Bishop (Endgame Book 3)

by Riley Ashby

  “Take these,” Castel said. I hadn’t even realized he had followed me. “In fact, I’ll drive.”

  “I need to get her, Austen.”

  “I get that, Archer, and I’m not going to make you stay. But you can’t drive right now.” He led me over to a super-sized Range Rover and unlocked it with the fob. He looked back at Ellery. “Send Tori after us as soon as she gets back here. I’ll text you our location.”

  “Tori’s the one who lost her in the first place.” I didn’t want her around. She’d failed enough for one day.

  “Yeah, and you lost her twice before that. You need to put that aside. Tori is possibly the only person who cares about this family more than I do, and she’ll do whatever she can to help us recover Josie. She’s probably beating herself up right now for letting her get taken in the first place.”

  I clenched my fists, growling. I couldn’t let the blame fall away so quickly. She was in charge; she promised she would take care of them. And she let Josie get taken.

  Still, she’d told us exactly what happened. There was no way for her to know the driver was going to take off.

  It just made me stiffen my resolve to take Josie everywhere she had to go myself from now on.

  “I only lost her once, by the way. I followed her the second time.”

  “Splitting hairs,” Castel muttered under his breath as he gunned the engine.

  My frustration only grew as we hit LA rush hour. Thankfully, our prey hit some of the same struggles, but he’d had a head start, and before long, he was moving far too quickly across the map.

  “He’s going to the mountains,” Castel said grimly. I cursed.

  “We could lose the signal up there.”

  “Shit.”

  We both jumped as there was a smack on the window. I looked to my right to see Tori, flustered and red-faced, gesturing to the back door.

  “How the fuck did you get here?” Castel exclaimed as she jumped into the back seat.

  She took several moments to catch her breath. “Had a cab bring me as far as they could, then ran the rest of the way. What do we know?”

  I resisted the urge to grab her by the throat. “What we know is she disappeared on your watch.”

  I expected her to hit back, but she hunched her shoulders instead. “I know. I should have gotten into the car with her. Then this never would have happened.”

  Castel shot me a look. I forced myself to push aside my anger with a sigh. “It’s not really your fault. She should have been safe in the car. Ellery’s trying to figure out who got to him.”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry, Archer. I’ll do whatever it takes to help you get her back.” She sat back and folded her arms. “Then I need the women I’m protecting to stop getting kidnapped. Some bodyguard I am.”

  “Hey.” Castel caught her eye in the mirror. “You weren’t even there the night Vail got taken. And Sophie threw herself into that situation.” He glared at me. “Archer just needs someone else to feel bad.” Focusing back on the road, he swerved between some cars into gaps barely big enough for the car to move us forward a few hundred feet. “This just proves we can’t trust anyone but ourselves.”

  I gripped my phone so hard the screen nearly cracked, staring at the tiny dot on the screen.

  “It’s stopped,” I whispered.

  So did my heart.

  My heart fluttered as the car finally rolled to a stop and my kidnapper lowered the partition once more.

  “Stay right here.”

  I sighed as he got out of the car. It wasn’t as if I could go anywhere. I considered crawling through the partition and trying to steal the car, but he took the keys with him and I had no idea how to hot-wire a car. Besides, I had no idea where I was. I would probably end up driving down some dead-end road and get dragged back here by my hair.

  Considering the danger I was possibly in, I was surprisingly calm. That was another sick thing being used had done to me. I was so used to the worst thing happening to me, the thought of being kidnapped and possibly being sold back into slavery barely fazed me.

  I picked at my nails as I thought. Was I really just going to let these new people take me? Send me back into a world of chains and whips used only to inflict pain, never pleasure, and no one gave a damn if I was strong enough to hold something fragile in my damaged hand. A world where men used to getting whatever they asked for took out their frustrations on me, starving me if it pleased them, leaving me bloody and broken only as long as it took them to recover and take me again.

  Someplace so far removed from the gentle way Archer had kissed me after he came, his focus on my own pleasure as much as his, the familiar pattern of tattoos on his arms as they encircled me through the night. An entirely different plane from Tori and Sophie and Vail, who sought me out not to use me but for my company, to ensure I was happy and well rested and in possession of a body that could move however it wanted.

  I hated being treated like a corroded penny once more when so much charity had been shown to me in order to make me shine again.

  I wasn’t going to let all that be thrown down the drain. The first time I was taken, I had nothing. My family didn’t care about me, and my job probably thought I had decided to quit without notice. But this time, people would be looking for me. Effort would be made on the part of men and women who barely knew me but cared about me all the same.

  I had to text Archer as soon as possible. How much longer did I have before someone came back for me? I peered out the windows all around the car, searching for some sign of what was going to happen next. My driver was talking to a woman several yards away, blocking her face from me. They looked like they were arguing and not interested in me.

  I whipped out my phone and unlocked it, hands shaking as I typed out a message to the only person I trusted to save me from this nightmare.

  Unharmed don’t text don’t call

  I slipped my phone back into my bra and looked back out the window to see the driver walking toward me. He wrenched open the car door, and I slid to the far end of the bench, trying to put distance between us. I didn’t want his hands on me. There was only one person who could touch me.

  “Get the fuck out here so I can go home,” he growled, leaning across the car to grab me and drag me into the fading light. He threw me on the ground where I rolled, clutching my arms against my chest so my phone didn’t fall free.

  “Be gentle with her,” a new voice said. An all too familiar voice.

  No. This can’t be happening. It can’t be her.

  A pair of shoes stopped just in front of my face, and I couldn’t help myself as I slowly raised my head to look my sister in the eyes.

  “Oh, Josie, thank God!” She reached down to help me up, trying to pull me into a hug. I kept my arms out and forced her to stay away from me.

  “What the hell, Alicia? You kidnapped me?”

  “Only because you wouldn’t return my calls!” She was blinking furiously, but a tear still fell down her face, smearing her perfect makeup. “I missed you so much, and you wouldn’t pick up! It was driving me crazy!”

  She tried to hug me again, but still, I held her off. This didn’t feel right. When we talked on the phone, she couldn’t have given two shits about my feelings. She barely wanted to give me the time of day. I knew this after years of her torturing me, keeping me away from Mom’s affection and trying to downplay my struggles in order to shine more light on her own life. She had no interest in my life or what had happened to me.

  “This is crazy, Alicia. You never cared about talking to me when I was around. And you sure as hell didn’t care about me when you broke the news Mom had died.” My throat closed up a little at the mention of my mother, but I couldn’t let myself break down in front of her. I still didn’t know what she wanted. “Why didn’t you just come talk to me? Why send me those weird photos and pretend to be Chad?”

  She shrugged and wiped her eyes, black eyeliner smearing across her cheeks. “I didn’t think you’d talk t
o me. You’re right, I was horrible when you called. I didn’t think you would listen to what I had to say.”

  I squinted at her. I’d gotten the first photographs before I talked to her—why would she have sent them to me before our fight on the phone?

  I shook my head. “This doesn’t feel right to me, Alicia. I want to go home. We can talk there.”

  She frowned, all trace of sisterly compassion falling away. “Why do you have to be so difficult?” She blew an errant strand of hair out of her eyes, stepping back and putting her hand on her hips. “I knew you were going to be like this. Is it because of Mom?”

  “No! Well, yes, but … this doesn’t make sense. You had me kidnapped, Alicia. That’s insane. It’s almost like you were purposely trying to scare me …”

  My phone buzzed against my chest—a text. Who the hell would send me a message? Everyone who had my phone number knew where I was. I clapped my hand over it, trying to act like I was just trying to rub my chest, but Alicia’s eyes narrowed.

  “Do you still have your phone?”

  She launched at me. I tried to fight her off, but I had never been good at defending myself—least of all against her. I was useless as she closed her hand around my damaged fingers, squeezing like she knew exactly how much it hurt me. I gave up my defense with a cry. In a few seconds, she had the phone from me, cursing. She turned it off and tossed it as far as it could go.

  “That weird bodyguard of yours is probably tracking you, right? So he’s already on his way.” She looked past me and leveled her gaze at the driver who had brought me here, pointing at him. “You were supposed to get rid of her phone.”

  He held up his hands. “I tossed her purse like you told me to. How was I supposed to know she had it stuffed down her shirt?”

  Alicia never replied. She simply pulled a gun out from the small of her back, pointed it at the driver, and shot him.

  I jumped at the sound, but I was completely frozen as he sank to the ground, leaving a dark smear of blood across the spiderwebbed window and down the front door of the car.

  She shot him. My sister murdered a man right in front of me.

  “Let’s go.” I snapped back to the present as she grabbed my arm, pressing the hot muzzle of the gun against my side. “We have to get out of here before your boyfriend shows up.”

  “Alicia, please.” I wasn’t proud of how quickly I slipped into my old position—pleading, begging her to stop hurting me, completely unable to stand up for myself. She always knew how to hit me where I was most vulnerable and put me underneath her. It was the reason I had moved out, the reason I had lost contact with my mom and eventually lost all hope of reconnecting with her once she died.

  As I had when I was a child, I followed her lead. The gun was not necessary; she only had to tell me to move, and I would have.

  I stood still as she pulled a blindfold over my eyes and bound my hands together with zip ties. She sat me roughly in a seat, not bothering to buckle my seat belt as she clambered into the front passenger seat.

  “Drive,” she said, and the unseen driver grunted in response. The car moved and pulled away from the last place anyone would know to look for me.

  I clutched her phone in my hand as I stared at the dead driver, his blood smeared across Ellery’s car as Castel and Tori scoured the area for any lingering threats. When we pulled up to her phone’s last location and saw the body, my heart stopped beating for a full minute. I was sure we would come around the other side of the car and find her broken body there, blood drying in the dirt.

  “There’s no one here.” Tori stowed her gun as she jogged back to me. “We found some tire tracks heading down that service road, so they must have taken her with them.”

  “His blood is still pretty wet,” I said. “They can’t have been gone too long.”

  Castel joined us and kicked the driver’s body out of the way, respect for the dead be damned. He unlocked the rest of the doors and set about examining the trunk while I pored through the back seat, desperate to find any trace of her. The text we received could only reassure me so much—had she been caught when she sent it? Surely, she wouldn’t have been so reckless as to send it unless she knew it was safe to do so. But still, they’d found her phone somehow. I powered it back on and jabbed in her PIN, relieved she hadn’t changed it after I told her I linked our phones so I could track her.

  There was an unread text from the phone company, warning her she had used up fifty percent of her data for the month. That had to have been what alerted them. Maybe they heard it buzz or saw it light up, but they—whoever they were—had found it and then moved quickly in order to make sure I couldn’t find her.

  There wasn’t a single shred of further evidence in the car, not that I expected to find anything. Tori had watched the driver toss the purse, so she wouldn’t have had much on her.

  “Let’s get moving again,” I said. “We can try to catch them.”

  “We need to get back to the house,” Castel argued. “We can access better resources from there. The security shit Ellery has for his company rivals our resources at the FBI, and we’ll be able to find her.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not going back. We need to find her, and we know what direction they went. That’s something.”

  “I knew you were going to say that,” Tori said, preempting Castel’s argument. “I’ve got someone coming to get us, Castel. Let him take the car and go after them if that’s what he wants to do.” She looked at me. “You have cash? Weapon?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then we’ll be in contact. Keep your phone charged. And don’t drive blindly. If you lose the trail, at least stop and call us. We don’t want you going hours in the wrong direction.”

  I nodded, but I had no intention of stopping until I had her back. “Call me when you have something.”

  “Ditto for you.” Castel tossed me the car keys. “You know you shouldn’t go after her alone.”

  We stared at each other across the few feet separating us. There was a lot of lingering animosity—between my dismissal from the FBI to his disapproval of my relationship with Josie—but he was looking out for me now. When we worked at the FBI, we went everywhere together. I could always count on him to have my back, and he expected the same from me. Even though we hadn’t worked together for months, we still both felt the wrongness of the situation—that we would leave each other behind—but he also knew he couldn’t stop me. It was the same reason he jetted out to LA the moment he heard Vail was missing, barely bothering to text me and let me know he was leaving. And he wouldn’t hold me back now from going after the woman I cared about, even if he couldn’t understand our connection or approve of how it came about.

  “Thank you, brother. For all your help.” I held out my hand, and he pulled me forward into a rough hug. We slapped each other on the back before pulling away, and he and Tori took off on foot in the direction we’d come. I hopped in the car and peeled out after the tire tracks Tori had found, praying I hadn’t lost too much time already.

  *

  It was hard to think like a criminal, but I had to use my head at every turn I came to. I wasn’t sure why these people wanted Josie, but I’d had enough experience with these situations that I knew to trust my gut. But as the sun sank below the horizon and the automatic headlights switched on, I to admit I had no clue if I was actually any closer to her.

  Finally, I had to head back to civilization. My gas was draining quickly, and Castel had yet to find any kind of connection to hint at where she was. I cursed repeatedly as I pulled into the gas station, resisting the urge to kick the tires as I topped off the tank. She’d been with those assholes for hours now, and I had no clue where she was. Beyond that first text she had sent me, I had no idea as to her well-being. She could be anywhere and in any condition.

  She could be dead.

  I shook the thought away. That couldn’t be true, and I couldn’t let myself think it.

  “Come home,” Castel told m
e when I called him. “We’ll keep looking, but you’re burning resources and energy. We won’t rest until we find her, Bryce.”

  The first name meant he was serious, but I couldn’t listen to him. I shook my head, forgetting he couldn’t see me. “I’ll get a hotel nearby. I want to be ready to go when you find something, not tucked away at the country estate.”

  There was a fumbling on his end, and then Ellery’s voice sounded in my ear. “Go back to the apartment. There could be more mail, maybe some sort of hint.”

  I cursed myself. Of course, they could have sent something since we left. I hadn’t bothered to ask about any mail showing up while we were gone.

  Finally, I had something to do while we figured this out. I turned around as quickly as I could, almost toppling the car in the process, and sped back into the city.

  *

  The night guard on duty didn’t know me and almost refused to give me Josie’s mail before he realized I was ready to literally strangle him unless he did what I asked. He handed me one package as well as a few envelopes. I ripped open the oldest one as I got into the elevator, tossing the spam mail to the floor as I ascended. I paused only long enough to open the door to the apartment, leaving the discarded mail in a trail behind me like bread crumbs.

  I halted coming into the apartment. I had entered on my side, but it was completely trashed. Furniture turned over, every cabinet opened, and contents of drawers emptied onto the floor. I jumped over to her side and found much the same, except many of the clothes from her closet were gone. Many more than she had packed when we left to go to Ellery’s house.

  Shit. So I had been right to get her out of here. Whoever this was, was determined—we knew that much already—but what had they been looking for?

  I dropped the package on her coffee table and pulled open the last envelope, this time containing only one picture of her and another girl. Chad didn’t appear to be in this one. I recognized Josie, and the girl she stood next to looked so much like her I was sure it had to be her sister. They had their arms around each other, but something about their smiles looked forced. Josie had told me her sister was the reason she had left home, but what exactly did that mean? Was Alicia so vindictive that she needed to continue torturing her sister even after all she’d been through?