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“We’ll find her,” Bear repeated fiercely.
His team was his rock right now, and he didn’t know what he would do without them.
As though their team leader’s words brought it to fruition, Mouse’s voice came through their comms. “Got a lock on her. She’s at the park by the lake.”
Immediately, Bear turned the vehicle around, narrowly avoiding colliding with a cab, and they headed for the lake. Central Park had been their last immediate hope of finding Vivienne. She talked about the park all the time, often walked there in her lunch breaks, and jogged there after work. It was the only other place they could think of that she might be.
If she wasn’t there, chances were she’d realized she had made a mistake and fled the city.
Then they’d never find her.
“There she is,” Arrow said, pointing out the front window.
Anger flooded his system in a rush as he spotted the woman standing calmly staring out at the lake like she hadn’t just had two people nearly blown up and one of them abducted.
“Play things cool, man,” Bear reminded him as he parked the vehicle and they all jumped out.
It wasn’t the reminder that had Surf reining in control of his emotions, it was the fact that they weren’t alone at the park. The last thing he wanted to do was cause a scene, get the cops involved, and waste time. Eagle would get everything sorted out, but precious seconds would be lost, seconds they couldn’t get back.
All that mattered to him was Lila and their baby, and he would set everything else aside to get to them in time.
The rest of his team got out of the other SUV, but they all stepped back and allowed him to take the lead as he approached the woman who had ripped everything he loved right out of his grasp.
“Vivienne,” he said as he reached her.
For a moment the woman didn’t react, then she turned very slowly to face him. A pair of devastated brown eyes looked up at him through thick lashes, and some of his anger melted away.
Whatever Vivienne had done he suspected it wasn’t by choice.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. A soft broken sound that cracked away another piece of his anger.
“What did you do, Vivienne?” he asked. His team had formed a small circle around him and Vivienne, both to make sure she didn’t try something stupid like running or pulling a weapon, and also to watch for threats in case they had been lured into a trap.
“I wasn’t given a choice.”
“We always have choices.”
Vivienne nodded slowly. “Then I chose my family over yours.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know how, but they knew I worked at Prey. Somehow, they even knew I slept with you, that I liked you.” Guilt was written into every one of her features making her look much older than the beautiful young woman he had used for sex.
“I never promised you anything.”
“I know. And I thought I could do one night with no strings attached. But I couldn’t. I kept hoping you would realize we could have had something special. I let myself dream about it, that you’d see something in me, see how much I cared. But then Lila showed up.” There was no heat in her voice as she said Lila’s name, no anger or jealousy, and he truly believed that she had been coerced into betraying them. “I saw the way you looked at her. It was the way I had dreamed you would look at me. I knew then that you would never care about me like that because you were already in love.”
“What happened? Who came to you? What did they tell you to do?” he demanded. Just because Vivienne had been coerced didn’t absolve her of guilt, nor did it get him Lila and their unborn baby back.
“There was a man dressed all in black with a balaclava covering his face waiting for me in my apartment when I got home. He showed me a picture of my sister’s house and a guy sitting in a car right outside it. Told me I either helped them or they would kill my sister and her two little kids. I’m so sorry, Surf, but I had to do it. I couldn’t let them hurt my family.” Vivienne’s voice pleaded for absolution he couldn’t give her. While he understood her position, she could have come to Prey and told them what was going on. They would have found a way to keep her family safe and use the situation to their advantage.
“What did they want you to do?” he asked.
Vivienne closed her eyes for a moment and drew in a deep breath. “Just contact them if one of you left the building.”
“Do you know who they are?”
“No. I just took the burner phone they gave me and called the number I was given when you and Lila left to pick up some of her things.” Vivienne dropped her gaze again, this time to the cell phone she held in her hand.
