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Heath? How the fuck did Heath have her?
“Don’t worry.” Heath sounded relaxed, almost pleased. “I’m going to get exactly what I want. Especially since you and your boyfriend have been playing us from the beginning.”
Ryder slammed his fist into the console, rattling the mounted monitors. The bastard got away. While Ryder had been busy patting himself on the back for a successful raid, Heath had already slipped through the perimeter, marched two blocks east, and ambushed the van.
Fuck.
Heath Diehl had Cassandra. And they were already gone.
Chapter 29
Heath had cranked the zip tie a notch too tight. Somewhere around the second turnoff, the numbness had already spread to Cassandra’s pinkies.
Refusing to give him the satisfaction of a complaint, she kept her bound wrists resting in her lap, shoulders hunched inward. In the green of the dashboard glow, her eyes remained fixed on a crumpled gas station receipt resting by her left shoe. She’d stared at it long enough to commit the details to memory: two energy drinks and a bag of sunflower seeds, totaling $7.43.
If she lived through tonight, she was never eating another sunflower seed.
Hands clamped firmly on the wheel, Heath kept his speed a few miles below the limit. Ever since clearing the city limits, he’d aggressively avoided the interstate, weaving through a labyrinth of rural back roads. Like clockwork, his gaze flicked upward to the rearview mirror.
She’d been reaching for her coffee when it happened. With Ryder’s team dominating the warehouse floor and Fallon securing the children, Cassandra had let herself buy into the illusion of safety for one naïve, fleeting second.
Then something heavy slammed against the exterior paneling. A few seconds later, the sliding door screeched open along its metal track. She spun her chair toward it, fully expecting to see one of the team.
The glow from the monitors had caught the man’s face. The first things she registered were those flat, dead eyes. Heath loomed in the doorway, slightly winded but projecting a terrifying, unhurried calm.
She parted her lips to shout his name into the comms line, but the opportunity vanished before she could. Heavy fingers clamped around her bicep, ripping her from the seat with enough violence to snap the headset off her skull.
As he yanked her past the main console, she had a single window of opportunity. Spotting the tray of spare body transmitters resting beside her keyboard, she lunged blindly. She snagged a unit, flicked the toggle by feel alone, and buried the micro-device deep into her front jeans pocket as Heath dragged her out into the cold night air.
He’d left his truck parked a block beyond the tire shop, completely separated from the SUVs the rest of the crew had driven, keeping its presence entirely secret. With her wrists bound tightly in plastic ties, he forced her into the passenger side. Thank God searching her pockets hadn’t crossed his mind.
The beacon remained undiscovered. Every bump and crack in the asphalt pressed the rigid, tiny disk directly against her hip bone.
Whether it actually functioned was anyone’s guess; the transmission might just be hitting a vacant van while the Rogue team was busy detaining suspects at the warehouse. Still, on the off chance someone found it, the only way they’d know what was going on was for her to keep talking.
“How did you find me?” she asked, allowing her voice to crack with a fragility that required zero acting.
When his hand cut across the cab toward her, she recoiled violently against the passenger door, her terror completely genuine. He firmly pressed two fingers into the base of her skull, right under the hairline. “Nano tracker.”
Twisting out of his reach, she awkwardly lifted her bound hands over her shoulder and carefully probed her nape with the tips of her fingers, but met only smooth skin. “How?”
“Planted it on you myself that day you left.”
She remembered. His hand had cupped her neck in the common area while she hung off Ryder’s side, barely able to stand. She’d assumed it was some sort of test, terrified he wasn’t going to let them leave.
“Yep. Microscopic. Smaller than rice. You’ve been carrying me around with you for days.”
Her skin crawled as if he were still touching her. “Why did you want to track me? Did you suspect us?”
His mouth got tight. “Not beyond suspecting everybody, which makes me the dumbass, doesn’t it?”
“Then why?”
“You and Sutton intrigued me. I wanted a taste.”
It took every ounce of willpower not to vomit.
“I was going to wait, of course.” He checked the mirror. “Let Arlo close this deal. Let Sutton take his cut and go home. Then I was going to come see you some night when he wasn’t around.”
