Lainey sat and stared at the TV screen, flipped through a few channels, then turned it off with a sigh. She looked down at the empty ice cream pint in her lap, and then over at the closed window blinds. Sunlight peeked around the edges, reminding her that there was a life outside these four walls. Outside her prison.

She jumped up and headed to the kitchen of Zane’s utilitarian apartment. She’d been baking up a storm out of sheer boredom. The counters and cabinets were overflowing with breads, pastries, pies, scones, the works. She sighed and picked up a scone, put it to her lips then threw it across the kitchen with a loud curse.

“Fucking men,” she sobbed as she slid to the floor of the kitchen. After a few minutes of sobbing—something she’d been doing so much lately her eyes burned and her face ached—she got slowly to her feet and started sticking all the baked crap into the big zip lock bags she’d asked Zane to pick up on the way home yesterday.

Once she had everything packaged up, she stared around her favorite room at a total loss. When the doorbell rang, she headed for it on autopilot, feeling woozy and drained, like she needed a nap, even though she’d taken one earlier in the day, after getting eight hours of sleep. As she scraped her hair up and into a ponytail, she had the half thought that she should really take a shower, maybe put on different clothes. But she had ordered Chinese and was looking forward to the Kung Pao chicken.

She grabbed her wallet from the cluttered table and hauled open the door, half asleep, miserable, and not paying attention.

“Hi Lainey,” a voice said, cheery and eager and instantly recognizable. Her vision narrowed to a pinprick as she looked into a familiar face. A terrifyingly familiar face. She stumbled back, wishing she’d had the wherewithal to put on shoes so she could duck under his arm and run. Her feet tangled in something, and she felt herself falling backward. A hand reached for her, grabbed on too tight, yanked her forward, and then all the lights went out at once.

* * *

She woke with a sneeze, which made her groan in pain. Her nose was pressed onto a hard, dirty surface. Her shoulders ached, but when she tried to rotate them to relieve the pressure, her wrists seemed to be locked in place behind her back. With some effort, she shifted so she was lying on her side, which let her at least draw a full breath.

“Think, Lainey. Process your surroundings. Remain calm.”

She kicked out her legs and wiggled her way over to an empty bed frame then forced herself onto her butt. The room was small and pitch black. It smelled like animals and piss. There were noises all around her. Above, below, to the sides. Screams, shouts, television shoot-outs—or at least she hoped they were on the television—filled her ears and brain.

“Get up, Lainey. Get moving. Find a door or a window.”

These little pep talks kept her mind off the pain in her skull and shoulders. She moved to where the noises seemed louder and figured out it was a window covered in some kind of dark paper. After a few minutes spent trying to peel it way using her swollen fingers while turned the wrong way, she was able to peer out onto an unfamiliar, dark streetscape.

There were random beater cars lining the streets and most of the lights were out. She saw a busted out fence beneath her, possibly surrounding the yard of the building she was in. As if to distract her shivering, terrified body, her brain began to formulate an escape plan.

When a door opened behind her, she whirled with a scream. “Help!” She screeched at the top of her lungs. “Help me! Please!”

Someone laughed. “Help me too, while you’re at it muthafucka,” a female voice hollered from the hallway. Then the door shut, leaving her in the dark again. Alone, with her husband.

“What a shame,” he said. “What a crying shame.”

Lainey scrambled into a corner and got on her knees. She recalled that this kind of submissive position was something he liked. It was possibly the best way to keep him from killing her. Because she knew in her gut that he would do that. He would kill her this time.

His hand touched the top of her head. Lainey kept her eyes down on the floor. His rich cologne hit her nose, almost making her gag but she held it back. If she made a sound without his permission, he’d backhand her, exacerbating the pain in her head and nose. She stared at his expensive brown loafers, at the dust motes dancing around his feet, and started to pray.

* * *

“Jesus, Zane, I thought you had this.” Owen glared at the tall, obviously distraught man, then over at Jon who looked equally wigged out. “Give me the SITREP,” he barked, hoping to get them focused.

“Lainey must have answered the door without looking,” Zane said before he dropped into a chair and ran a hand down his face. “I told her not to. But shit, man, I can’t babysit the girl. I had work to do, you know?” He raised one arm, indicating the GAPS office, now devoid of its one female presence. “I never thought he’d find her at my place. It’s so far off the beaten track.”

“We’re dealing with a perp who’s got balls and connections and more money than God. That more money than God thing is probably what he’s using to get people to talk.” Owen stared down at his phone, willing her to message him as he’d been doing for a solid week. Of course, now the stakes were much higher. “Tell me again how you found out he had her.”

Zane heaved a sigh. “I got a call from a strange number. I answered it. Some guy claiming to be Richard Case said he had his wife and he would be keeping his wife and that I could stop worrying about his wife because it was his job to take care of her. Then he hung up.” Zane looked over at Jon.

“I got the same call,” Jon declared. He leaned his elbows on the high counter between the reception area and Lainey’s workstation. “Only he told me to tell you that if she chose not to be with him, that is, if she chose you over him, he’d make sure you never saw her alive again.” Jon shook his head. “I’d just got back from Italy and was so jet lagged, I didn’t know if I was dreaming or what. At least until this knucklehead called me in a total panic.”

Zane glared at his friend then trained his gaze on Owen. “Richard Case is her husband? Christ in a sidcar. That’s a real wrinkle.”

“Yeah, it is,” Owen admitted as he fired up his geo tracker. It was a waste, he knew. There was no way Lainey had managed to have her work phone on her when the guy showed up at Zane’s to snatch her. Besides, what was she going to say to him? ‘Hang on a sec, psycho killer hubby, while I get my work phone, so my new squeeze can find me, kill you, and save the day?’

He sighed and leaned back, trying to force his spinning brain to concentrate on a solution. At that moment, his phone buzzed deep down in his pocket. He scrambled for it, stared at the screen, and then turned it to show the number to Zane. Zane nodded and mouthed, “Same number.”

Owen pointed to his computer and stood. Zane opened the tracer app for their company lines and gave him a thumbs-up. He put the device to his ear. “If this is who I think it is I hope you have your affairs in order because I am going to find you and separate your head from your worthless body very soon.”

A low chuckle sent a thrill of fury down Owen’s spine. “Right, right. You’re the hero. I almost forgot.” Richard Case’s voice was nondescript if a little high pitched for a man. “I wanted to make sure you heard this directly from me, Owen Taylor.”

Owen clenched his fist, pressed it against the drywall, and took a deep breath. Negotiation with assholes had never been his strong suit. He preferred to fire his weapon and let the suits sort out the rest. He felt Jon’s hand on his shoulder. Instead of pissing him off, the touch did calm him enough to answer. “What is it, Richard? I’m pretty busy over here, packing my bag full of guns and knives. I’ve got an appointment with a loser asshole who hurts women for fun, see, and I don’t wanna be late.”

“I’ll make sure my wife forgets you, Taylor. I’ll be putting you right out of her pretty little head. She has such a pretty little head, doesn’t she? And those lips. And that rack.” The low, almost cartoonish, evil chuckle forced Owen to close his eyes. “Ah, such a beauty. And wasted these past few years—but most especially this past week or so. Wasted on you. Oh, wait, here she is now. Hon? Sweetie? Come on over here and say goodbye to your hero.”

Owen stood up straighter and stared at Zane who was frantically stabbing at the keyboard, trying to get a location. He marched over and glared at the screen and almost missed the soft sniffle.

Almost.

“Lainey,” he croaked out, stuffing his fingertip in his other ear so he could hear her. “Lainey. Are you all right? Is he hurting you? Can you tell me—”

“Don’t try to find me. I’m leaving with Richard. He’s my husband, and it’s for the best.” Her cadence was weird, and she sounded muffled. “Don’t, Owen. Please. Forty-five fifty-one,” she whispered.

“What?” He ran out into the hall so he could hear better. “Forty-five fifty-one what?”

“Don’t try to find me,” she said, then ended the call.

“I got it,” Zane said. “There.” He pointed at the screen, which showed a red flag waving on a street grid.

“Let’s go,” Jon said, stuffing his Glock into a shoulder holster and handing one to Owen. “We’ll get her back. I swear it.”

Owen nodded and followed the men to Jon’s truck. After about ten minutes spent speeding through the city, they screeched up to a line of busted former payphones beside a line of low-rent beach houses. The seagulls swooped and screeched above them as they tried each dangling handset, only to find them all dead. Owen glared around, desperate for something. When he spotted the number 4551 painted on the curb outside an old brick building, his heart nearly stopped.

“There,” he said, pointing with a steady finger before pulling his weapon out and marching across the street.

“Wait,” Jon said, following him and dragging him into an alley between the 4551 building which looked to be half meth lab, half abandoned apartment building, and a bombed out one story structure that was probably at one time a gas station. If he didn’t know better, Owen would swear he’d been dropped straight back into the hellish nightmare of street battle in the Middle East. “Let’s watch the building. See if anyone comes out.” Jon held up his phone that had a picture of Richard Case from some magazine cover or another, looking smug and rich and asshole-ish. “This guy?” He shook his head. “Wow. How we didn’t discover that about her when we did the background check, I have no idea.”

“She’s good,” Zane said, admiration clear in his voice. “Almost as good as our token Marine here. Think Lainey’s her real name?”

Owen ignored them both and stared at the front door of the brick building, willing the fucker to emerge so he could walk up to him and blow his brains out all over the sidewalk by way of “negotiation.”

They waited for almost two hours, but no one came or went from building forty-five fifty-one.