Alarm was a slow tingle at the base of my spine.
“Maybe you’re mistaken, darlin’. Want to check with some of the other staff in the ER? Make sure she hasn’t been called into an emergency or something?”
“Sure thing, Cade. But apart from a couple of split eyebrows from a college brawl, we haven’t had an emergency come in for a few hours,” she said as she picked up the phone.
As I waited for her to talk to someone still in the ER, something began to take hold of me. If Indy had finished an hour ago and her car was still in the parking lot, then something had happened to her and she was missing. When I’d phoned the security detail to let them know I was picking her up, they didn’t say anything about her finishing early. As far as they knew, they were still due to pick her up at five.
Laura put the phone down. “Sorry, Cade, but Indy definitely clocked off just under an hour ago. No one has seen her since she left.”
Fear stormed through me.
Indy was missing.
INDY
I finished work early. It was a quiet night, and apart from a couple of kids with a few scrapes and scratches from a drunken brawl outside The Suds Bar, not much was going on in the ER.
I knew I should call Cade and the security detail. But it was just after four in the morning and I knew he had a long ride ahead of him, so I decided to surprise him by slipping into bed next to him and showing him just how much I was going to miss him while he was in Kansas.
It was a stupid mistake.
A stupid, stupid mistake.
Walking to my car, I was too caught up in other things to really notice what was going on around me. By the time I recognized the sweet pungency of chloroform, it was too late. Within seconds, I was plummeted into darkness.
When I came to, I was on a bed, my hands shackled to the headboard. I was blindfolded, but it was a little too high, so if I tipped my head back I could see a small sliver of my surroundings. I was in a room, a bedroom, perhaps, and it was still and dim, the only source of light was a small curtained window to my left.
That was when it hit me. I had been kidnapped and I was now a prisoner.
My instinct for survival kicked in and I began to struggle against the binds around my wrists. The bed shook and rattled against the wall as I twisted and jerked on the mattress, tugging on the ropes that held me prisoner. When that failed to work, I started to yell. I started to yell for my damn life. And that of my baby.
Almost immediately, the door burst open and a blurred shadow rushed toward the bed.
“Please, I’m pregnant . . .” I rasped.
“I don’t give a fuck,” came a growl.
I felt a male presence, felt his rage, felt the smash of his knuckles and the break of my nose before the darkness claimed me once again.
It could have been minutes later, it could have been hours, I had no idea what the time was, the only thing I knew was the numbed pain of a broken nose and two very puffy eyes. I was slumped against the pillows, my brain rattled and dazed from the earlier blow to my face. I licked my lips and felt the metallic tang of blood on my tongue. My mouth was dry and my throat sandpapery, and I realized as I struggled to swallow that the chloroform hadn’t just burnt my lips, my kidnapper had used enough to burn my mouth and my throat. I needed water. I needed to get free before he killed me and my baby.
Panic tore through the haziness of my post-anesthetized brain and I pulled on the ropes again, suddenly terrified. Because if I didn’t get free, I was most definitely going to die.
CADE
I woke everyone up. Bull. Chance. Caleb. Hell, I was going to wake up the whole goddamn club because we needed to find Indy, and we needed to find her now. Because whoever was behind all this murdering bullshit was also responsible for wherever she was.
I was a mess and I knew it. And I couldn’t afford to be. I had to keep my wits about me for Indy’s sake.
I went down the hallway of the MC clubhouse pounding on the doors of my brothers, waking them up and hauling them out of bed. I rang my brother Chance, and then Caleb, and then I rang every other King on my phone, and I kept ringing until they all answered.
“You need to keep calm, son.” Bull sat a shot of bourbon in front of me.