Page 11 of Protecting Paige

Could it be?—

No. It’s not possible.

But…

Call for help, the logical part of my brain instructs.Quick.

Just as I’m opening my mouth to shout, Derrick’s hand clamps over it. His fingers dig into my cheeks.

His breath is hot on my face as he hisses, “Don’t even think about making a sound,Paige.”

My heart thunders so loudly it’s hard to hear anything else.

But faintly, from upstairs, I hear a voice call, “Fredericksburg PD. We’re responding to a welfare check. If anyone’s home, can you open the door, please?”

Hope wars with impotent frustration. So close. Help isso close.

The hand over my mouth grips even harder. Something cool and hard presses against my chest. “Don’t try anything,” Derrick orders. It’s low. Menacing. “Or I promise, Paige, Iwillkill you.”

CHAPTER 3

CILLIAN

She has to be okay.

She has to be.

It’s a silent mantra I keep repeating.

But I also keep hearing her frightened yelp. Her muffled cry. The sound of the phone clattering to the ground. And then her voicemail message on repeat as I called her over and over, my panic growing by the second.

My foot presses down on the gas, pushing my car well past the speed limit. I know it’s not wise, speeding like this; not when I can’t afford to be pulled over. But my body won’t listen to reason. My body is running on sheer instinct, which is telling me to get to Paige’s house as quickly as I can.

I didn’t know where she lived before, but I do now.

After two fruitless minutes of calling Paige, I knew I needed to try something different. But I didn’t know her address. I didn’t even know her last name.

I had a fleeting thought of calling her company. But just as I was racing to my computer to look up their contact information, another idea struck me.

Rather than dealing with operators and hold times and wasted minutes trying to convince whoever finally answered that I was serious and not some crazy guy looking for attention, I could call on the people who’ve always had my six. People who would do anything for me if I asked, just as I’d do for them.

So I called my old GB teammate, Niall. He’s out in Texas now, working for an elite security company, along with two more of my former teammates, Xavier and Rhiannon. If there’s someone to be found, a person who needs help, their company is the one to call.

And I knew once I explained, Niall would find Paige’s location faster than anyone else.

Not two minutes later, I was proven right. As I was racing to my garage, trusty Sig and Ka-Bar in hand, he called me back. “Okay,” he told me, “we have her location. Matt hacked into the cell phone company’s records and got her address. Paige Beaumont, 512 Woodthrush Lane, Fredericksburg. Just west of I-95. Looks like she’s about an hour?—”

“Forty-five minutes,” I interrupted. “This time of night, I can make it in forty-five minutes.”

Because, even then, I knew I was making the drive. If Paige called me back with an explanation—a sudden emergency at home, or heck, a spider that made her drop her phone and accidentally break it—I could just as easily turn around and come back home.

But if I didn’t hear from her…

I called the police, of course. The second I hung up with Niall, I called them. They said they’d send over a patrol car to do a welfare check, promising to call me back if there was a problem.

As if I’d wait for them to call me? Not when I kept hearing Paige’s frightened yelp over and over. Not when my gut was screaming that something was terribly wrong.

So I badgered the Fredericksburg police for a good thirty minutes, all the while speeding like a maniac down the highway, until an annoyed-sounding officer finally got back to me. “There’s nothing wrong,” he reported. “Just an empty house with all the lights off. She probably just went out. If you don’t hear from her after twenty-four hours, you can file a missing persons report.”