as he ejected a cartridge from the gun he carried and replaced it with a different one from the sack.

  Comprehension slammed into her. Not a man at all she saw now, but Four. No blond hair in sight, her bald head was covered by a Phillies hat. Mia brought her hand up, finger on the button of the vial.

  “If you try it I give him another jolt.” The woman pointed the TASER at Jude’s heart. Mia hesitated. Jude’s muscles were still contracting and releasing violently. Two probes were buried in his shoulder. She could see the wires leading from each one. “Who knows, at this range it might be lethal.” The woman smiled gleefully. “It’d be sort of fun to find out, wouldn’t it?”

  “All right.” Mia straightened, hoping to take the woman’s attention off Jude. She held out the vial with two fingers. Dropped it. It rolled a few feet away. She visually measured the distance between her and Four. Her muscles tensed. There were at least six feet separating them. If she could get closer…

  “And the knife. Now!”

  Mia made a show of holding it away from her side as she inched toward the woman. “He isn’t involved in this. It’s just you and me. Let’s go before anyone else comes along. Let’s go.”

  The woman’s finger tightened on the trigger. “Stay where you are and drop that knife or I’m going to do my damnedest to stop his heart.”

  She halted, her gaze scanning the parking lot for someone, anyone who might happen by. It remained maddeningly empty, their little tableau playing out for an audience of three.

  Four’s finger tightened on the trigger. “Or maybe you don’t care.”

  The knife clattered when it hit the pavement. “Kick it under the car.” After Mia did so, the other woman’s lip curled. “Maybe you obey a bit better for me than you did our Master.” She raised her hand to reveal a key fob. As she pressed a button, the trunk of a nearby sedan raised. Four rose. “We’re going to go over and you’ll get in the trunk. Then the two of us will be on our way.”

  Mia cast a glance at Jude. How long did the effects of the TASER last? Already the spasming had lessened. His gaze met hers and she knew that all she had to do was buy them both some time. But it would help to get Four as far away from him as possible. “All right.” After she’d put several feet between them and Jude she deliberately slowed. Four violently shoved her forward. “He’s due for another jolt and this thing is effective up to fifteen feet.”

  She put one foot in the trunk, using her bent position to grip the knife hidden at her ankle. Heard the telltale sound of Four’s weapon being fired again and the noise released something dangerous and primitive inside her. “No!” She straightened and whirled, knife in hand. Mia swung the blade in a vicious arc at the same time Four reached to give her a push. Sliced the woman across the arm.

  With a high-pitched howl Four snatched her hand back and ejected the cartridge. Evading the next slash of the knife, she pressed the weapon against Mia’s back. The jolts of electricity had her arching, her body going numb from the stunner.

  “More trouble than you’re worth. I always told Master so.” The pain, fierce and brutal at first, faded when the device was removed. But her muscles were jerking and unresponsive. Four folded her into the trunk and Mia couldn’t summon a physical response to stop her. Something pricked her arm and a wild shriek emanated from her. In her mind she was fighting the injection. Screaming and struggling and battling like a wild thing. In reality she was motionless, the world already spinning away in a dizzying spiral.

  She felt the backpack being torn away. Two hands shoved her further into the trunk. Mia saw the lid closing and ordered her muscles to come to life. They didn’t respond. The car started. Began to move. Consciousness fading, she willed her body to respond. There had to be some way to get out the trunk of a car. A lever or cable… The thought was hard to hold on to. Her thinking was muddled. Mia felt like she was being sucked into a turbulent vortex. She had one last guilt-ridden thought about Jude’s fate before everyt
hing went black.

  8

  Jude opened his eyes. Stared at the overhead lights before closing them again. Fluorescent dots danced beneath his eyelids. Forcing them open once more he grasped a metal bar next to him. Hauled himself upright. Stared hard.

  A hospital bed? What the hell? Snippets of memory swirled in his head but his mind was muzzy and he had a bastard of a headache. Four had tased him. He shook his head, bit back an oath when the movement threatened to jar something vital loose in his brain. Shit. He didn’t need a hospital after being tased a couple times.

  Because he didn’t have the strength to climb over the bars, he started to scoot down in the bed to where they ended. Was brought up short by tubes attached to his hand. An IV. Wincing, he yanked off the tape holding the needle in place and removed it. The action summoned another flicker of memory. He’d managed to get to his feet when Four had come flying across the parking lot. Someone had been there to help him. But she’d shouted at them to leave him alone. He frowned. Struggled to remember. A heart attack. She’d said he was having a heart attack. And then there had been a needle.

  She’d drugged him. Which meant she’d likely drugged Mia. Recalling her panic attack at the mere suggestion of a narcotic, his mouth flattened. He had to get to her. Before the whacked-out robot of a woman did her real harm.

  At the edge of the bed now, he tried standing, wobbled a bit and then spied his clothes in a plastic bag on a chair. Stumbled toward them. Dressing was going to have to wait a couple minutes. Right now he needed the support of a chair to keep from sliding to the floor. Whatever Four had injected him with packed a helluva wallop, and he had at least seventy pounds on Mia.

  An image of her as he’d found her last night swam across his mind. Armed to the teeth. A look of ferocity that had been jarringly out of place on that beautiful face. As much good as he’d done her today, she would have been better off facing Four on her own last night.

  He dug in his pants pocket to bring out his phone, his gut clenching. If he dwelled on what she might be going through right now he’d be no good to either of them. Jude speed dialed a familiar number. Waited impatiently for Kacee to answer. When she did he spoke with all the urgency he was feeling. “Things went south in Pennsylvania. Four has Mia.”

  “Four? That woman from the security video? Gone south how?”

  He clenched his jaw, throttled down impatience. “Top priority, Kace. Code red. Activate the location features on Mia’s electronic devices. I need to alert the police to find the car she’s in. Put a call into Raiker.” He might end up needing the law enforcement doors the man’s name could open. “Tell him she’s been kidnapped by a woman who’ll deliver her back to The Collector.” Speaking the words aloud made it impossible to contain his nerves. He surged to his feet. Reached for his bag of clothes. Mentally cursed when a wave of dizziness hit him.

  Pulling out his shirt he frowned as colored bits of paper drifted to the floor. Comprehension filtered in sluggishly. “Evidence. There will be confetti at the scene where I was tased.” He ignored the concerned exclamations from Kacee as he removed the rest of his clothes from the sack, careful to preserve the brightly colored snippets of paper. The TASER would have released dozens of the tiny pieces each time it was discharged. They acted as personal identification features. If a crime was determined to have been committed, the corporation would match the information on those pieces and release the identification of the owner from their AFID database to law enforcement. A process that no doubt would take far longer than Jude was willing to wait.

  “Send two operatives up here. No, send one and have him accompanied by Logan. Tell him to bring whatever he needs to work on the road.” Logan Spirrow had orchestrated the infiltration of necessary databases in Vietnam. Jude would be much too busy to take care of that end of things himself. “Have you got a location yet?”

  “Let me get to the computer. I’m half a building away.” But from the sounds of her breathing Kacee was running. “You took your mini laptop with you. Can’t you use it?”

  “It’s still at the scene.” Jude had no idea where his car or belongings were. But on his priority list that hit squarely at zero. Mia’s welfare was number one. And he was reminded of the reason it was imperative to maintain a distance with clients. To keep anything that hinted at emotion locked away. It clouded logic like nothing else could. And damned if he wasn’t feeling emotion right now. An overwhelming tangle of anxiety and guilt that threatened to choke him.

  He elbowed that aside to focus on Kacee’s next words. “Okay, I’m bringing the location up now. I feel short on details here. What else aren’t you telling me?”

  “That I’m standing here in a girly hospital gown with my ass hanging out,” he snapped. “The location, Kace.”

  “O-okay. This map is a more appealing image than the one you’re painting anyway. The Friend’s Inn. Looks like a mile or so outside Johnstown, Pennsylvania.”

  Disappointed hissed out of him like steam from a kettle. “Are you sure? That’s where this all went down. In the parking lot.”

  “I’m certain.”

  Somewhere down the hall a cart creaked. A distant voice sounded on a loudspeaker. “Are you looking at the iPad location feature?”

  “That’s what’s on the computer.”

  “Because she bought an iPhone. The devices should be synced.”

  “Did she set up iCloud? Why yes, she did. And here’s a doc with her Apple ID.” Now Kacee appeared to be talking to herself more than him. “Very convenient the way she left all this information for us to find. I still think my guess about her…”

  “Was wrong.” Dead wrong, Jude thought bleakly. Mia hadn’t let the information because she wanted a white knight chasing after her. She’d expected to meet the danger alone. And the way things had transpired she might have been better off doing so.

  He looked around the sterile room. Two beds, the other neatly made and vacant. Logically he knew that had Mia faced Four alone, the end result might have been the same. But today the woman had successfully used Mia’s concern for him against her. He’d become a liability, in a way he never would have foreseen.

  “Okay, here it is. Find my iPhone…it’s just outside Pennsylvania, barely. Near Morgantown, West Virginia on Interstate 79. On the move, it looks like.”

  “Good. Text me updates every five minutes along with her iCloud password. I’ll take over the monitoring when I get back to my computer. And get that call into Raiker. I have a feeling I’ll be needing him.”

  “Got it.”

  He disconnected, a familiar sense of calm settling over him. Barring the possibility the phone had been ditched in another vehicle, the location app was a powerful tool in locating Mia. If Four’s car was still moving, she was as safe as she could be at this point. It was when it stopped that the danger for her increased exponentially.

  He set his phone down on a table next to the bed and pulled on his clothes, shooting a look around the room as he did so. One other bed, which was empty and neatly made.

  There was no clock in the room, but the one on his phone indicated that Four had over a three-hour head start.

  If Mia still had the phone on her, the lead wouldn’t matter. Shoving his feet into his shoes, he grabbed his cell and headed for the door. Had to duck out of the way when it swung inward just as he was reaching for the handle.

  A stout middle-aged woman in a bright pink smock looked at him in shock. She held a water pitcher. “What in heaven’s name are you doing?” She took him by the arm with her free hand. “You need to get back to…you took out your IV! Mr. Bishop, the doctor is not going to be very happy with you.”

  He pulled away from her grasp. “Get the doctor in here and call the police. It’s urgent.”

  She eyed him shrewdly. “There’s an officer right outside who accompanied your ambulance. Sit back down on the bed and I’ll get her for you.”

  Because it seemed more expedient, he did as requested. And was rewarded a co
uple minutes later when a female officer and a doctor entered the room. The man was tall and spare, with wide framed glasses that slid down the bridge of his long thin nose. He pulled out a small computer from the pocket of his lab coat and typed something into it.

  Ignoring the man, Jude focused on the cop. “There was a kidnapping at the site where the ambulance found me. The Friend’s Inn parking lot. Happened at about seven-oh-five. The suspect is female, bald, wearing a baseball cap. Five foot five, one hundred ten pounds. She’s driving a black Honda. 2012 maybe.” He stopped when he noticed the officer wasn’t writing anything down. His gaze narrowed. “Do I need to speak slower or is your memory that good?”

  She took a notebook from her back pocket but didn’t open it. “Let’s start with the part of who tased you.”

  “We removed the prongs from your skin, Mr. Bishop.” The doctor looked up from the file he was reading on the screen. “There can be problems with infection from them, but I think with the antiseptic…”

  “I’ve got a location on the kidnapper’s car.” He stood, still directing his words to the officer. “From a find my iPhone app loaded by Mia Deleon, the victim.” The last word knotted in his throat. He knew how much Mia would hate having the descriptor applied to her. “It shows her just over the state line. You need to alert the West Virginia state police. They can find the car and…”

  “Deleon?” He finally had the officer’s attention. “Isn’t that the name of the gal who sent police agencies all over the country on a wild goose chase for a fictional kidnapper years ago?”

  Swiftly he considered his options and focused on the one most certain to garner cooperation. “She’s one of the richest women in the country and you need to consider what would happen to your career if you didn’t act with the expediency this situation deserves.” Jude had no idea what Mia was worth, but if the inside of her apartment was any indication, it was more than he could fathom. Money talked. He needed something that did.