Chris dozed off within minutes of them curling up together. They had a few hours before they were to leave and Abigail’s stupid mind wouldn’t stop whirling. She slipped out of bed and slipped on her bra and panties, then grabbed his shirt and a pair of boxers. Her clothes were folded neatly on the dresser. But somehow, she liked the way his clothes felt on her. And they smelled like him.
She slipped out of the room and glanced around. No sister or sister’s fiancé around. She stepped over to the window. She didn’t see them outside either. She didn’t feel right standing in his apartment when they could walk in at any moment. Plus, they had things to discuss. She would just be in the way.
She blew out a breath and quietly left the apartment. There was a chair outside his door, which she hadn’t noticed before. Did he ever sit outside his door and watch the world? Inside her gut, homesickness rolled for the first time. Not that she missed a man that would hold her prisoner but she missed thinking she had a family.
Chris and his team wanted her to lead them straight to her birth family, one she never knew she had. Monster or not, she wasn’t sure she could do it.
“Aren’t you supposed to be inside there?” Abigail jumped as she heard Jack’s voice. She whirled around and he was pointing toward the door to Chris’s place. “Outside isn’t really safe for someone like you.”
“Like me?” She snarled the words.
“Pretty little princesses.”
“He had company.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of company?”
“The family kind,” she replied.
“Huh,” Jack said. He grabbed her arm. “Come on. You can’t stand out here by yourself.”
“I’m not going with you.”
“Listen, Pippi, I get that you’re attached to pretty boy in there. But you’re no good to us dead. So, you can walk on your own into the garage over there, or I can throw you over my shoulder and carry you over there. Your choice.”
She glared at him, wishing she had laser eyes at that moment. “I’ll walk.”
“Good choice,” he replied. He gestured for her to walk in front of him. She reluctantly did, slowly making her way back to the garage. When they entered the empty waiting area, Jack motioned for her to sit. “You can wait here for now.”
“Fine,” she replied. He growled—actually growled—and left her alone.
Minutes ticked by and still, she was alone. She hadn’t been alone since she met Chris and for the first time, it made her heart race and her palms clammy. In the garage itself, she saw another man working. He was Hispanic, with shoulder-length black hair tied haphazardly into a ponytail at the base of his skull. He wore an olive green t-shirt speckled with dirt and oil from working, revealing almost entire sleeves of tattoos on his arms and dirty beat up jeans that had more holes than fabric. Old worn and scuffed combat boots completed his outfit.
He seemed at home with the cars inside, though there were only two in there at the moment.
“That’s Axel,” Bea said as she entered. “He’s the local mechanic.”
“I thought… I mean, I thought Chris was.”
“We all work here,” she replied. “But Axel isn’t… He doesn’t know what we do.” Her ebony eyes narrowed and Abigail resisted the very strong urge to shrink back from her. “It stays that way.”
“He won’t hear it from me,” she told Bea. “I hardly understand it myself.”
“Good,” she replied, the scary glint in her eyes vanishing in a soft inaudible pop. “You about ready to go?”
Abigail nodded. “Yeah. Chris got tied up at his place.”
“I heard,” the woman replied. “Can’t say it surprises me.” Abigail didn’t get a chance to ask her what she meant. Bea turned and vanished, and Abigail was left alone again.
She took a breath and slid into one of the chairs. But before she could lose herself in her thoughts, something slid along the back of her neck, her hairs prickling to a stand. She glanced around but saw nothing, but she couldn’t stop that nagging feeling that she was being watched.
Axel was still working in the garage. Bea was nowhere to be found. Neither was Jack. Surely they wouldn’t just leave her there. Jack said she was no good to them dead. Which meant they needed her.
She was supposed to lead them to Jean Giroux.
She stood up, glancing at the working Axel. He didn’t seem to notice her as she stepped toward the door. She glanced out the glass door into the world. The town had yet to wake up, so the streets were mostly deserted. She had a clear view of the town square from where she stood. The sun warmed away the cool night air. The birds glided from tree to tree, some chirping softly as the world began another day.
Slowly, she pushed the front door open, sliding out and letting the door shut on its own. She glanced over at Chris’s apartment. The door remained shut, no evidence of the family drama within. She had to admit, she was just a tad jealous. He had a family that loved him and he couldn’t have them. She could and had no family, not one person that cared about her. For one man, she was a tool, a weapon. For another, she was a forgotten idol, a simple artifact that had been taken from him and he wanted it back. Both were willing to kill to possess her.
What was it like to have someone who cared so much about you that they were willing to show up unannounced just to make sure you were okay? She walked toward Chris’s apartment and stopped after a few steps. She stood between Hawk’s Automotive and the apartment building. She had no business walking back in there. That wasn’t her family.
~*~*~
A feeling of warm slime slid over her. She hugged herself, a shiver passing over her even in the heat of a Texas morning as the slime turned to ice. She wasn’t sure what it was she felt, but she didn’t like it.
She glanced down at herself as her fingers brushed the soft fabric of the t-shirt she wore. She’d forgotten to change before she’d made her escape from the apartment. What kind of message did that send to people that she stood outside in bare feet, wearing Chris’s t-shirt and boxers?
She didn’t care, she realized. They could judge her all they wanted but she was her own person, maybe for the first time in her life.
Something grabbed her hair, and yanked back, exposing her throat. She tried to move away, but the glint of silver as her attacker brandished a knife close to her throat had her still. He yanked her violently back against his chest. “Miss Lewis. It’s good to see you again.”
Pure fear pounded inside her veins, turning them to ice as it passed through her.
No. They’d found her. What was worse was she knew the voice.
“Let go of me, Brad.” Her voice came out shaky and flat, not at all the confidence she was trying to convey.
A guttural laugh erupted from him as his fingers fisted tightly in her hair. “Let me think about this… No.” Something trickled down her neck. He’d cut her. Not deep. Maybe just where the tip pierced her skin, but the blood slid down her throat like a slimy snake.
How had they found her so fast? She’d left Galveston two days ago.
“I’m not going back.”
The knife disappeared and an iron fist clammed on her upper arm, holding her as he whirled her around to face him. A few days ago, she’d left him pants-less, phone-less, and screaming after her. Now, he was eerily calm, completely in control. His blue eyes had darkened since their first meeting. His jaw set firmly and determined. She had to wonder what her father had done to him. He no longer looked like the jock driven by his dick that she’d tricked. How many days had it been? Three? Four? She couldn’t remember. Not long. Yet, the man that looked at her was completely different than the man that had there that first day she’d broken free.
“The senator would like to see you.” The voice that rumbled forth was just as eerily calm. He yanked her alongside him as he headed toward the back of the garage. She glanced wildly around at the dead silence of the morning before she realized no one had seen them. She pulled back, but he lifted a gun from his shoulder holster and pointed it directly into her rib cage. She stiffened. “Walk.”
She let him pull her for a second, paralyzed by the appearance of the gun before her better senses took over. She tried to pull away, but his grip tightened on her arm. “You can’t kill me. He needs me.”
“You’re assuming I care,” he replied. “We’re going to talk a little first before I return you to where you belong.” A black SUV was parked behind the garage, facing out toward the road that led out of town. Her heart pounded. He wasn’t just here to collect her for her father. He was still upset about what she did to him.
If she got in that vehicle, she had a feeling she’d never be seen again.
She twisted her arm uncomfortably, trying to break his hold but he didn’t get go. His hold tightened which was where she wanted his focus before she used his tight grip to leverage herself as she swept her leg behind his knees.
He pulled them both to the ground, refusing to release her, but the force of the impact released his grip on her. Scrambling to get to her feet, she tried to run, but he grunted and grasped her ankle, pulling her back down. Her thighs scraped against the concrete painfully as he pulled her back. “Get back here!”
She let out a frightened shriek as he pinned her to the ground, his hand holding her neck down so she couldn’t struggle. Tears filled her eyes, completely involuntary as the cold barrel of his gun slid along her cheek. “If you’re going to kill me, just do it now.”
“Not up to you, sweetheart,” he replied.
“How about me?”
She briefly saw the flash of a body before the weight lifted off her. The crash against something metal forced her into motion, flipping over to a sitting position. Chris collided with the man, their big bodies locked together in a lethal dance in front of the SUV.
She glanced to the side, saw Brad’s fallen weapon and picked it up. She aimed it toward the fighting pair, but she couldn’t fire it. What if she hit Chris? She’d never forgive herself.
The gun was yanked out of her hand easily. She yelped as she turned to face her new attacker. Jack stared down at her, his face twisted into an angry snarl. He grumbled something she couldn’t hear and aimed the weapon at the two fighting. Before she could stop him, he fired two shots and everything went still.
He lowered the weapon and his gaze swept over her, obvious disgust in his expression. “Little girls shouldn’t play with guns.” He walked away, toward where he shot. She turned just as Chris stood up, breathing hard, and his face and clothes bloody. She wasn’t sure if it was his or the other guy.
His eyes swept over her, checking every inch of her body before he turned to Jack and nodded. Jack handed him the gun, grumbled something, and walked away. Chris’s eyes snagged hers, the adrenaline storm still raging in his eyes. He stepped closer to her. “We need to get you somewhere safe. Seems your father isn’t that far behind.”
Suddenly, a fist slammed into the side of Chris’s jaw. His head snapped to the side, his eyes rolling up into the back of his head. The weapon flew from his hand with the second blow. Abigail whirled around, facing the new attacker.
He was dark-haired, dressed in a decent suit. No tie and the collared shirt’s first couple buttons were unbuttoned, showing off the swirl of a tattoo she couldn’t see. A long thin scar broke the lines of the tattoo. “My apologies for startling you.” The thick French accent poured from his lips. He was quite familiar with the English he spoke, but it was obvious he didn’t speak it every day. He smiled, but it looked more like a grimace. “I’m here to retrieve you. For your father.”
“You go back to Senator Lewis and you tell him to go fuck himself.” She told him, courage she didn’t know she had pumping through her veins, hot and ready.
He laughed. “Not him. Your real father.”
She stared at him. He could be lying. But there were only a few people that knew who she was, where she came from. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“I understand your reluctance,” he said. “My name is Claude. I’m here to protect you.”
“That’s funny because so is he.” She pointed to the unconscious Chris. Any minute now, she wanted him to wake up and rescue her again. But he didn’t stir. How hard had he hit Chris?
“People like him,” his nose wrinkled in pure disgust, “do not protect people like us. Come with me, and I will take you to your father. He’s anxious to have you home with him.” His dark eyes slid over her. “More of the senator’s men will be here soon. They won’t be as hard to fight off as one man.”
“You’re lying.”
“I am not.”
“How did he know I’m here?” she asked.
“Inside source.”
“How did you know I was here?”
The man grinned. “We used our own inside source in their organization.”
Lovely. So the strange French man spied on her father’s men who had a spy here. Did Chris know? Was Chris that guy?
No, even as the question came up, she squashed it. Chris was loyal to a fault. He’d promised to protect her. He wouldn’t falter on that promise. He couldn’t. It wasn’t who he was. That left the rest of his team.
“Aren’t you even curious about the man you were stolen away from? The man who helped to give you life?” He held out his hand. “Come.”
Wasn’t this what they wanted her to do? Go to Giroux, flush him out for them? She had a prime opportunity to walk right up to him. They hadn’t been sure how she’d make the approach. Now they had one.
“Our time is up,” he said. “Come with me. Meet your father.”
She glanced up at him, his hand outstretched toward her. She shook her head. “I can’t. I don’t have any clothes. I don’t even have shoes on.” Her shoes. They were in Chris’s apartment. The card was in her shoe. The one that kept her alive.
“I’ll get you anything you need. It’s now or never,” he replied. His hand wasn’t shaking. It was steady and firm as he waited for her. This was her shot.
Slowly she took his hand, sliding her fingers into his warm palm. Chris stirred to life as Claude helped her step toward him. They were almost to Claude’s car at the end of the drive when Chris called her name. She glanced back, the hurt and betrayal plain on his face. She almost walked back to him, but Claude’s hand tightened on hers, not much, but just enough to let her know it wasn’t a good idea. She had a feeling Claude wouldn’t take no for an answer either.
“Chris, I have to go.”
“Don’t, Abigail. Don’t do this.”
She smiled at him. God, she loved that stupid man. “Do me a favor. Take care of my shoes for me. They’re my favorite. I’m gonna come back for them.” If he got her stupid obvious message, he didn’t show. His eyes raged into a hurricane, complete with lightning and thunder streaking across his irises. She didn’t wait for an answer. She let Claude open the door and lead her into the passenger side of the car.
As they drove away, they didn’t speak. She glanced in the rearview mirror. No one chased them.
Maybe she’d read too much into what she and Chris had shared. Maybe he didn’t really care enough.
~*~*~
Chris’s chest felt like there was a piano sitting on it. Watching her walk away from him left him completely numb on the outside while pain slashed its way through his insides. What the fuck would possess her to do that? To just let a man take her away?
He growled. And that thing about her shoes. Jesus, she was so not a spy. He was lucky there wasn’t a contingent of armed men bearing down on her shoes right now. He pushed himself to his feet and ran back to his apartment. Addison and Murphy were there, but he ignored them as he went into his bedroom and found where she’d left her shoes.
They looked ordinary. White with blue trim. Blue shoelaces. He looked over the entire shoe, then the other one. It wasn’t until he was about to put them down when he noticed something off with one of them. The arch was forming some kind of square outline.
“Chris, what are you doing?” Addison asked from the doorway.
“Hold on,” he said, absently as he lifted the insole, revealing a small SD card. “Hmm.” He lifted it out and frowned. What would Abigail need to hide a memory card for?
“Chris!” He nearly growled as he stood and turned, fisting the card in his hand as Addison scowled at him. “You’re acting weird.”
“Trust me, Addy. I wish I could tell you all about it,” he replied. “But I have to go. I’ll be back.”
He all but ran next door into the garage and down into the belly of the lair. There had to be some clue on there as to what the fuck made Abigail get into a car with a complete stranger when she had a very fucking big target painted on her back.
He grabbed his laptop and inserted the card into the side slot. He opened the file list and browsed through them. They all had default images names. He’d have to open every damn one of them to see what they were.
If one of the senator’s security team made his way here, there would be more shortly. They had a very short timeframe to work with. Right then, he had not just Abigail to protect, but now his sister and Murphy were here. He couldn’t let them get stuck in the middle of this.
He opened each file, realizing each one was an image of a document. Abigail’s documents. Her real ones, not the ones Senator Lewis had when he adopted her. Her Giroux files. He scanned over a few. There were payoff documents where Senator Lewis had gone to government agencies to fix her records, probably making her harder to trace. Surveillance pictures of Giroux, of his family.
Jesus. There was enough here to put Lewis behind real-life prison bars, not just some cushy white collar prison. He’d thought Abigail had run because she wanted freedom. That was only part of it. She planned to put a lot of distance between her and Lewis. She would have had to because she was going to blow the top off of him.
So who had Abigail now?
“Sierra, pull the tape in the back of the garage. About thirty minutes ago.”
“Yes, Agent Hardy,” the computer purred at him.
He shook his head. Sometimes, he wasn’t sure if that computer was hitting on him or not.
A few seconds later, the video played. He fast forwarded to the point where the new guy entered and stopped playback. “Sierra, that guy. Run his face through our database. I need to know who he is.”
“Absolutely, Agent Hardy. I’d love to do that for you.” Oh, boy.
The results popped up on the screen a few minutes later with a match. Chris’s eyes widened.
“Jesus, Abigail,” he whispered. “You don’t do anything halfway, do you. Sierra, open this file on the mainframe and call the gang down.”
A few minutes later, his team was collected in the briefing room, staring at him in various unhappy ways. He’d completely obliterated the whole no contact rule at this point and he knew it. None of them were all that happy with him. He couldn’t blame them.
“Nathan wants to talk to you,” Scott said as he leaned back in his face. His face was impassive, but Chris saw the hint of fear in them, something only Nathan brought out in people. Bea and Jack looked like identical ends of the spectrum, both sitting with arms crossed and scowls on their faces. The difference was Bea was five foot two, her frame small, at about a hundred pounds soaking wet, and Jack was six foot three with a huge chip on his shoulder that probably weighed a hundred pounds. Jordan seemed nonplussed, waiting patiently for whatever was about to come.
Dread filled Chris’s veins as he sat down in front of the screens, and Nathan’s face appeared on his normal screen on the side. “I understand we have a bit of a family issue, Mr. Hardy.”
“A small complication.”
“Family appearing is hardly a small complication.” Chris looked up. Nathan didn’t appear angry. His face was calm, almost benevolent, but there was a streak of dangerous violence beneath that facade. “Did you forget about our deal?”
“No, Nathan. I remember.” He didn’t want to have this conversation now. Abigail was getting further away by the second.
“So explain to me why your sister and her fiancé are sitting in your apartment right now?”
“They just showed up. I’ll take care of it.”
“See that you do, Mr. Hardy, or I’ll be forced to cleanse the situation. I will not risk the team’s exposure.”
Chris clenched his fists to keep his body from shuddering with real fear. No one wanted Nathan to cleanse anything. Typically, his cleansing involved people disappearing. He wouldn’t let Nathan kill his family. He’d worked too hard to keep them safe already.
Nathan continued on as if he hadn’t just threatened to kill his family. “What do we know about these men that attacked Miss Lewis today?”
Chris took a breath. He pulled up both men’s pictures. “Abigail knew the first one from the senator’s private security team. Bradford Kinsley. He’s former Army, got out after two enlistments and four deployments. Never really settled after that. He’s basically been a hired gun for private security firms. No red flags. No known contacts with anyone on our bad boy lists. He doesn’t even have so much as a parking ticket.”
“Completely clean?” Jordan mused. “So either his record was expunged, or it’s an alias.”
“It’s pretty detailed to be an alias,” Chris replied.
“Makes the kidnapping and killing easier,” Jack replied. “Alex used to do the same thing. He’d hire private security to watch the warehouses including a few specifically hired individuals with clean records that could cover his illegal merchandise in the event of a raid.”
“What about the other guy?” Bea asked, nodding her head toward the picture.
“Claude Dupont,” Jack interrupted. “I worked with him a few times.”
“What are we looking at with him, Mr. Allen?”
Jack sighed. “He’s calculating. Intelligent. He doesn’t need to be coerced to do his job for Giroux. He loves the work. Beating heads in, killing, rape… it doesn’t matter what it is. He gets off on violence.” His eyes darkened, almost black all the way around. “I only worked with him a couple times, for small jobs. He was Jean’s lapdog. Alex was the one holding my leash.” He bared his teeth in a dangerous grin that looked more like a snarl.
“One Giroux brother is the same as the next,” Chris grumbled.
“No. Alex is a kid, trying to live up to his father’s name. What idiot puts a girlfriend in control of his assets like that? Jean… He’s the real deal,” Jack said.
“How would you know that?” Chris asked.
“I know a monster when I see one, Hardy. I see one every day in the mirror,” Jack snarled back at him.
“So, Abigail decided to go straight to Giroux.” Jordan smiled. “She’s going through with our mission, leading us straight to him. Smart girl.”
“Not so smart. She’s not a spy, and she’s got no backup. We have no idea where they’re headed.” Chris growled.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Jordan said, a trickster grin sliding up his face. “I may have planted a tracker on her bra when we were taking pictures for the passports.”
Chris stared at Jordan. “How the hell did you even get near her bra?” He couldn’t even remember Jordan being within two feet of her.
Jordan snickered. “Trade secret.” He tapped a couple buttons on the control console in front of him, and a map appeared. A red trail blazed along I-35, heading south. “It’s a Nathan Hawk special design. Long range GPS tracker. Micro-tech, and about the size of a fingertip. I attached it to the back of her tag, by the hooks. It’ll stay, and it’ll look like the ink from the tag blotted due to wear.”
“Okay, so we can find her. Then what?”
“We follow her to Giroux,” Jack said. “She’s giving us an opportunity to get to Giroux. We can’t pass this up.”
“What if Lewis’s men find her?” Chris asked. “We can’t take that chance. She could die.” He glanced at Nathan, who’d been quiet as they talked. This was what he did. He let the team talk it out, and then he made a decision that either supported their discussion or overruled everything.
“People are dying every time one of his bombs explode, Mr. Hardy.” Nathan sighed. “She said she would help us get to Giroux. I believe she’s doing that.”
“That’s not all,” Chris said. He tapped a couple buttons and the files from Abigail’s memory card flared to life on the screen. “Abigail had an SD card in her shoe. I found a shitload of dirt on Senator Lewis’s dealings with Giroux, with her kidnapping as a child, bribery of government officials, and half a dozen other crimes. I think she was planning on blowing the whistle on him.”
“How could she do that?”
“She’s America’s Princess,” Chris said. “She would have the media’s attention in a heartbeat. The problem would be guaranteeing her safety. She knows how much pull Lewis has. He’d try to block her, maybe even try to kill her.”
Jordan’s face lit up as he realized what Chris was saying. “She wanted to go to Giroux as a safety precaution. She was betting that Giroux wouldn’t want her dead like Lewis would and being out of the country, she’d be away from the senator’s influence.”
“I don’t think she’s wrong,” Jack said. “Jean was fanatical about his family. All Giroux are, honestly. Simon Giroux drilled family together as a unit into them from a very young age. Losing his family would have devastated Jean.”
“Alright, Mr. Allen and Mr. Hardy, you continue following Miss Lewis’s trail. Figure out where she’s headed and I’ll make sure you get there.” Nathan’s voice carried out over the speakers as if he were in the room with them. “Mr. Levi, Miss Li, I want you to follow behind that car. Mr. Muldoon will monitor from here.”
As everyone stood, ready to get to it, Nathan’s cold face turned toward Chris. Even through the screen, shivers ran down his back. “Mr. Hardy. I’m giving you two days to make peace with your family. When this mission is over, Christopher Hardy will die.”
“Nathan—”
The screen went black. No discussion then. Okay. He should have seen this coming. In fact, maybe he should have been thankful Nathan didn’t decide to sanitize the entire breach. He was giving him a chance to say goodbye on his own terms. When he signed on to this life, he knew he had to say goodbye to everyone he ever loved, but somehow it had been easier when they just thought he was an asshole who didn’t call.