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Blood rained down on her, warm and wet. She cringed but couldn’t cover herself from a man’s life showering over her. Panic and pain twined into one when she saw the hole in his jacket, the blood spurting from the wound in his chest.
“C-Connor,” she whispered desperately through numb lips.
If she was going to die, lost in the wilderness somewhere and surrounded by dead men, he would be her last thought. Dying with only her Daddy in mind was the next best thing to having her heart stop while in his arms.
There was no doubt she was going to die today.
A gloved hand knocked away the deadly shards of glass still remaining, using the gun as a hammer to smash them out. Then it reached in and grabbed her wrist, pulling her free of the wreck.
She tried to scream, but her throat clamped down on the sound. Broken bones jarring, her head exploding with every inch of movement, she succumbed to the darkness.
*
Four hours, and not a word.
Connor paced the hallway, cell phone in hand. The one without swollen knuckles and marks gouged into the flesh from Zeke’s teeth. He walked up and down, following the same solitary path he’d made since Hadley and his idiots took Jenna away with a promise to call Connor as soon as they reached the hospital and she was settled.
He’d almost killed the agent when Jenna screamed in terror and Hadley had tried to restrain him. If Zeke hadn’t been there, Connor would’ve succeeded. Instead, the agent ended up with a black eye, broken nose and bruised ribs, while Zeke earned himself a chipped front tooth.
He wasn’t ashamed of his actions. Both men would have done the same if it had been their woman trapped with two strange men, alone and frightened.
When she’d pounded on the kitchen door, tried to open it, he’d nearly managed to break out of Zeke’s impressive hold. With Hadley’s weight leaning against it, Jenna hadn’t stood a chance of opening it, and Connor hadn’t been strong enough to break free and save her.
Why the hell wasn’t Hadley calling?
Luna stuck to his heels. She’d been glued to his side since Jenna’s departure, and she matched his every step. Every so often, she whined as though asking where her mistress was.
“Connor, come sit down before you wear a hole in the carpet.”
Sarah leaned against the doorjamb of the living room, her face drawn and tired. She’d kissed her husband goodbye and sent him home to take care of the kids when it became clear Connor wasn’t handling Jenna’s loss well.
“He hasn’t called.”
“I know. He will. He promised.”
“His promises mean shit.” Connor almost let the phone fly before he remembered he needed it. “They took her, Sarah. They fucking took her, and now nobody is telling me anything.”
“The weather’s bad, Con. Hadley will be driving slower than usual. He knows how important she is to you—he’s a Daddy too.” She stepped forward and grabbed his arms before he could make the turn back to the front door. “Trust him. We’ve trusted him this far and he’s done nothing but help. Give him the benefit of the doubt.”
He snorted. “He kept me from her.”
“He was following a court order. Even Zeke said he didn’t have a choice in the matter, Con. Maybe it would have been worse for Jenna if she’d been able to say goodbye—letting go of you wouldn’t have been pleasant.”
Goodbye. The brief goodbye they’d had hadn’t been long enough. Jenna wrapped around him, crying her heart into his shoulder. A long, desperate kiss. Whispered words and promises before the psych attendants came in and took control.
Out of patience with the conversation, Connor growled and resumed pacing. If Hadley hadn’t warned him to stay away from the hospital on pain of arrest, Connor would have been driving right behind them. But something told him Jenna’s parents had connections, if not money, and that locking him up wasn’t outside their moral limits.
Apparently, nothing was.
When the phone rang, he fumbled it in his hands, only to discover the screen blank and the fucking thing silent. It dawned on him the ringtone wasn’t his—the goddamn ringing phonewasn’t his.
Sarah wrestled her cell from her pocket with a quick, absent apology. Her brow furrowed as she glanced at the flashing screen, then she answered with a quiet, “Zeke?”
Ignoring her, Connor took three steps away, promising he’d wait ten more minutes for Hadley to call before he didn’t give an actual fuck what punishment the law brought down on his head, and went after his girl.
“Connor.”
The edge in Sarah’s voice was different to anything he’d heard from her before. When he turned slowly, she was shaking, her skin so white she could have faded into the snow outside and disappeared. She walked to him and took his hand, leading him into the living room without a word of protest from him, and nudging him onto the couch.
