19
“Mia!”
Linc’s heart was in his throat and pounding a mile a minute. Not as an after effect of the plethora of bullets that had come flying at his head minutes earlier, but because, as he screamed Mia’s name, she wasn’t screaming back. He barreled up the staircase, side-stepping the bodies he’d dropped left and right, his mind running through several different possibilities.
It was possible that, while he’d been preoccupied in a near deadly shootout, Mia had helped her skinny ass to the laundry chute in the bathroom once more. It was possible that, as he raced desperately down the hall toward the bedroom, jumping over the dead bodies there too, that he was moving in the wrong direction. It was possible that she was in the depths of the forest outside once more, running for her life, and this time, he’d have discovered her escape too late. If she was as fast a runner as her long legs suggested, it was possible she could have already made it halfway to the lone house that sat a few acres to the east. A house where he knew a bored, lonely old lady lived. A lonely old lady who wouldn’t hesitate a moment in calling the police the second the Princess Di of politics showed up at her door.
This time, he might just lose Mia for good.
By the time he’d barreled into the doorway of the bedroom, short of breath, eyes wide, and fingers digging desperately into the frame, Linc had prepared himself for the worst. He had prepared himself for Mia to be gone.
But he hadn’t prepared himself for this.
He hadn’t prepared himself for the sight of her, crumpled in a heap on the floor, motionless, much like the dead men that still littered the hallway behind him. He hadn’t prepared himself for the sight of her long brown limbs thrown astray and bent into uncomfortable angles that could only be maintained when one had taken a fall accidentally and landed in an unnatural position. Leaving them unable to move in their unconscious state.
For a moment, Linc was frozen. For a moment, he stopped breathing. For a moment, all he could do was gape at the white towel that had miraculously managed to stay tied at her breasts. Breasts that still rose up and down, with faint, but still present breaths. All he could do was stare at the broken glass that surrounded her comatose body. Glass that he himself had put there in a foolish moment of fury the night before. A moment he regretted with every fiber of him as his eyes landed on the largest shard of glass there was. Not lying on the floor, but instead embedded in the heel of her foot. So deep it had inspired a pool of blood almost as long as her leg to drip out from the impalement and create a stream that slowly seeped across the floor. Toward the tip of his boots.
Linc charged across the room in one long stride. Not just because Mia was down and bleeding but because they had to get the fuck out of that house as quickly as possible. The wound in her foot was ugly and would surely leave her in a lot of pain, but it wouldn’t kill her.
Without her, there was no Emma.
So when Linc made it to her body, he bent down without a second thought, seized Mia’s wrist, and yanked her up from the floor. So quickly it caused her head to fall back. He bent down as he pulled so that her body crumpled onto the safety of his big shoulder, and then he stood, lifting her from the floor. Her lifeless limbs swinging on either side of him was reminiscent of the way they’d slung in the back alley on the night they’d met.
This time, however, his heart ached at the feeling.
He didn’t focus on that ache, however, too busy turning on his heel and racing out of the room.
——
Linc fought not to look to his left—to the passenger seat of the car parked in the house’s garage, where Mia was still passed out. Still wearing that maddening white towel and nothing else. Still in the same position, he’d put her in when he’d eased her body into that seat, minutes earlier. Still percolating with the sweet aroma he’d once believed was perfume, but after her shower, now proved to be her triggering, provoking, downright dangerous natural scent. His jaw clenched and rolled when breathing through his mouth did nothing to ease the debilitating aroma that would never, not even for a second, allow him to forget that she was in that car with him, half naked, skin and hair still damp and dewy from their moment in that steam-filled bathroom. A moment when he’d been so lost in her, so disabled with need for the warmth between her thighs that he’d almost ended up dead.
Almost lost Emma forever.
The stark reminder of his imprudence—a reminder driven home when his dick continued to jerk at the memory of Mia up against that bathroom door—kept his eyes off her. Instead of looking at her, he licked his lips and gave all of his attention to the burner phone in his hand and the clock on the car’s dashboard.
He waited until the clock struck twelve—then he dialed a number and put the phone to his ear.
It only rang twice before it clicked, and Linc didn’t wait for the person on the other line to say hello before his deep voice was filling the car.
“Send every flunky you got,” he spat. “But I’ve still got yours, and the terms remain the same. Emma for Mia.”
Silence dominated on the other end of the line, followed by the unmistakable sound of someone drawing in a sharp breath.
Malik’s voice finally came, his every word terse and clipped. “If anything happens to my wife, you have my word, you will pay in the most hideous way imaginable.”
“If you send anyone else who isn’t my daughter, I’ll kill them on sight.” Linc hung up without another word—eyes still locked the clock on the dashboard just as it hit the twenty-second mark. Twenty seconds. Just long enough to get his point across and just short enough to ensure Malik couldn’t trace the call. Leaving Malik with no other option but to seethe and wait, with baited breath, for Linc to contact him again.
This time, Linc allowed himself to look across the car to Mia. He kept his gaze on her, even after he’d turned the key in the ignition. Even after the engine growled to life and he’d yanked at the gearshift, putting the car in reverse. He couldn’t even break his eyes away after he’d he lifted his foot off the brake pedal and sent the car rolling backward at top speed.
Only when he was sure he was seconds from killing them both, did Linc finally tear his eyes from her serene face, wrapping his arm around the back of her seat and craning his neck to look out of the rear window. He looked back just in time to turn the wheel sharply, narrowly avoiding a collision with the massive willow tree at the end of the driveway, guiding the car onto the dirt road.
He slammed his foot on the gas, the rear wheels kicking up dirt as they sped away from that house, never to return.
——
Malik hung up the phone with his jaw clenched and his eyes alight, biting back whatever storm was clearly brewing inside of him as he leaned on his desk with his fingers splayed wide.
“Did you hear that?” he asked, meeting eyes with Hakeem, who was crouching at his laptop on the other side of the desk.
Hakeem shook his head from the laptop that the phone was still plugged into. “I heard him, boss, but he hung up too quickly. Couldn’t get a trace. But it’s all good because his fingerprints are all over that house and we can—”
“No. Did you hear what his just said?” Malik jabbed his finger at the phone.
Clearly still believing that his boss was furious about the news that had just hit him—news that the man who’d snatched his wife had somehow taken out a team of seven men—Hakeem sputtered. “Boss—he said… he said that the terms… the terms, they’re still the same.”
“He said ‘if you send anyone else who isn’t my daughter…’ ” When Hakeem continued looking confused, Malik’s voice rose. “ ‘My daughter’.”
Realization washed over Hakeem’s eyes, and before Malik could say another word, Hakeem jumped up to his feet, shuffling backward away from the desk, putting a phone to his ear with one hand and pointing a finger at Malik with the other. “I’m on it.”
“Find out exactly who this miserable bastard is and get me the Russians—now!” Malik barked, and even as Hakeem tripped out of the room, he finally allowed the anger that had been bubbling up inside of him to come out in an infuriated scream.