Page 52 of Condor’s Vow

“Stay put. Someone is on their way.”

Clay hung up and felt like he couldn’t breathe, the terror was almost overpowering. The woman he loved was in the hands of the serial killer who had been hunting her, and he had no clue where she was. But he knew a man who might.

Spinning, he charged back into the interview room and in seconds had Malone Clark pinned to the table by his neck. Clay’s arm was pushing down and cutting off his air, and he didn’t give a fuck.

“Where the fuck has Wood taken my woman?” He hardly recognized his own voice it was so tortured and deadly. He’d never let a situation get to him like this, but then he’d never had it involve the woman he loved before. If something happened to her, he’d never forgive himself.

“I don’t know.”

“Fucking think!” Clay pushed harder, his vision going red, wanting to hurt someone or something to ease this feeling of impotence.

“Condor, step back. He can’t breathe, and he’s no good to us dead.” Lyric pulled at his arm, and after a minute more, he stepped back breathing hard.

Lyric moved in closer to Malone, seemingly nonchalant. “You need to tell him what you know, or else I’m going to have a few of my less savory friends pay your ex-wife a visit.”

Malone balked and looked at Clay who was holding his shit together by a thread.

“He has the surgery but also a private place he uses for research. It’s more secluded. He’d probably go there.”

“Where?”

Malone rattled off an address in Fredericksburg.

Clay was out the door the next second.

Hawk walked beside him. “What do you need, Condor?”

Clay stopped and saw his team ready to take direction from him to get Hattie back. Hanging his head for a second, he tried to focus. “Call Dax and Cruz, get them up to speed. I need every person looking for her. Rose, get a team over to the Westlands Veterinary Clinic in case he bluffed us. I want you to take point there. I know it should be me, but I can’t sit on my hands.”

“Of course. Go. We have this. I’ll get a BOLO out on the car and Patrick Wood now.”

“Thanks.”

They had potentially seventy miles between him and Hattie and that killed him. Picking up his phone, he called the one person he knew who wouldn’t be tied down by the rules in this situation that. “Reid, I need your help.”

“I’m on my way. Martin called me. Where you headed?”

“Fredericksburg.”

“Fuck. Okay, stay calm. We’re going to get your girl back. What do we know?”

“The killer is Patrick Wood, a vet and the biological father of the kids that died. He used Mr. Chester to get to her, and I had no fucking clue.”

“Don’t do that. It serves no purpose. Believe me, I know. Stay calm, concentrate on your training, and we’ll get her back.”

Clay put his hand over his eyes, the distance between him and Hattie eating away at him. “I can’t lose her, Reid.”

“You won’t. She’s smart and she’ll stay alive until you find her.”

“Okay.”

“I’m pulling in behind your vehicle now.”

“How the fuck did you find us so fast?”

“It helps when you work for a company that believes in family.”

Clay had met the Eidolon team and worked with them to rescue his sister, and they were an entirely different level of badass. Yet they had dropped everything to save Callie, and that meant something to him. They were ghosts, not bound by the same rules as him and his team, but they had the same core morals. Jack and Will, who owned Eidolon, were good men.

In fact, they all were and had even offered him a job. He may have been tempted if he hadn’t been offered this, but something drove him to stay in the FBI, and now he wondered if everything had led here to this moment where he could, God willing, save the woman he loved.