MADISON TURNED HER head into her pillow. She slowly opened her eyes, blinking at the bright, overhead light.
She jerked upright, and had to put her hand down to keep from falling on the soft surface she was sitting on. A mattress, no sheet, on a concrete floor in a small room. Her hair was damp and smelled like shampoo, as if it had just been washed. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a shirt.
And they weren’t hers.
Bile rose in her throat at the thought of a stranger being that familiar with her body. Bathing her, dressing her. She had to swallow hard to keep from throwing up.
She shoved her damp hair back from her face, and realized she wasn’t bound anymore. She jumped up, then staggered at the first rush of blood back into her limbs. Spots swam in front of her eyes, and she caught herself against the wall.
When she could see clearly again and the dizziness subsided, she looked around, trying to get her bearings. She was in a room the size of a small bedroom, empty except for the mattress. Bars covered the one window, a black square reflecting the overhead light back at her.
A door was set into the far wall. She hurried toward it and grabbed the doorknob. Locked. She tried again, twisting hard, then rattling the knob. She pounded on the door. “Help! Is anyone there?”
She beat on the door, screaming until her throat was raw. Gasping for breath, she collapsed against the wall.
Focus. She needed to concentrate, think. There had to be a way out of here.
The window.
She ran to the dark piece of glass and cupped her hands around the bars as she tried to see outside. Someone had painted over the glass. She couldn’t see anything. The bars were wide enough apart that she could fit her hand between them to touch the glass. She pounded, trying to break it. She took off her shoe and used it like a hammer, but nothing happened. The glass wasn’t any ordinary glass or it would have shattered by now.
Trapped. She was utterly and completely trapped.
She turned away from the window and plopped onto the mattress. Her chest was heaving from exertion, and she sprawled backward. Her eyes flew open wide as she saw what she hadn’t noticed earlier.
Pictures on the ceiling above her, dozens of them. She scrambled to her feet and squinted up at them, shading her hands from the light.
Oh God. They were pictures of her family.
Her mother, smiling at her new husband, standing outside a house. The villa in France, where her mom and her husband lived when they weren’t in Manhattan, the villa where her mother was right now.
Above that was a picture of Logan and Amanda, on a cruise ship.
On their honeymoon.
Fear slashed straight to Madison’s heart. She’d seen these pictures before, on her mother’s social media Web site. Someone had printed them out and taped them to the ceiling. They’d built this prison just for her.
Who, Damon? Why would he do this?
She stilled when she saw a picture that hadn’t been on any Web site. A picture of Pierce, in Jacksonville, standing on the balcony at his apartment, flipping steaks on a grill. He was grinning and looking through the open sliding glass door at someone inside. Madison squinted up at the picture. She gasped when she recognized the faint image of the other person, barely visible in the photograph
She was the person inside.
She let out a low moan when she saw the next picture of Pierce, lying on the street after he’d been shot while trying to protect her, blood seeping through his shirt.
The message was clear. Whoever had taken her was threatening her family, and everyone she cared about.
Her body flushed hot and a buzzing sounded in her ears. She ran to the door. She rattled the doorknob and pounded on the wood.
“What do you want from me? Who are you? Damon? Are you the coward doing this? If you hurt my family again, I’ll kill you. Do you hear me, Damon? You got away once, but you won’t get away again. I’ll track you down. I’ll kill you.” Tears streamed down her face as she sank to the floor, curling her fingers against the door.
A sound had her sitting up straight. A footstep, another. Closer, closer, stopping right outside the door.
Her heart was beating so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. She waited, watching the doorknob. Praying the door would open, but dreading it at the same time.
A full minute passed. Nothing. No sound. The door remained firmly shut.
She quietly leaned down and laid her head on the cold concrete to peek underneath the door.
Something flew at her, brushing against her face.
She screamed and jerked back.
The sound of laughter echoed in the hallway, floating back to her as the footsteps sounded outside again, getting farther away, fainter, fainter, until she couldn’t hear them anymore.
A white piece of paper lay on the concrete. That’s what had flown at her from under the door.
Her hand shook as she slowly reached out and picked up the piece of paper. Letters were pasted onto the page, in different sizes and colors, as if they’d been cut from a magazine. When she read what it said, she began to shake so hard her teeth chattered together.
YOUR PUNISHMENT IS ABOUT TO BEGIN.
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.
Madison had been missing for more than twenty-four hours. Pierce had worked violent crimes long enough to know the exact odds of her being found alive.
They weren’t good.
The sun coming in through Madison’s bedroom window had him blinking against the harsh light. He’d gone upstairs late last night, so tired he couldn’t focus anymore. He’d intended to take a quick nap, but the sun coming through the window told him he’d slept far longer than he’d meant to.
He cursed and jumped out of bed. He rushed through his morning routine, taking a mostly cold shower to try to wake up. Braedon had brought him a travel bag with fresh clothes from his house. Pierce didn’t bother with the shaver. He threw on some slacks and a dress shirt and padded in his bare feet down the stairs.
He nodded at Lieutenant Hamilton sitting on one of the couches as he headed into the kitchen for some caffeine. Hamilton looked as bad as Pierce felt. In spite of his doubts about Madison, Hamilton was doing everything in his power to help find her, making Pierce regret the bad thoughts he’d had about the man.
Most of them.
He poured a cup of coffee and took a quick sip, grimacing at the bitter taste, but welcoming the caffeine. He called out to Hamilton from the kitchen. “Heard anything?”
The lieutenant let out a loud yawn. “No, too early.”
Pierce took another deep sip. Tessa was still following up on the one lead they had—the sighting at the Super 8 motel yesterday. She was a bulldog when it came to leads, and he had every faith that if there was something to find, she’d find it. She was young, inexperienced but tenacious and clever. If anyone could figure out what really happened at that motel, Tessa could.
Or Logan.
He was the best investigator Pierce had ever met. He could look at a series of seemingly unrelated facts and see the pattern that revealed the truth.
Pierce glanced at his watch. Logan had said he’d try to get a flight out of Italy last night, but he had to take his bride, Amanda, to leave her with his mother and the mother’s new husband. Logan refused to bring his wife to Savannah. He said she’d been through far too much to be plopped back in the middle of turmoil again.
Pierce understood Logan’s stance, but he hated that he had to wait that much longer for Logan to get here and pitch in with the investigation.
He drained his cup, refilled it, then filled one for Hamilton.
The lieutenant nodded gratefully when Pierce set the cup down in front of him.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Pierce said. “You haven’t tasted how bad it is.”
Hamilton laughed, a hollow, tired sound. “As long as it keeps me awake, I don’t care what it tastes like. Heard anything from Mrs. McKinley’s brother?”
Pierce sat down across from Hamilton. “Last I heard, he’d just booked a flight to France to drop off his wife. Should’ve gotten there sometime during the night. Hopefully he’s on his way here by now.”
“I hope he’s as good as you say he is. I’m about out of ideas.”
“He is.” The sound of the front door opening had him turning around. His brothers, all of them, came through the door, with Alex following close behind.
“None of you should be here.” Pierce pulled a chair back from the grouping in the family room so Austin could scoot his wheelchair up. “You did more than enough yesterday, helping with the search. You can’t have had more than a couple of hours sleep.”
“As ugly as you look this morning,” Braedon said, “I’m sure we got more sleep than you did.”
Alex shook his head at Braedon. “Matt guilted us into coming. He wants us to work on Madison’s renovations. He thinks all the problems B-and-B has had over here are because someone was trying to stop us from digging up the yard, that if we work on the footers, we might find something important that will help with the investigation.”
“I should have thought of that,” Pierce said.
“We’ve got a team outside right now getting it started,” Matt said. He crossed over to sit next to the lieutenant. “I want to know what you’ve done so far to find her.”
Hamilton raised a brow and glanced across at Pierce. “He thinks he can figure out where she is when half my police force hasn’t had any luck?”
“Apparently he does.” Pierce smiled his first smile since Madison’s disappearance.
Matt went into the front room and grabbed the map off the table. He came back in the family room and plopped down again. “What are all these red circles for?”
Hamilton eyed him much like he would a rattlesnake, but he answered Matt’s questions.
Alex sat beside Pierce. “I told them the police probably wouldn’t want anyone in the backyard with everything going on, but I think they all feel a bit helpless. If they can work on the renovations, it will make them feel needed.”
“I don’t see any problem with them working out back, as long as they stay out of everyone’s way. The police are finished back there.”
“Let me know if there’s anything you need.” He stood. “Come on, boys. It’s time to teach an old lawyer how to dig footers.”