Chapter Twenty-One

Kenzie wasn’t sure she was still breathing. When the words came out of Gage’s mouth, she felt her knees weaken. Jamal’s panicked cry snapped her out of her shock. He’d heard, and now he was shaking. As scared as she was, she had to be strong for him.

Steeling her spine, she asked, “How bad?”

“I don’t know. Kayla had to take a call from the office before divulging details.”

She reached for his arm. “Come on. We’re going to the hospital.”

He avoided her grasp and shook his head definitively. “No. I’m sorry, but my orders are to keep you here where it’s safe.”

“This isn’t a negotiation,” she advised him tersely. She didn’t want to be mean, but he wasn’t keeping her from rushing to Declan’s side.

“We don’t have a vehicle,” he pointed out triumphantly. “Sorry.”

She wiggled a set of keys. “Declan’s truck. Either ride with us, or you can stay here. Your choice. But we are going to the hospital.” It wasn’t a lie. If he wouldn’t take them, they’d take themselves. Simple as that.

“I could restrain you with flex-cuffs.”

Jamal jumped in front of her like a pint-sized warrior and crossed his arms over his chest. “No, you won’t. We’re going to Declan. Now.”

She took no joy in the man’s capitulation. Worry and fear were salsa dancing in her belly. She was afraid she’d have to ask him to pull over so she could throw up, even though she hadn’t been able to eat.

Jamal proved to be an exceptional direction-giver. Along with Declan’s dashboard GPS, he led them to the hospital. Kenzie jumped out and helped Jamal from the back seat. Grasping his hand, they took off for the emergency room. A black SUV was parked next to the doors. She gasped in horror as Noah and Ethan placed Declan on a gurney. Blood covered his arm, and his eyes were closed.

“Declan!” Jamal cried.

His eyes jerked open, and he bolted upright. “Jamal, Kenzie. What are you doing here?”

Tears flooded her eyes. “We’re here for you. Are you okay?”

His lips twisted. “It’s a damn scratch. I’m fine.” He tried to get off the gurney, but a medic stopped him and turned to them with a stern look.

“He needs medical attention. You can talk to him after he’s patched up.”

#

Scarlett Harmon passed tired eons ago and was quickly working her way to catatonic. All she wanted to do was hug her sister and then sleep for a week. Leo had allowed her to speak to Ruby on the phone when she first arrived. It was her only condition before doing their dirty work. Ruby was terrified, but they were feeding her and pretty much leaving her alone. That was good.

Now that Scarlett’s part in the operation they’d launched was over, she wanted out. “I did what you requested. Now let my sister and me go as you promised.”

“I don’t think so, sweetheart.” Leo ran a finger down her cheek. She recoiled from his nasty touch. His nostrils flared at the rebuke, and he dropped his hand. “You’re too valuable. I think we’ll keep you a while longer.”

Frustration had her gritting her teeth. It took every ounce of restraint she possessed to refrain from using her makeshift shiv and jamming it into his eye socket. Most of the time, she was left alone in a cold, dark space with only a mattress and a bathroom she didn’t even want to acknowledge. She’d have nightmares about it for years to come—assuming she’d have any years to live after they were finished with her. When they brought her to the room where they’d placed her laptop beside several other computers and a wall of monitors, she’d spotted a ballpoint pen and surreptitiously swiped it. After removing the ink reservoir, she was left with a hollow tube, which would render significant damage when stabbed into a vulnerable optical organ.

Though she hated to be separated from her computer when she was locked up, she wasn’t worried that they could steal any information. Besides the biometric locks, she’d built in many fail-safes and prepared for any contingency. Even if they made her open a program and download it in front of them, what they’d have would be jumbled garbage.

She was bummed she’d lost her tracking dot when it wasn’t complete, but she was happy to note it worked. There was no better test than by fire, she supposed. She’d warned Leo that it was still a work in progress. He’d glared at her and told her it had to work or else. She didn’t know what “or else” meant, and she had no desire to find out. Thankfully, she didn’t have to since the dot did its intended job. But with no way to retrieve it, she’d activated a kill switch that would render it inoperable so no one could access her technology.

“Besides,” Leo continued, “until we know if this is what we’re looking for, we might require your ample…services.”

The way he said the last word, his gaze trailing down her body, made her skin crawl. She’d barely slept, worrying that he or one of his disgusting friends would come into her room and rape her. Or worse—Ruby. She’d fight to the death if they tried to attack her, but that would leave Ruby all alone with them, and that wasn’t an option.

“You want to see your hard work pay off? Watch.”

He brought up feeds from dash cams on three separate screens. She tried to follow what was happening, but the cars were driving fast along a bumpy road. They were at a storage facility. Her eyes zeroed in on one of the vehicles as it screeched to a stop. A man jumped out with a long tube he supported on his shoulder. She gasped in horror when a projectile blasted out and slammed into a black SUV, sending it skyward. Had there been anyone inside?

Her hands flew to her mouth when gunfire sounded, and then men were going down like bowling pins.

“What? No!” Leo bellowed, jumping to his feet. “They have snipers. Sonofabitch. How did they know we’d be there?”

One car bumped the one in front of it out of the way and then sped down the corridor between buildings, heading toward an open door. Someone stepped out and fired, and she flinched when bullets pierced the windshield and wiped out the camera. The burning SUV blocked any view of the only remaining camera.

Leo frantically punched buttons on his phone, his curses growing louder and more colorful when his calls went unanswered. With a huff, he stormed out of the room. He’d left her alone with her computer.

Pushing the horrifying images she’d witnessed from her head, she accessed the folder where she’d captured snapshots of the group they’d tagged with her device and ran it through a facial recognition program. She’d hacked into the hospital surveillance cameras and grabbed their headshots without Leo knowing. A hit came back for the woman. She worked for a security company in Indiana. With a glance over her shoulder to make sure she was still alone, Scarlett tried to hack their website to leave a message, but it was impossible to breach. She might’ve been able to with enough time, but she’d been trying to do it on the down-low. Having to resort to using the generic email address on their bare-bones website, she sent a message.

Urgent! Please help me. My name is Scarlett Harmon, and I’m being held hostage by a gang called the Daggers in Chicago. I’m in a warehouse, but I don’t know the location. I created an untraceable tracking program they forced me to use on your group. They have my sister. Please don’t alert the police. I don’t know where they’re holding her, and they will kill her.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Leo roared, making her spin around and shriek in fear.

#

The cramped cubicle surrounded by a white curtain where Declan had been wheeled was packed with bodies. The nurse tried to object and send everyone to the waiting room, but she finally tossed her hands in the air and admitted defeat. Jamal perched on the bed beside him, with Kenzie standing close. Noah, Ethan, Kayla, and Gage were in there as well, though Gage was practically hugging the curtain, looking decidedly uncomfortable. Declan assumed it was because Kenzie talked him into escorting them to the hospital.

He valiantly fought off unconsciousness. His vision was blurry and unfocused, and because of the blood loss, he was shivering. He was thankful when a nurse covered most of his body with a warmed blanket, leaving only his damaged arm free. She made sure the IV stayed in his hand before dodging his coworkers and leaving. He tried showing no symptoms so Jamal wouldn’t worry. He looked ready to crack at the slightest provocation.

Kenzie leaned close to whisper in his ear, and he inhaled her scent. It calmed him. “Before you say anything to Gage, this is all on me. I was coming with or without him. He finally relented, knowing I wasn’t bluffing—and I wasn’t.”

Gage glanced over as if he heard, but Declan knew that wasn’t possible. Besides the surrounding chatter, beeping machines, loudspeaker pages, and other sounds would’ve made it impossible to overhear her soft-spoken words. Guilt flashed in his coworker’s eyes. Declan gave him a nod, hoping to convey that he was forgiven. He knew Kenzie would follow through on her threat. Jamal too. He’d have done the same thing in Gage’s shoes.

A doctor arrived to stitch up his arm and ordered everyone to the waiting room except for Jamal and Kenzie. Jamal chattered non-stop, a result of his nerves, no doubt. Declan didn’t feel the doctor working on his arm, and he hoped it was because he’d numbed the area while he stitched and not that he’d lost all feeling in his appendage.

Once he finished, he read off a list of instructions that Declan tuned out. It wasn’t as if he’d never been shot before or suffered through stitches. He knew the drill. His attention focused on something the man said. “Excuse me?”

“I said I’d like to keep you overnight for observation and to replenish the fluids you’ve lost.”

Declan was already tossing off the cover and sitting up. “No.” He started to rip the needle from the back of his hand, but a nurse stopped him.

“I certainly can’t keep you here against your will,” the doctor drawled. “But leaving is against my recommendation.”

“Duly noted.”

The doctor tried working on Kenzie, giving her the spiel about infections and blood levels, blah, blah, blah. He could’ve kissed her when she told the doctor that it was Declan’s decision and that she’d look after him.

It was another forty-five minutes before they could leave. Kenzie signed mountains of paperwork, and he accepted the prescription for painkillers the doctor prescribed but ripped it up as soon as he departed. He couldn’t afford to have his senses dulled. Until they rounded up the remaining Daggers, the case wasn’t closed.

They met his coworkers in the waiting room. “Any word from Alex or Dorian?”

“Not yet,” Noah said. “Let’s head back to the house, and I’ll call for an update.”

Gage drove Declan, Kenzie, and Jamal back in his truck, with Noah, Ethan, and Kayla following in Alex’s SUV. Kenzie and Jamal had climbed in the back of the crew cab while he eased into the passenger seat. It was a different view from his usual spot behind the wheel. His phone rang as Gage pulled out of the parking lot. Tugging it from his pocket, he read the screen. Tyler Redmond, the COBRA Securities technology genius. “Hey, Tyler. What’s up?”

“Where are you guys?”

“I’m with Gage, heading back to the safe house. Noah, Ethan, and Kayla are following.”

“Put me on speaker so Gage can hear this.”

He clicked the button. “Go ahead, Tyler.”

“A message just came through the website email. I’m going to read it to you.” He relayed the note from Scarlett Harmon.

“The man we dragged from the car said he put a tracker on Kayla when she and I were at the hospital to visit my brother. She found a small sticker in the groove of her boot.”

“Whatever he tagged her with, they were able to follow you to the safe house and then any time you left. Tell her not to throw it out. I want to dissect that sucker.”

That would explain how they knew when they visited Jamal’s apartment and then the storage unit.

“How come our scanners didn’t pick up on the tracker?” Gage asked.

“I did some quick research on Scarlett Harmon, and she’s developed untraceable state-of-the-art technology. The government is interested in purchasing it from her and holy circuit breakers, I want to meet her. It burns me up that she’s better than I am,” he grumbled.

Declan ignored his pity party. “Did she leave a way to contact her?”

Tyler snapped out of his funk quickly. “No, but she said she was in a warehouse. I pinged her computer. It’s the same area where Kenzie was held. Call me when you get there. I’ll cut the power to the entire building, so you’ll need your NVGs.”

“Got it.”

“I don’t have to remind you they’re holding her younger sister, too, so this has to be done stealthily.”

“No, you don’t,” Declan confirmed. “We’ll be careful, and we’ll call you when we arrive.”

“Roger, that.”

Declan disconnected and turned to Gage. “I’ll call Noah and have them head over there now. We’ll drop Kenzie and Jamal at the safe house and then head over.”

“Declan, no,” Kenzie protested, leaning through the opening between the seats. “Those two women are in trouble. It’ll take an hour to drop us off and then head there. They might not have that much time. Go now. Jamal and I will stay in the truck.”

“Promise,” Jamal chimed in.

Declan hesitated. Scarlett and her sister needed help. He knew the Daggers would harm them, especially since their plan had been thwarted. They had to be desperate that they’d lost the cash, drugs, and a sizeable chunk of members. They might take their revenge out on the women. Praying he wasn’t making a mistake, he keyed in the coordinates to his GPS and called Ethan to relay Tyler’s information.

“I’ll give Alex and Dorian a head’s up,” Ethan said as Gage turned at the next light, following the directions from the GPS. “We’ll meet you there.”

He turned in his seat to face Kenzie and Jamal. “When we get there, I want you two to stay in Alex’s SUV, where it’s safe.” He didn’t know if it had the same hidden compartment as Noah’s Escalade, but it was a COBRA Securities vehicle. It’d be safe.

Jamal’s face creased with worry. “You were shot. You should stay there with us,” he insisted.

“It was just a scratch. I’ll be fine.”

#

Scarlett stared at the concrete ceiling as she rested on the worn-out mattress. It’d been a close call, and Leo almost caught her sending the message, but she was able to close the window and open one with a traffic camera feed. She’d convinced him she was trying to locate footage around the storage buildings so he would know exactly what happened. The dunderhead actually believed her.

Though he didn’t divulge details, she knew it was bad. He’d left her door open a crack, and she’d crept close enough to hear him talking to one of the other gang members. The operation had been a colossal failure. All the men at the storage facility had been killed. Counting two that died yesterday, they’d lost eight of their remaining members. They were down to less than ten, counting Leo.

It would be the best time to escape while their failure distracted them, but she wasn’t leaving without her little sister.

Had her message gone through to the security company? And if so, would they believe her? Scarlett wished she had her computer with her to dig into their background. She knew she could hack their website, though they seemed highly cautious, and she probably wouldn’t find anything they didn’t expect her to discover.

Her heart had thumped in anticipation when Leo and the other man left with her door ajar. Scarlett had started to leap off the bed when footsteps sounded, and then the door slammed closed. She felt like it was a door slamming on her chances of leaving the warehouse alive.

She only hoped that someone at COBRA Securities read her plea, believed her, and came riding in on white horses to rescue Ruby first and then her. Hey, a girl could dream.