Page 63 of Madam Temptress
“Rory!” I scream again, this time praying I’m not going to find what I fear most. My mind is filled with visions I will never recover from if they come true.
I see the blood on her door, and then I see Lachlan’s ashen face.
I freeze in my tracks. All the blood drains from my limbs at the stricken horror etched on my husband’s face.
“Oh God. Oh God.” Tears flood down my cheeks as my voice turns ragged and sobs are wrenched from the very depths of my soul. “Where is she? Where’s my baby? Is she—”
I can’t even get the word out.
My baby can’t be dead.My baby can’t be dead.
Lachlan rushes toward me and grips both my arms. His fingers are like iron manacles jerking me to a halt.
“Where is she?” I ask, but really, I’m begging for her to come back.
My heart stops when he finally speaks in a tortured tone I’ve never heard from his lips.
“She’sgone.”
Thirty-Eight
Magnolia
“Why aren’t they picking up?” Panic has set in as all of us try to reach Mount and Keira to relay the horrific news.
“Answer the fucking call, man!” Moses shouts at his phone as he tries Mount again.
“Come on, Keira! Pick up!” I shake my cell, like somehow that’s going to make her respond. Not that I have any fucking idea how to tell her that a bloodthirsty madman who wants me dead went after her helpless, innocent child instead. Tears spill down my cheeks in another wave of unrelenting guilt.
God, if it’s possible to regret an entire life, I’m doing it now.
Nothing—not grief, not love, not hate—could bring these emotions out of me. Nothing makes you realize every single way you’ve ever failed like an innocent suffering for your sins.
I try the call again, praying Keira’s going to pick up as much as I’m dreading the pain I’m going to cause.
And then it hits me.
I turn to Moses, who’s vibrating with unleashed fury beside me. “What if they already know? Oh my God! What if they’re already home?”
The driver punches it, laying on the horn as he blows through a red light. I grab the seat in front of me as he floors it through the crowded streets of the French Quarter, pedestrians darting out of the way.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Moses punches at his screen again, trying Mount, and finally ... he picks up.
“Unless you know where my baby girl is, you’d better stop fucking calling me,” Mount says in the coldest, scariest tone I’ve ever heard.
Chills skitter across every inch of my body as I feel the pain and fear underlying his every word.
“Reyes has her. We’re going to get her back. Noon. The French Market. Far end near Esplanade. He wants to make a trade for Magnolia.”
The roar that comes through the phone turns my bowels to liquid.
Reyes was right. Mount will turn me over in a heartbeat to save his baby girl. Hell, if we all survive this, he might kill me anyway for even putting her in danger.
I wouldn’t blame him one single bit. Hell, I’d hand him the loaded gun myself.
“We’re coming to you,” Moses says, cutting through the terrifying silence that followed the pained roar. “Everyone’s getting out alive today but Reyes, and if you say that you don’t give a damn what happens to Magnolia, I’ll kill you myself before I save them both. You hear me, Mount? We play thismy way.”
I stare at Moses, shock searing through me as his words penetrate. The threats he just made. The ultimatum he just laid down.He just threatened to kill Mount for me.
