Blaire

“Wake up!”

I didn’t want to open my eyes. My lids felt like lead and the voice was like a bee buzzing in my ear. I tried to shift my position on the bed. My eyes popped open. The mattress creaked too much.

“Wake up, Blaire.”

“Valerie?” I finally recognized the voice and sat up. Grant’s sister was sitting on the edge of a twin-sized cot. Her eyes filled with relief.

“Oh, thank God, you’re okay,” she cried and hugged me. I wasn’t sure if I had entered an alternate universe so I surveyed my surroundings, noting the tall crates and boxes and wide-open space. We were in a warehouse and there was a man off to one side holding a rifle. And then I recalled everything. Val kidnapped. Grant leaving the penthouse. Andy coming by and faking his misery when he was the mastermind who’d betrayed us all. Plus, the bastard tranq’d me.

“Just a bit groggy,” I replied, grimacing at the cottony feel of my mouth. “Did they hurt you, Val?”

“No.”

“Do you know where we are?” I whispered.

“Hey!” Our guard called. “No whispering or I’ll separate you two bitches.”

“Charming,” I muttered. “Where’s Andy?”

“He’s around somewhere,” Val said, her voice turning hard. “I can’t believe I fell for his boyish act.”

“We all did,” I said and lowered my voice again. “Do you know how many guards—”

The guard growled and stalked toward us. He yanked Valerie off the bed as she gasped in outrage. I jumped off the bed, got between them, and rammed my fist into the man’s face. He let go of Val and was about to backhand me when footsteps came running.

“Rex!” Andy scowled at his man. Beside the senator’s fake aide, stood Suit-Guy from the gallery. He had a laptop under his arm. But my eyes momentarily locked on Rex. He looked familiar.

“Good, you’re awake, Blaire. We can’t waste time,” Andy stated. He motioned for Suit-Guy to get situated at a desk that had several wires attached to computer equipment. “I believe you met Eric at the gallery?” I turned to Eric who gave me a mock salute.

On another table were the paintings. They’d been cut from their frames and laid stacked on top of each other. Above the table was a swivel lamp and magnifying glass. Beside it was what I suspected was a spectrometer. “Do you need anything right now? Are you hungry?”

“All right,” I stood back and swept my arms out helplessly. “You all have to tell me what I’m supposed to find underneath that.”

“Numbers, Blaire,” Andy said impatiently. “We tried to leave you out of it, but Kostin concealed the numbers very well, it’s hard to separate the pigments. You’ll have to go in there manually.” He scowled at me. “Don’t give me that look.”

He stalked over to Val, yanked her arm, twisted it behind her, and held her in front of him. “We don’t have time. Your damned tracker is causing us problems and it’s not like we can cut it out of you. I’ll hurt Valerie if I have to.” He jerked the arm behind Val higher, but Grant’s sister, although in pain, wasn’t giving Andy the satisfaction.

Brave girl. Now if I could figure out how many people we were up against and plot our escape.

“Release her and I’ll get started,” I said. “I need a scalpel, solvent, a bowl of water, and clean rags. Think you can get me those?”

“Do you really need the scalpel?” Andy asked, pushing Val off to the side. There was a hurt look on her face, but I couldn’t analyze what she was feeling at the moment, although, it would wreck me if Grant had used me the way Andy had used her. Hopefully, she wasn’t in too deep with him yet.

“Do you really want those numbers?” I countered. Ugh, I wanted to punch him in the face. To think I thought his boyishness was adorable. Now he made my skin crawl. That two-faced bastard.

He came back moments later with a box cutter. “This is all I have.”

“It’s not ideal, but it will do,” I returned coolly then settled in front of the desk and got to work.

Three hours later, my back and eyes were killing me. The solvent had also nauseated me. My fingers were tired from maneuvering the box cutter. I was miserable, but I had uncovered the two bank account numbers they needed. I had passed the paintings through the scanner and noted that each painting hid four account numbers.

I wasn’t sure what Suit-Guy, Eric, was doing with the account numbers, but he confirmed the money in them, and it sounded like they were distributing it to different accounts.

“You need to work faster,” Andy murmured close to my ear while his hands massaged my shoulders.

“Take your hands off me.”

His fingers disappeared and he plopped down on a chair beside me. “You know, Blaire, I really liked you.”

“Lot of good it did me—you still sold me out,” I muttered as I scraped some paint off a section to reveal a 2. A thought occurred to me. “Did you put the bomb under the car, Andy?”

Val gasped.

“Rex was the senator’s driver that day, wasn’t he?” I asked. “He didn’t have a beard then.” It had finally clicked where I had seen him. “He told you I was secure in that Bentley and wouldn’t get killed in that rollover, but you didn’t care about Amelia.”

“Orlov couldn’t get to you, so he asked my boss for some help. We needed you alive and it was the perfect setup to alienate you from them.”

“You fucking bastard!” Grant’s sister leapt up from the cot, but Rex turned the rifle at her.

“Wow! And then you marched me out to the slaughter,” I derided.

“You’re a survivor though. You’ve ruined my chances for greater things.”

I sat up straight and cracked my neck from side-to-side. “What do you mean?”

“Blaire, do you think I wasted years going to law school, years building my reputation as a political advisor, just to be a thief? No. The plan was to infiltrate the administration of the next president. Then you proved to be too difficult to abduct because your damned boyfriend was too paranoid. There was a change of strategy. It wasn’t my preference, but my backer was making it worth my while.”

“You work for the Russians? Are you a spy for the Kremlin?”

Andy burst out laughing. “No, I don’t work for the Kremlin.”

He did not deny working for the Russians.

A large clanging gate slid open somewhere and a rush of footsteps echoed through the warehouse. Two men appeared, both armed with carbines.

“One of the carriers is down,” one of them said. “It’s being hacked.”

“By whom?”

“We’re not sure, chief. But the location markers are down to seventeen. What do you want to do?”

“If we try to move out of the tracker’s range, they’ll locate us before we reach a safe house. BloodTrak is using satellites, so there’s no guarantee they won’t find us.” Andy glanced at Valerie. “We’ll send a message. What do you think, sweetheart? Shall we see who’s more important? Will your daddy stop me from chopping off your finger? Or maybe we should go straight for the jugular?”

Val’s eyes widened in terror and I wanted to kick Andy’s ass.

“You wouldn’t,” Val said, her chin trembled but she tilted it up in defiance.

Andy smirked, before he turned to Eric. “Get the webcam up and make sure our IP redirectors are activated.”

“Andy, don’t do this,” I appealed to my former friend. “I’ll get this done faster.”

“You’re not even halfway done, Blaire,” Andy told me. “I’m buying you more time, sweetie.” His smile was maniacal as he considered Val. “I’ll do this side-show in another area.”

“No!” I shouted.

“Rex.” Andy tilted his head in my direction and his guard pointed his carbine at me. He then grabbed Val’s arm, but she yanked out of his hold and refused to budge. It took three men to pull her past a section of stacked crates.

“Get to work,” Rex ordered.

“You can tell Andy I’m not going to—”

Rex swung the butt of his rifle toward me and smacked me at the tip of my chin. Pain erupted on the whole side of my face as my eyes watered. Refusing to let him see my tears, I turned back to the paintings and grabbed the cutter and solvent.

I tried to block out Val’s cries and struggles on the other side of the rows of boxes, but I couldn’t.

“Shut up!” I heard Eric shout. His outburst was followed by the sound of flesh hitting flesh and Val suddenly stopped crying.

“That was harsh, Eric, but thanks,” Andy said. “She was getting on my last nerve and I would have shot her.”

Asshole.

“Do we have contact yet? Good.” Andy paused. “Ah, Senator.”

“You sick son of a bitch. What have you done to my daughter?”

“Oh, you mean, this daughter?”

“Daddy …” Val croaked.

“Oh my God, what have you done to her? I’ll kill you, Spencer.”

“She’s been a handful,” Andy said.

“Where’s Blaire?” Grant!

“She’s busy earning us billions. Don’t worry—she’s still in one piece,” Andy said. “Now, I want you all to back off. We have no use for the women. Once Blaire gives us what we need, we’ll let them go.”

“Your word is shit, Spencer. You work for Yashkin,” Grant growled.

“Stop hacking the carriers,” Andy warned.

“Chief, we lost another one. We’re down to nine locations,” Eric said.

“Damn it, I’m warning you, Senator.”

“No!”

Val screamed.

I clenched my fist around the cutter and spun around. Rex didn’t see me coming because his attention was on the drama unfolding on the other side of the crates. I jumped on his back just as he was about to turn toward me. With my left hand covering his mouth, I sank the cutter into his neck and jerked it up. Valerie was still screaming and her father was yelling, so no one heard us hit the floor. Blood pooled like a river around us. My body and mind went into survival-attack mode with a single focus. I heard Liam’s voice in my head.

Fight.

I grabbed Rex’s carbine, checked the magazine, grabbed his extra ones, and went to get Valerie.