AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lila was out there somewhere, alone and scared, possibly hurt, wondering where he was and praying he would come for her.
There was no way he could let her down.
No way.
Failing her meant losing not just the woman he already knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with but also their unborn baby. No way could he live knowing that he lost both of them.
“Why don’t you sit,” Bear suggested in a voice that made it sound more like an order.
“Can’t. Too wired.”
After he’d regained consciousness on the street after the explosion to find that Lila was gone and the cars with the men who had attacked them were speeding off down the street, he’d tried to pursue them. With a concussion and cuts and bruises all over his body, he hadn’t made it far.
By the time his team and cops had shown up it was already too late.
They were long gone.
Refusing to waste time at a hospital while Lila and their baby’s lives hung in the balance, he had been patched up by Arrow and all of them had returned to Prey. They’d been here ever since, going over security footage. Eagle Oswald, founder and CEO of Prey Security, had pulled in everyone on his cyber team, run by his sister Raven and wife Olivia. There wasn’t a single person at Prey who didn’t take this plot to overthrow the government personally. The second Storm Gallagher had gone after Dove Oswald—now Dove Anderson as she’d married Isaac a few months back—it had become personal to Prey. With each attack it only made them more determined to take down everyone involved.
Even though Surf was surrounded by people he had never felt this alone in his life.
Loneliness wasn’t a new feeling to him. His childhood had been brutal. Ruled by gangs and addictions, father murdered in front of him when he was four, men in and out of his drug-addicted mother’s life. Abuse on a good day, what could only be considered torture on a bad one. It had taken everything he had to fight his way out of that life. He’d wanted more from his future than dying in a gang war or overdosing.
Joining the military was his salvation, but Lila had brought something into his life that he hadn’t experienced before.
True love.
They might have tiptoed around their feelings, chosen their words carefully, claiming they were only falling in love, but they both knew it was more than that. They had already fallen.
The love he had for his teammates was different. He would die for them. They shared a deep friendship, a brotherhood, a bond that had been born in blood and bullets, one that could never be broken. But what he had with Lila ran so much deeper.
Now it could be gone.
“Surf, sit,” Bear ordered.
“Can’t,” he repeated. “Something isn’t right here.”
“We’ll do everything we can to find her,” Arrow assured him.
“We’re reviewing footage searching for anything that will tell us who they are,” Raven Oswald assured him. The woman was a warrior if ever there was one. She had battled armed men as a teenager to protect her younger siblings, survived losing her three-year-old daughter, and scoured the globe to get her child back and taken down a human trafficking ring in the process. And now she was happily married to the man she loved with two beautiful children.
If there was anyone who could find a clue that would help them find Lila it was computer genius Raven.
Yet he wasn’t reassured.
“The answers aren’t out there,” he said, restlessness flowing through his veins. “They’re in here somewhere.”
“Here at Prey?” Eagle asked, his blue eyes sharp, anger simmering beneath the surface of his calm exterior. The man was heavy on responsibility and very protective of everyone at Prey. Since he and Lila were together that made her one of them, and Eagle would go all out to get her back.
“What are the chances the first time we leave the building in weeks we get ambushed?” he demanded.
“They were likely watching the building,” Mouse said.
“No, we didn’t pick up a tail when we left, and it would have been easier for them to take us out at Lila’s apartment,” he countered.
“Would have been safer too,” Domino said slowly. “My brother’s men were highly trained and smart. An ambush on the street like that had way too many variables. Too many people, could have been cops nearby, we were close by. And using a bomb like that was risky. They could easily have taken themselves out as well.”
“It was like they threw together a plan on the fly because they knew I wasn’t here,” Surf said, glad Eagle and his team were starting to catch on.
