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“A few hours.”
“Do you think she’s alive?” It was the loudest question in my mind, and no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, I simply couldn’t. Eli had already gone to extreme lengths and now he was backed into a corner. I didn’t trust myself to envision what he was capable of.
Sawyer’s gaze was low, hair falling across his forehead. Gone was the pristine look he favored so much.
“If he has hurt her,” Sawyer said slowly, lifting his gaze to me. “I will kill him.
The wait for nighttime was excruciating. Each hour dragged by like claws down a chalkboard and not even calls from our lawyers could do anything to distract us. Despite the slow passing of time, the last hour seemed to fly by, and we were rushing out of the office to head to the river. Liam was last. Leaving behind Marie for a second time today was hard for him, even if she was in good spirits.
He would be back with her in no time.
I hoped.
The spot Eli had chosen was rather secluded. A stretch of the river tucked behind an old Bistro that had closed its doors more than six months ago. The inky water glittered ominously in the moonlight as we approached. The alleyway opened into another dirtier alley with a small set of stairs leading to a higher platform.
There, Eli stood with a twisted smirk on his face. His features appeared sunken in the shallow light of the lone streetlight. That smirk widened at the sight of Sawyer, then faltered when Liam and I stepped into view.
“Well, I shouldn’t be surprised,” Eli remarked, sliding one hand into the pocket of his suit jacket. “Unable to meet even a simple request? Maybe you care for Callie even less than I anticipated.”
It took every ounce of my restraint not to charge forward and tackle Eli down those stone steps. Holding myself back was a challenge, and my muscles all over burned from how tightly I was tensing. Reacting so suddenly would do nothing to help Callie.
“I’m not stupid,” Sawyer snapped. “You wanted to talk. So talk.”
“Straight down to business?” Eli’s smirk returned. “Alright. Give me the patent.”
“Fine,” Sawyer answered so quickly that I didn’t even have time to be surprised. “Tell me why.”
“Why? Because you’re sitting on a gold mine and you know it.”
“To you,” Liam remarked bitterly. “If you want to inflate prices and kill people for profit, sure.”
“Down boy,” Eli sneered. “If I want an opinion from you, it’ll be about how to get black-out drunk. Until then, shut up.”
Liam’s hands curled into tight fists, and his teeth clacked together when he snapped his jaw shut.
Asshole.
“I’m tired of you, Sawyer. I’m tired of working my ass off only to bow down and play second fiddle to fucking Crane Enterprises because your rebrand put you right in my crosshairs. I’m hurt, you know, that you didn’t at least call me to let me know you’d be knocking me off my pedestal. Not even a gift basket.”
Sawyer remained stoic, his face a picture of calm. “A boot does not have tea with an ant before crushing it,” he remarked. “If you’d been any real kind of competition, you wouldn’t have bowed so easily.”
Heat crawled up my spine. I wanted to reach out and warn Sawyer not to antagonize the asshole but I couldn’t. It seemed Sawyer had a plan, and trusting him was my only option. Other than tackling Eli into the river but the outcome of that fantasy wasn’t meaningful.
“You watch your tongue,” Eli snapped. “You stomped your big fucking boots over everything, shoved me aside, and I was always scrambling to keep up, and why? People were blinded by this faux moral compass you shouted about from the rooftops. I never believed it for a second. And you!”
Eli’s narrow eyes slid to me.
“There was no way in hell I was going to play second fiddle to Golden Dov, a company led by a man with more money than sense.”
“Despite that,” I snapped, unable to remain quiet for a second longer. “I’m still above you. And you’re never going to get your hands on that patent because you wouldn’t even know what to do with it even if it did just fall right into your lap?—”
“You can have the patent,” Sawyer cut in, effectively silencing me. “Where is Callie?”
It struck me then that in all our hours of waiting for nighttime, we really should have agreed on a plan of attack. In truth, I was willing to do anything to get Callie back but the game of toying with Eli was known only to Sawyer. Following Liam’s lead, I fell silent and gritted my teeth as smugness burst across Eli’s face.
“You really do care about her, huh?” Eli said slowly. “Or is it simply a desire to punish her for betraying you? I can’t imagine how that must have felt, learning that she was the one that screwed you over.”
“Did she?” Sawyer tilted his head slightly. “She gave you the wrong patent. Looks like it wasn’t me that got screwed.”
