AS THE TALL male figure comes through the door, I take a deep breath to let out a blood-curdling scream but swallow it as soon as I see Doc’s handsome face in the lamp’s light. I grow lightheaded at the roller coaster of adrenaline and relief, emptying my lungs as I collapse against the bathroom’s doorframe.
“Jesus H., Doc. What the hell are you doing here? And how the fuck did you get in? I definitely locked the door behind me!” I squawk breathlessly as I sink down to the floor, plopping onto my ass like a deflated balloon. My heart feels like it’s beating a mile a minute.
He strolls forward until he towers over me, his bearded jaw set as he pulls a thin pair of tools from his pocket, wiggling them between his fingers before replacing them where they were. “Four seconds, goddess,” he growls, using the name he’s been calling me the last few days. The endearment warms my heart while his tone makes my blood run cold—a very strange feeling. “I opened your locked door in four… seconds.”
“You’re a man of many talents,” I murmur, trying to shake off the way his mesmerizing eyes penetrate me with his disappointment. “How did you—”
“There are sensors on all of the doors and windows of my home. The moment you opened the front door, I watched you steal my truck on my surveillance app on my phone,” he tells me, and I instantly feel a pang of guilt. “When you disappeared from my cameras’ view as you pulled out of my driveway, I tracked you with the GPS I have in all of my vehicles. I was already on my way home, and pulled into your garage not even a full two minutes after you had parked.”
I roll my eyes. “Hell, I’m surprised you don’t have a Go-Pro attached to your dog,” I gripe, swatting my hair out of my face, beginning to squirm under his laser-like stare.
“Micro-camera. In his collar,” he states.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me.” My eyes widen.
“Scout is a highly trained retired military working dog. And he can obviously follow orders to stay the hell put a fuck of a lot better than someone else I know.” His nostrils flare.
Rage fills me at that. “One, I’m not a dog.” I clamber to my feet, straightening my tank with haughty movements. His eyes drop to my breasts and then meet my eyes again so quickly I question whether it actually happened. Either way, his intense expression never wanes. “And two, you have no right to order me to do anything. I’m a grown-ass wo—”
His mouth slams down on mine so ferociously my body bows, and if it weren’t for his massive arm circling me, I would have fallen backward. He’s so fucking tall my face aims toward the ceiling as he devours my lips, and finally, as my mind catches up to put all of these different puzzle pieces together to realize he’s kissing me, I whimper and go dead weight when his tongue plunges into my mouth. He holds me to him effortlessly, his whole body wrapping around me like a cocoon. And while I feel so tiny, so helpless in the arms of such a giant man, even as he takes his anger at my insubordination out on my lips, I feel nothing but safe. Well… that and completely turned on in a way I never thought possible.
Just as my hands find his shoulders and run upward, over his neck and into the back of his short hair, his phone rings loudly, the sound echoing off the bathroom walls.
He growls as he breaks the kiss, leaving me panting against his chest as he pulls his cell out of his pocket.
“Seth?” It comes out as a bark, and he clears his throat. I look up to see the frustrated look melt from his face as it’s replaced by worry, before a serious mask locks into place while he listens to Seth speak.
Doc’s eyes find mine, his focus shifting back and forth between my irises.
“Stay calm. We’re on our way,” he says, hanging up and grabbing my hand.
“What’s wrong?” I ask quietly, dread filling me.
“Brandon’s taken Twyla. Let’s go.”
FIFTEEN MINUTES PASS without a response to my last text message to Twyla. And then twenty, then thirty. By then, I’ve sent her a few more, still with no reply. It’s still a half hour before the store closed, so maybe she had more customers come in, but something in my gut tells me not to blow her silence off. I call her work number just in case her cell has died, and when she doesn’t answer that, I know something is very, very wrong.
I log into the surveillance system, and with a few keystrokes, I tap into the cameras outside Toys for Twats. Seeing Twyla’s car still in the parking lot, my brow furrows. Why wouldn’t she be answering either of her phones? Have my messages asking her about her thoughts on trying BDSM freaked her out so badly she’s ignoring me? Surely not. Not after seeing the heat in her eyes while we were talking about it in the car less than eight hours ago.
I switch the view to the cameras Bryan had put outside Brandon’s hotel when he went to serve him the restraining order. And when I see his car isn’t in the lot, where it’s been the whole time since the camera was installed, my heart pounds inside my chest.
I pull up our GPS program, scanning the map for any signs of Brandon’s whereabouts. To ensure he was driving back to California, Bryan had also placed a microscopic tracking device beneath his car. But when I locate the dot on the screen indicating Brandon’s movements, he’s not heading south on I-95 to catch I-10 to head toward the west coast. No, he’s heading east, and when I rewind his tracker to see where he’s been, that’s when I see the dot had stopped at Twyla’s work for a total of six minutes.
With my heartbeat now pounding in my ears, I go back into the surveillance program and type in the time for the footage from the store’s parking lot camera. And I can’t explain the emotion that comes over me when I see the motherfucker carrying an unconscious Twyla out to his car before speeding out onto the street and out of sight.
I grab my cell, my hands shaking as I call Doc. He picks up on the first ring, his voice coming out gruff. “Seth?”
“Doc, he’s… he’s fucking got my woman. Brandon took her. I’ve been trying to get a hold of her for half an hour, and when she wouldn’t answer, I tracked Brandon. He left the store twenty-four minutes ago, heading east,” I tell him all in one breath, rage and panic filling me in equal parts as I say it out loud.
“Stay calm. We’re on our way,” Doc replies, and I let out a maniacal short burst of laughter.
“Stay calm?” I shout, but he already hung up.
How the fuck he expects me to stay calm when—
I’m so angry at myself I would pay someone to beat my ass right now. How fucking stupid had I been? All our focus had been on keeping Astrid safe, keeping her hidden in a place where Brandon didn’t know her location. With the restraining order served and surveillance on him in place, we thought we were still being extra cautious by not letting Astrid out in the open until he had left. We all thought it was her we needed to keep safe, his obsession with her, not Twyla.
He must’ve grown frustrated, unable to get to his ex-girlfriend. And now he’s going to take it out on my woman.
I jump up from my computer chair, my hands diving into my hair. “Fuck!” I growl, as I try to think of what to do next, and just then, Corbin and Bryan storm into my office.
“Doc called. What’s the plan?” Bryan demands, coming to stand in front of my desk, his arms crossing over his wide chest.
My brain’s jumbled. I’ve never been so angry or scared in my entire life. “I… I don’t know. I can’t think straight!”
Corbin comes around my desk and grips onto my shoulders, giving me a jerk to force my eyes to his. “We’re going to get her back, brother. She’ll be all right. But right now, we need to know details, and we need to make a plan,” he says calmly, and the sureness in his expression makes me snap out of my panic.
I run down everything I’ve seen from the cameras and the GPS, and soon, Doc shows up with Astrid, her face showing the same terror I feel on the inside, knowing her abusive asshole of an ex now has Twyla.
Finalizing our plans, everyone splits. Doc will be at the club, making sure everything runs smoothly here and to keep an eye on Astrid. She threw a fit when we told her she couldn’t come with us to get her sister, but Doc was able to settle her down, and finally she understood if we wanted to get Twyla back safely, we couldn’t worry about her too.
Corbin and Bryan run to their offices, grabbing whatever gear they choose to bring with us, and I scoop up my laptop, feeling utterly useless as the other two men return, sliding their handguns into holsters beneath their jackets.
“Wipe that look off your face, man. We’re just the muscle. Your brain makes our job easy. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t know where she is. Now let’s go get her back,” Corbin grunts, and I let out a breath, following them out of my office.