Page 61 of Take Me Back
“Of course I cleaned out their rooms. We popped the safe and got the phones, IDs, and passports. No sign they were ever there. Oh, you know, except the fucking broken door handle in the bathroom. One of the guys is fixing it, but it cost me an extra thousand.”
Broken door handle? What the fuck? If anyone touched a goddamned hair on Kat’s head, I will fucking kill them.
“Yeah, yeah, I can hear your gratitude loud and clear. The boat is here and they’re going to load him up. He’ll be delivered on time, and I’ll meet up with you.”
They separated us? Fuck.
I shift and test the ropes knotted around my wrists. My first instinct is to rip that phone out of Anya’s hands and call in the cavalry to rain down hellfire on these assholes. I try to kick out and sweep Anya’s feet, but my legs are still numb.
Unaware of my consciousness, she keeps pacing and talking. “Where the hell are you going with the girl? I want to get off the island and back to Monte Carlo before I get another fucking bug bite.”
That bitch deserves every single thing coming to her, and it will not be pretty.
No one touches my wife without consequences.
“Hours? What the hell am I supposed to do while you’re on some genie-in-a-bottle island waiting for the boat for hours?”
Genie-in-a-bottle island?What the hell is she talking about? I rack my brain for any mention of a genie in a bottle, and I’ve got nothing. My synapses are firing slowly, but it has to mean something.
“Don’t you dare tell me to settle down. What if someone gets wind of this?Play idiot blonde. Great. Nice suggestion. How far away is that place, V?”
When she says V, it confirms my suspicions that she must be talking to Vander.
“You’re going right by here? I’ll be ready as soon as he’s gone, and you can pick me up.”
Her growl of frustration tells me Vander was less than amenable to her suggestion.
“Fine. I’ll wait. But you better tell those Plan B assholes they need to come up with a damned Plan C. The money for her better be worth it; that’s all I’m saying. I want my damned bonus. I’ll be waiting in the room after we get him loaded up. No, of course they won’t miss the transfer. He knows he won’t get paid if there’s no delivery. Call me when the tender is on the way.”
The money they get for her better be worth it?Over my dead body.
Cold fury, the kind that you unleash only when you need to feed the killing machine, floods my system. My entire body vibrates with unharnessed rage.
Nobody touches my fucking wife.
Anya curses, and I assume she’s ended her call. I could snap her neck right now, but it wouldn’t get me the answers I need. I have to shut it down before I’m surrounded by sand soaked with her blood, and no way to get to Kat.
Be smart, Dane. Think. Plan. This is what you do.
But I haven’t been in the field in a year. I’ve sat behind a desk or at a conference-room table, punishing myself for my mistake, watching over my former team as they walk into situations that would make any normal person shit himself at the first sign of trouble.
All because I’m not worthy of having their backs anymore.
I replay Anya’s half of the conversation, committing the things to memory that seem significant.Genie-in-a-bottle island. Plan B needing a Plan C.
My synapses fire faster as the adrenaline dump helps my brain shake off whatever they drugged me with.
Fuck these sons of bitches. They don’t have a clue who they’re dealing with. Not one fucking clue.
Anya speaks again to someone else on the beach. “Did you get all that? Plans are off schedule, but we still need to load him. My ride is delayed, but that doesn’t impact his transport. When’s the boat coming?”
I can’t get a look at the man’s face without turning over, and I don’t want to give away my only other advantage at the moment—the fact that they don’t know I’m awake.
“Yeah, yeah. Got it. He said he’d be here soon, so anytime. Now, we wait.”
“I’m not the kind of woman who waits. Where the hell is he?”
The sound of an approaching engine answers her question.
