Kara Lennox - In This Together

“Why are you asking me that? You’ve been kidnapped! Who cares about a power plant?”

“Everybody, if there’s a radioactive leak.”

“It was a false alarm. The safety team resolved it long before I got there.”

“Oh, that’s good.”

“Keep talking, Elena. I’m going to work with his provider to see if we can triangulate your location.”

“You don’t have to do that. He’s not going to hurt me.”

“You think I should just roll over and do whatever he wants? Do you want every two-bit gangster out there with a friend or relative in prison to think they can get me to—”

“In this particular case, yes—give him what he wants. If you do find me, if you come in here with guns blazing, I’ll be in more danger than I am now.”

“You’re being held hostage by a maniac. I don’t think it could get much worse than that. You don’t know this guy. You don’t know what he’s capable of. And I’m capable of conducting a proper hostage extraction, thank you very much.”

Dios, he was in a snit. She’d made a mistake. She shouldn’t have called Daniel. “I have to go. If he realizes I took his phone, he’ll move me.”

“I’ll find you, Elena.”

She turned off the phone, sick to her stomach. What if Daniel made good on his threat? She doubted Travis even had a gun, but she feared he might be dangerous when cornered, weapon or no. He could end up getting himself killed.

Her eyes burned with tears. Why was she like this? She’d outsmarted her kidnapper; she’d gotten a message to Daniel. She should be elated. But she was frightened, and she felt as though she’d done something wrong. Really wrong.

Suddenly the bathroom door burst open, and if she’d been scared before, she was terrified now. Travis filled the door, looking very large, and if he could have shot lasers from his eyes, he probably would have. He looked like an avenging dark angel.

He came toward her, and for one horrible moment, she thought he was going to hit her. But he snatched the phone out of her hands.

“I didn’t even turn it on,” she said.

“You had my phone for five minutes and you didn’t turn it on?”

All he had to do was check the call history to know she was lying. “Okay, yes, I turned it on, but I just wanted to tell Daniel I was okay. I asked him to give you what you want.”

“I’ll just bet you did.” He took her arm. “Come on. We have to go.”

“We do?”

“I suppose you think we should just sit here and wait for the cops to come and arrest me?”

She tried to reason with him as he dragged her through the house. “I didn’t tell him where we were. I couldn’t, because I have no idea.”

“The cops can locate me by the GPS. They can get within a hundred feet, and once they do that, they’ll figure out we’re in the vacant house.”

She knew that, but she was surprised he did. She’d assumed when he said he couldn’t manage a simple online form that he wouldn’t understand how the GPS tracker on a phone worked.

He took her through the back door. It was only a few feet to the truck, which was already open. No chance of her making a break for it, not that she’d have given herself even a small chance of escaping him. He was strong and fast. He’d recovered awful damn quickly after she’d bonked him with the wrench.

He pulled her to the rear of the truck.

“Oh, come on. Do I have to ride in the back again?”

“Of course not, princess. Your limo should be here in a few minutes. Yes, you have to get in the back. I know you think I’m stupid, but do you really think I’d put you up front with me where you can jump out at the first stop sign? Or open the window and scream for help?”

“I don’t think you’re stupid.” She sighed as he opened the cargo cover and the tailgate.

“Will you get in, or do I have to stuff you in there? I don’t want to hurt you. I really, really don’t. But I’ll do what has to be done not to get caught. Not yet.”

She could fight him. He’d have a helluva time getting her into the back of the truck if she kicked and clawed and screamed, and maybe a neighbor would hear her this time. But in the end, she’d probably hurt herself worse than him. He’d get her inside the truck—no doubt about that—and be gone before the cops arrived.

She looked him in the eye and made sure he looked back. Then she gave him the evil eye, something her abuela had taught her. She’d reduced more than one grown man to quivering jelly with this look.

“I’m keeping score. I’ll make you pay.”

“I don’t doubt it. Get it through your head, Elena. You can’t talk me out of this. The only thing that matters is that someone gets Eric out of prison so he can get his little girl back and try to salvage what used to be a good and productive life.”

She looked away. Then she sat on the tailgate and swung her legs up. Travis held her hand, helping her wedge herself into the truck bed as if he were assisting her into Cinderella’s carriage.

“Oh, comfy.” She patted a folded blanket he’d put in there so she’d have a cushion for her head. Just before he shut her in, she handed him his cell phone, which she’d pickpocketed again.

“Son of a bitch!”

“You might want to stop carrying it in your front pocket,” she said sweetly.

“How did you do that? Do you moonlight as a magician or something?”

“Trade secret.”

He closed the tailgate and cargo cover. The last she saw of him, right before it went dark, he had the strangest, most perplexed look on his face, as though he wasn’t quite sure what to make of her.

She could have kept the phone. She could have turned it on again once she was out of his sight. His provider would track the pings and follow them right to whatever new location he drove to. But she hadn’t.

Some part of her really didn’t want Travis to get caught.

* * *

DANIEL HAD ASKED Randolph, his chauffeur, to drive him directly to the Project Justice offices downtown, where everyone had been put on notice. Elena had been kidnapped. And when it came to his people, no effort was too great.

Celeste was in her usual place at the front desk. A former Houston cop, she was the building’s first line of defense—and a formidable one at that. Her wild-colored clothes and big dangly earrings were a deceiving affectation. No one got past her if she didn’t want them to.

She got to her feet. “Daniel. Any word since she called?”

“No.” It didn’t surprise him that news of Elena’s call had reached Celeste. She always seemed to know everything that was going on. “Celeste, thank you for your quick and decisive actions when the kidnapper called.”

“I knew he was serious. I tangled with him once before, when he tried to get in here without an appointment.”

“You’ve met him, then? What’s he like. Tell me every detail you remember.”

“He’s over six feet, muscular build, working man’s hands. Dark hair, kinda shaggy. Blue eyes. Nice looking, can’t deny that. Any other time—”

“Irrelevant, Celeste.”

“Right. He was very polite but insistent. And stubborn. He didn’t want to take no for an answer, no matter how many times I explained that his first step was to fill out the online form. Once he realized I wasn’t going to budge, he left. Not in a happy mood.”

“Did he seem unbalanced?”

“No, not at all. He stated his case in very clear terms. I remember the case he was talking about, the Tammy Riggs murder.”

Daniel remembered it, too, though not in great detail. He followed a lot of crimes, sensational or not.

“He had a sort of noble bearing. Looked me right in the eye. Never used any coarse language, didn’t lose his temper.”