The Mogul and the Muscle - Claire Kingsley Page 0,89
was in danger, right fucking now, and I needed to get to her.
My instincts had gone haywire, and I knew exactly why. I’d been compromised. I loved her and it was making me irrational.
Logic. No emotion. Focus on the mission.
I grabbed her phone and stuffed it in my pocket, then jogged downstairs.
“Nicholas,” I called.
He was still in the kitchen. Meat sizzled in a pan on the stove and if I’d been in a normal state of mind, my stomach would have growled at the mouthwatering aroma.
“Yeah?”
My voice was completely calm. “Cameron left her phone. Would you mind calling Inda? I really need to talk to Cameron.”
“I’m sure they won’t be gone too long,” he said, stirring the meat.
“Just call her.”
He stopped stirring, his eyes lifting. “Okay, man. Sorry.”
I took slow breaths while he pulled out his phone and called his wife.
The seconds ticked by and I could tell she wasn’t answering. He turned off the burner and moved the pan.
“That’s weird,” he said. “Her voicemail picked up. Should I leave a message?”
“No. I’m going to look for them.” I headed straight for the front door.
Nicholas followed. “Dude, you’re freaking me out right now. They just went down to the village. They haven’t even been gone very long.”
“I know.” I locked the front door behind us and bounded down the porch steps.
“Then why are you acting like this is an emergency?”
“Because it might be.” I got on my bike. “And if it is, we’re losing time. Are you coming?”
“Crap,” he muttered, and got on behind me.
The two of us barely fit on my bike, but we didn’t have far to go. We followed Cameron’s driveway out to the street, then crossed the bridge over the canal. The road wound around and the village came into sight up ahead.
Cameron’s golf cart was in the middle of the street. Empty.
I stopped the bike and we both jumped off. Nicholas was babbling something, but I ignored him. I took in the scene, looking at every detail. No sign that they’d been hit. No tire marks or tracks. The foliage on either side of the road was undisturbed.
“Inda’s phone,” Nicholas said, holding it up. “She must have dropped it. Should we go look down at the Tiki Hut?”
I checked the golf cart again and realized the almost silent electric motor was still running. They hadn’t broken down and left it here. They might not have stopped intentionally at all.
“No. Someone took them.”
“Shit, are you serious?”
“Dead serious.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket.
“What are we going to do?” he asked. “Call the police?”
“Cops are too slow.”
“How are we going to figure out where they are?” he asked. “Is there another way to track them?”
I glanced up from my phone. Nicholas was a chef, not an intelligence operative. He wasn’t even former IDF, like his wife. But his face was determined, his voice calm. He could help.
“If my instincts were correct, there might be.” I opened the tracking app Cameron didn’t know I had. A little red dot appeared on the map. It wasn’t far—in Coconut Grove—but it wasn’t here in Bluewater. “Thank fuck.”
“What? Is that them?”
“Should be.”
“Did you implant a bug in her or something?” he asked.
“No, in her shoes.”
“Her shoes? She has like a hundred pairs. You bugged them all?”
“Nope. Just a few.” I pocketed my phone and got back on my bike. “She picks her shoes based on her mood. I figured if I ever needed this, it’d be because she was either trying to ditch me or she was pissed at me. Either way, I bugged a few of her boldest pairs of shoes as a precaution.”
He got on behind me.
“You bugged the shoes you’d thought she’d wear if she was mad or trying to ditch you?”
“Exactly,” I said over the roar of the engine. “And I was right.”
This was a rescue operation with two women as the target. Once the extraction was complete, I wouldn’t be able to fit them on my bike—Nicholas and I barely fit—so I had to go back to get Cameron’s car.
Nicholas insisted on coming with me and I didn’t argue. His wife was missing. A man needed to be able to protect—and rescue—his woman when necessary. I wasn’t going to deny him that.
As long as he stayed calm, and stayed out of my way.
The little dot on my tracking app hadn’t moved. That was neutral information. It was good if it meant they weren’t being moved. A moving target would be more difficult to apprehend