They would pay — Ricky just had to give the lawyers and Bryson time to do things the right way. After a lot of talking, Ricky had backed down and was now securely back at the safe house, where those worthless bastards couldn’t touch him.
Bryson stopped at a gas station and stuck the nozzle into his tank, then went inside for coffee. After paying for his drink, he walked back outside and checked his messages. He was concerned to note several missed calls from Axel. He hadn’t heard the phone ring. Maybe he’d been too focused on Ricky.
He quickly dialed Axel’s number.
“Winchester, where in the hell have you been?” Axel yelled from the other end of the line.
“I’ve been with Ricky. I’m tired, cranky and in need of a whole lot of sleep. Quit the yelling,” Bryson said as he took the nozzle from the tank and slipped into the driver’s seat.
“He got away from surveillance!” Axel shouted, his voice higher than normal.
Bryson’s muscles locked together and a cold sweat popped out on his brow. He didn’t want to ask the next question.
“Who?”
His voice was so quiet, he wasn’t sure whether Axel had heard him. After starting his motor, he had to sit there for a moment and wipe his palms on his trousers.
“Jesse Marcus.”
Bryson couldn’t get sound through his throat, couldn’t focus. He sat there for a moment, took a deep breath and tried to be rational. Jesse was in Montana — Misty in California. Even if the ass**le had gotten away, he couldn’t reach Misty. Jesse could have no idea where she was.
“She’s safe. Her house was checked before she went home tonight,” he said, trying not to panic. He was at least an hour from her place.
“She’s not home, Bryson. The marshals have been by her place. There’s no sign of her, nothing. And no one has seen Jesse since yesterday. He’s had plenty of time to make it down there.”
“But the house was checked,” Bryson repeated. He’d made sure.
“They found the agent…dead,” Axel said.
The breath rushed from Bryson’s lungs. Jesse might have her — he might have taken her anywhere. But how could he have found her? The records of her location were sealed.
“He can’t know where she is!” Bryson shouted, more scared than he thought he could ever possibly be.
“It doesn’t look good,” Axel told him. “This guy…he has connections, Bryson. I don’t know how or who, but I do know he gets his hands on information he has no business knowing. He gets away with stuff he never should have been able to get away with. As you well know, even this trial has had problems since the start, with evidence turning up missing, witnesses that should be protected ending up dead. I don’t know who’s helping him, but someone is, someone with a lot of power.”
Yes, Bryson knew this — knew all of this, yet he’d still allowed her to go home alone. He’d been confident in the fact that Jesse was being watched, that they’d be warned if the man appeared to be getting even an inkling of where she was. He’d promised to protect her, sworn she wouldn’t get hurt.
What if leaving her at the airport cost him Misty forever? What if she thought he didn’t care?
“Do we have any clues on where he could be?” Bryson asked as he threw his SUV into drive and peeled out of the gas station, hitting the freeway and flooring the gas pedal.
“I’m working on it, Bryson,” Axel said, but he didn’t sound confident.
“I don’t care what you have to do, but get me something,” Bryson shouted into the phone. Maybe they’d missed a clue at her house, something to tell him where Misty could be. He had to find her — had to save her, because he knew beyond a doubt that Jesse had her.
Bryson’s world had been too perfect for it to continue without a glitch. Misty might never trust him ever again if Jesse hurt her. He’d broken his promise that he wouldn’t let Jesse near her.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Axel said.
Bryson wanted to slam his phone through the windshield. “That’s not good enough, Axel. I don’t want you sitting on your ass thinking up ideas. I want you to find her!”
“I know you’re scared, Bryson, and I know I’m the one delivering the news, but don’t talk to me that way. We’re going to get her back.” Confidence and steel now ran through Axel’s voice.
They were both pissed — for their own reasons. Bryson tried to calm down, but he couldn’t. There was too much left up in the air. He felt vulnerable, helpless.
He slammed the phone down on his seat, nearly smashing it. Not wise. If she could call him, he needed to be available. He only hoped he wasn’t speeding away from her as he rushed toward her house.
No matter where he had to go, or what he had to do, he would find her before this night was over, he vowed as he raced down the freeway. One way or another, she was coming home — even if Jesse ended up in a body bag. To think she could be in one too wasn’t acceptable, and he thrust that grim thought from his mind.
Turning his emotions off, he prepared to do whatever it took to find Misty. Because he would die before letting her go.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Some guy with a jackhammer was hard at work inside Misty’s head. What the heck? It took her several moments to orient herself and to remember.
She’d paid the cab driver, walked into her house…
Panic set in when she recalled the body on the floor. And then someone had grabbed her, drugged her. Where was she now? The room was dark, with only minimal light sneaking in beneath the door. Was she alone?
As she sat up slowly on the putrid-smelling bed, her hand landed in something sticky and wet. She shook as she yanked the hand away and wiped whatever it was off onto another section of the uncovered mattress. Her stomach heaved and she tried to plug her nose. Hearing a scratching in the wall, she felt herself freeze.
Was that rats or mice? Fear was threatening to consume her, especially since the lighting was so poor. Where was she? It seemed to be an abandoned building of some sort, somewhere now inhabited by rodents and bugs. As if her situation weren’t bad enough, she had to fight vermin, too. Not that she wasn’t dealing with a human form of vermin…
Forcing herself not to succumb to panic, and not to shed futile tears, she attempted to look around, and to make her breathing calm down. Creeping quietly over to the window, she looked out, but she couldn’t see anything through the dirt-encrusted panes.
Don’t freak out, she reminded herself. Easier said than done. She had no idea where she was — but she had a pretty good idea of who’d brought her there.
Her fears had come to life, just when she’d started to feel more secure. She’d been so afraid that exactly this might happen, and now it was real, now she had to fight to survive. And she had to do it alone.
Did Bryson even know? Or, more like it, would he care? After their stupid, petty fight, maybe he wouldn’t bother to check on her. Okay, she knew he was a professional, and he wouldn’t let his probable disgust with her petulance stop him from attempting a rescue, but how would he even know where to look?
When would he check on her again to even learn she was missing? It might take several days before he tried to find her. Why had she had to get so upset with him? Yes, he’d been wrong in surreptitiously having her DNA tested, but it wasn’t worth this. It wasn’t worth her now being all alone with Jesse in what had to be the middle of nowhere.
It seemed hopeless. So freaking hopeless. But NO. She would not cave in to her fears. She couldn’t!
What she needed to focus on was escape. She attempted to open the window, but to no avail. It was nailed shut, or glued shut, or it just hadn’t been used in so long that it was never going to open again without a crowbar.
Taking a deep breath, she thought about her options. She refused to just roll over. She’d never, ever been a quitter. She’d grown up in the most awful of circumstances, and she’d managed to survive this long on her own. She would continue relying on herself — the one person who hadn’t failed her.
Her phone!
Please be there, she screamed in her still-pounding head, and she reached inside her bra and found the small device. Her years on the street had taught her lessons that she still carried with her now, and one of those lessons was not to leave something you didn’t want to lose in obvious places.
Holding her breath now as she stared at the door, she pulled out her phone and flipped it open. One bar of reception, and only a single bar of battery life. It was enough…she hoped.
She didn’t even think about calling 911. Instead, she dialed the one person she truly did trust, no matter what had been said — Bryson. When the phone began ringing, she heard the doorknob rattle on her room, and she fought down the stomach-roiling nausea. Now was not the time to vomit.
Quickly turning the incoming voice volume of the phone way down, she hid the device inside a hole she’d found in the pillow on the small cot, she prayed it wouldn’t disconnect, prayed Jesse wouldn’t hear it, and prayed even harder that Bryson would be able to trace the call. Then she moved to the other side of the door and waited for it to creak open.