Page 76 of Deserving Cora
He immediately clicked on Pipe’s name and sent him a text.
Stone: Get out. Now.
He sent the same message to Owl, just to be on the safe side.
To his horror, he didn’t get the little check mark next to the messages saying they were delivered. He immediately clicked on Pipe’s name again, but this time to call him.
It went straight to voicemail.
Stone swore viciously and clicked on Owl’s name…with the same result. Out of desperation, he tried Cora. Again, no luck.
The situation felt worse and worse with each minute that passed. He desperately wished that the other guys were there. Brick, Tonka, Spike, and Tiny were better at this kind of thing. He was a helicopter pilot. Yeah, a hell of a good one, but he didn’t have the time in the field that his friends had. He’d been sufficiently trained in every type of combat situation, but the vast majority of his time had been spent in the air, not with boots on the ground. He had no doubt his friends would have probably formed three different plans by now and be halfway to executing them.
He frantically tried to think about what he should do next. Call the cops? Go up to the door and get his friends? Sneak up to the house and look through windows to see what intel he could gather?
All he knew was that if he didn’t do something, he might never see Pipe and Owl again. Both of them—as well as Cora and Lara—could end up dead.
He hadn’t lived through a helicopter crash and two weeks of torture to lose Owl now. They’d vowed to stay together through thick and thin, and no way was he gonna sit back and let anything happen to his best friend…or anyone else.
He had to come up with a plan. Pronto.
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
Pipe resisted the urge to pace. He held Cora against him as they waited.
After what seemed like hours, but was probably only minutes, Owl swore. “Something’s definitely wrong,” he said.
Pipe didn’t argue. How could he when everything within him was screaming that the situation was FUBAR? He pulled out his phone and typed out a text to Stone. He hit send, but to his surprise, after a few seconds, a notice came up that the message hadn’t been delivered. Pipe clicked on the message and tried to send it again, with the same result.
“Bloody hell,” he swore, clicking on Stone’s name. But the phone wouldn’t connect. “Owl, can you get a hold of Stone?”
His friend pulled out his phone and clicked a few buttons, then looked at him. “It won’t go through.”
Pipe’s lips pressed together. He didn’t need the hair standing up on the back of his neck to know they were screwed.
“Jammer?” Owl asked.
“That would be my guess,” Pipe agreed.
“What? What’s jammed?” Cora asked.
“The phone signal,” Pipe told her in a voice that sounded much more calm than he felt.
“I thought that kind of thing was just something made up from the movies,” she said.
“Unfortunately, it’s not,” Owl told her.
“Obviously,” she said, sounding very disgruntled. “They aren’t going to let us see Lara, are they?” Cora asked.
Pipe sighed and shook his head. Although seeing Lara was the least of their worries at the moment.
“Shit!” she said. “Right, so…fuck them. What now? Go out there and kick Creepy Guy’s ass? Search the house? What’s the plan?”
“Get the hell out of here and come back with the cops, like we probably should’ve done in the first place,” Pipe said grimly. He was an idiot for letting Cora accompany him and Owl to the house. He’d let her desperation to see her friend outweigh his common sense. And now she was in the middle of an unknown fucked-up situation.
He headed for the door, grabbed the doorknob and twisted—but froze when it didn’t move. Pulling on the door didn’t help either.
Fuck. They’d been locked in.
