Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
“What?” Panic detonates, shooting shrapnel through my veins. “You recognize him.”
“Yeah.” He squeezes his eyes shut, and a single tear slips free.
That’s all it takes. My control snaps, sending my hysteria from functional to feral.
“Who has her?” I shove my face in his and roar, “Where is she?”
He blinks, directs a pointed look at Mikhail, at Oliver in the front, and shakes his head.
A shut-mouth, don’t-ask no.
But when he turns back to me and sees my expression, his stubborn armor slips.
The horror must be written all over me. His eyes go round, filling with something akin to affection or mercy. He opens his arms and pulls me in. His hands cup my jaw, and his thumbs rest against my cheeks.
“She’s safe,” he whispers.
“Safe?”
“I promise.” He holds my gaze and lets me look as long as I need, laying it all out there for my inspection, for my doubt, for my fear.
I search his eyes and find only certainty.
Air flees my lungs in a violent rush. “Safe where?”
He glances at the van’s occupants and looks back at me, apologetic but resolute.
I don’t push. I think.
Whoever Jag is mixed up with isn’t a name he’ll drop casually. That narrows the field fast. If he won’t say it in front of the Russians, they must not play well with whoever’s holding her.
“He’s retired.” I gesture at Oliver, keeping my voice low.
Jag arches a brow, but it barely works given the swollen state of his face.
“Fine. Does that mean she’s not a hostage?” I whisper. “She’s a protected asset?”
He nods and lets his head rest against the wall like it weighs a ton. Spent. He rolls his face toward me, inches away from mine, watching me process.
He believes she’s okay.
I see it in the way his shoulders finally loosen. In the tear he didn’t mean to let escape. In the way his hands stop shaking. Most of all, I see it in the way he looks at me. Open, pleading, asking me to trust him with the one thing that matters.
I do.
I trust him because I know this about Jag Rath. He would carve out his heart before letting harm touch her. He would burn every bridge, sell every secret, and ruin himself without hesitation if that’s what it took.
So if he says she’s safe, she is.
We’re not done. Not even close. The second we’re alone, I’ll demand the whole story. I’ll want names, locations, motivations, and an idiot-proof backup plan that comes with vodka, eyeliner, and a spare apocalypse.
But for now, I wait, clinging to the one solid truth I have left.
We’re coming for her together.
The engines settle into a soothing thrum as the city drops away beneath us. Los Angeles shrinks. The Pacific stretches, and the air inside Monty’s private jet smells like recycled oxygen and mobsters.
Fucking Russians. I don’t trust them.
I don’t trust Monty’s island. I don’t trust the plane, the sky, or the silence between the turbulence.
But I trust Wolf.
I still can’t wrap my head around it.
Twenty years of tracking Adrian Crowe. Twenty years of building traps and watching him slip free every time. I mapped his money, his routes, his business deals, and those of his evil business partners. I stalked him through data, every second of every day, for two fucking decades.
And Wolf walked in and ended him in a single night. A bomb on his chest, a razor blade behind his inked smile, and no fucks to give.
I’d throttle him for it if I didn’t want to grab his hair, shove a hand under his skirt, and assault his mouth until he comes in his hot sequined shorts.
He’s beautiful in a way that makes my chest ache. Reckless in a way that begs for punishment. And he’s mine, if the world would give us five uninterrupted minutes to say the things we’re not saying.
I owe him my life.
I owe him Dove.
Sitting near the rear of the plane, I rest my hands on my lap because if I don’t, they’ll start searching for things to break.
The Restrepo cartel has my little bird.
They fucking took her.
That truth jolts in my head. Not relief. Not terror. But the extremes of both, braided into a live wire.
I need my computer equipment.
Wolf said they moved everything to the island before Crowe’s people could destroy it. Servers, drives, redundancies stacked on redundancies. My work, my mind, all laid out in metal and code.
Except for my connection to the Restrepo cartel. Those files are buried so deep I built them to survive excavation, layers upon layers, the kind that would take Mikhail years to peel back, if he ever managed it at all.
But if he somehow corrupted or compromised my servers, I won’t be able to contact the cartel.
I shut that thought down. I’ll know soon enough.
Monty’s in the cockpit, flying us back to Sitka. His co-pilot, Oliver, sits beside him. Kodiak sprawls near the front with Mikhail, pretending not to listen while listening to everything.