“He’ll be lucky if I don’t carve his dick off and feed it to him like a sausage.”
A chiming sound filled the room, oddly out of place. Patrick grunted, moving in closer. It came again . . . followed by the ringing of the phone.
It happened so abruptly, it caught her off guard, but Patrick moved away.
Seconds later, over the sound of her own panting, she heard him speak.
“Who the fuck is this?”
His next words were filled with . . . well, if Dru didn’t know better, she might have thought it was fear.
Minutes passed.
The call ended and she braced herself. She’d caught her breath, she could fight longer. Harder—
“Let her go. We need to go to the city,” Patrick said.
The leather holding her restrained fell away and she sagged, falling to the floor.
He touched her, and it was a shock as the flash, flash, flash came. He was scared. Damn scared. And pissed. Somebody knew . . . For a second, she was scared as well. But he didn’t know about her.
Who the fuck knows—
Going to kill—
Terror flooded her and she thought of Tucker.
But then sanity hit, realigned, as the flash settled into her mind. Patrick had spoken with a woman. Dru was safe . . . or safe on that front, at least. He didn’t know about her, about Tucker.
And he was leaving . . . she could get the hell out.
“You’ll be staying here, Ella,” Patrick said. “And don’t think of leaving. I’ll just find you . . . and you’ll be sorry.”
“I think I’m rather done with this engagement bit,” she said.
“Oh, no.” He knelt in front of her, stroked a finger down her cheek. “No, you’re not. But go ahead. Try. Run. I’d enjoy it. I can’t wait to break you, Ella. I really, really can’t.”
She spit in his face.
When he hit her, she moved with it, just at the last moment, enough to lessen the blow so she wasn’t completely dazed.
As he left, she remained on the floor, pretending to cry.
Their time was up.
They had to move, and now, before he freaked and took actions to eliminate all evidence . . . which meant he’d kill his hostages.
TWENTY-ONE
THIS was a mess.
Taige struggled out of the lethargy of the gray to find Jones staring at her, Cullen glaring at Jones, Dez standing in the background glaring at the two men, and the air in the room thick enough to cut with a knife.
“Oh, hell.” She rolled onto her side, cradled her aching head in her hands, and wished she hadn’t given up drinking all those years ago. She could use a glass of wine just then.
A hand curved over the back of her neck, and she turned her head, found herself staring into eyes of the color of the sea.
“Here I was thinking it was Jillian who’d be hauled into this mess,” Cullen said, sighing.
She stared at him, wishing she could make this easier on him. Poor guy. Saddled with two females who were going to worry him into the grave. Had to suck. Reaching up, she said, “You said you wouldn’t change me . . . now is the time to show it.”
Thick lashes fell, shielding his eyes. “I’d do anything to make this easier on you,” he said hoarsely. “Some small selfish part of me thinks . . . this isn’t your problem. You don’t work for him anymore. None of this is your problem.”
Then he looked at her, those blue eyes burning so hot.
“But looking back . . . neither was Jillian. She wasn’t your problem, but you saved her, anyway.”
“Suffering is everybody’s problem,” she said quietly. Slowly, not entirely trusting her queasy belly, she sat up. Her belly stayed settled. She hadn’t been prepared for the strength of that vision. Hadn’t been ready for the intensity of it, the power of it. It had damned near laid her low. “What’s Joss’s connection to this woman?”
A strange, tense silence fell.
Slanting a look at Jones, she found him eyeing her oddly. When he didn’t answer her, she pushed. “Well?”
“To my knowledge, there is no connection. She’s engaged to marry our prime suspect. She’s one of the suspects, although I didn’t share any information about her with Crawford. I wanted him focused on Whitmore, and only Whitmore, so he could find his own way through this mess.”
Taige closed her eyes. Sighed. “A mess? This isn’t a mess . . . it’s a damned catastrophe.” She plucked through some