The final buzzer sounded.

Three to one, we’d beaten Ontario.

The goal they’d gotten had happened because I’d been distracted, looking for Shea in the family box.

She hadn’t been there.

She didn’t show.

But she’d promised.

She’d left me.

I shoved the hurt aside and made it through the post-game. Shower. Coach’s talk. Skipped the media. Threatened with fines for skipping the media...the rest of it was routine.

I was simply numb to it all.

“You okay?” Lukas asked as we walked to our cars.

“Yeah.” I nodded my head. “No.” I shook it. “Fuck, I don’t know.”

“My house is yours,” he offered.

“Thanks, man,” I responded, climbing up into my Mercedes.

I started the ignition, and then sat there, my hands braced on the steering wheel.

I had two options.

The first was to continue the silence I’d begun last night—to let her go. I’d only meant to give her space and safety. Elliott had already been asleep. My penthouse was safer than her apartment, anyway. And when she’d brought up how the fight had affected her, I’d known she’d never sleep soundly next to me. Not when she’d fallen back into her fear.

So I could give her the space. Feed the silence. Let her decide if she was ready to move on from her past. Let her decide if I was her future.

The second option? Fight like hell for her. Make her understand that she was the last person who should be scared of me. Apologize like hell for letting my temper fuck things up last night, and then beg until she listened. Use every weapon in my arsenal to make her see that she was my forever, that I’d never loved a woman the way I loved her. I’d never love another woman. Only Shea.

Yeah, I liked option two.

As I pulled out of the parking lot, the drawing Elliott had left me on my passenger seat drifted toward the armrest.

“Beat Ontario!” it said, showing two helmets clashing.

I’d found it on our way to dinner last night, and it had made me smile ever since.

My gut twisted. Even if Shea was pissed at me, there was no way she’d keep Elliott from the game. She wasn’t a coward. She would have shown up because she’d given her word.

I hit the button on my steering wheel that connected my phone and ordered the voice recognition to call Shea.

It rang once. Twice. Three times. Four times.

“Hi, you’ve reached my voicemail—”

I hung up. She always had that thing on, always worried an emergency would crop up at work. And if she hadn’t wanted to deal with me, she would have sent me to voicemail after two rings, not let me hang on for four.

Something was wrong.

My foot hit the floor, sending the Mercedes zigging through traffic. My stomach knotted as I called Paulson.

“Sir, how is your morning with the girls?” he answered.

“Funny, I was calling to ask you the same thing,” I snapped. “They’re not with you?’

“No, sir. There was a note left on the entry table that she’d gone to the rink with you.”

Fuck.

“Pull the security footage from the elevator. I’m pulling into the garage right now.” I hung up the phone and swung the Mercedes through the gate and into my private lot.

My other cars were here, but Shea’s was missing.

I parked the Mercedes and jumped out.

“Don’t assume the worst,” I reminded myself over and over as I raced to the elevator. The garage lighting reflected off something near the door, and I stopped dead in my tracks.

I took a deep breath and picked up Shea’s phone.

The case was cracked, the screen shattered.

“Damn it!” I shouted, punching the elevator button. I called Lukas on my way up and told him to haul ass over here.

“Did you pull the footage?” I barked at the guards as the doors opened in the penthouse.

“Yes, sir.”

I walked over to the small room just off the entry that held all the security monitors.

There they were…

“Fuck!” I shouted, watching Todd grab Elliott. My heart seized when Shea fell into the footage, an object striking her in the head. “Call the cops,” I ordered them.

“Kidnapping is more the FBI,” Paulson said.

“I don’t give a shit what badge it is. Get someone here now.”

While they contacted law enforcement, Lukas showed up, flanked by Connor and Noble. Gentry arrived a few minutes later. Lukas had called in the moral-support cavalry.

Paulson filled them in while I paced the length of the penthouse.

What had they done to her? What were they doing to her right now? To them? What did he want with her? Did she have a concussion? Had they hurt Elliott?

God, where were they?

The tracker.

I swiped open Shea’s phone, and was met with her password screen. I quickly input Elliott’s birthday and the phone opened. The battery flashed red.

Scrolling through her apps, I found the tracker and opened it. I was most definitely not patient while I waited for it to open.

“Suits are on the way up,” Paulson told me.

I nodded, all of my concentration on the spinning circle.

The app opened, and I immediately hit “listen in.”

A few seconds later, a rustling noise came through the phone. Then light breathing.

“Mom?” Elliott’s voice nearly brought me to my knees. “Please wake up.”

Shea was still unconscious.

I heard more movement, then a scraping sound, like she was brushing up against something.

“He’ll pay.” Muffled voices.

“How can you be sure?”

“He hired those guards for her. Trust me. He’ll pay to get her back.”

Todd.

But how many more?

“Which one?” the other chuckled softly.

“We can probably charge double.”

“You don’t want to keep the kid?”

“Not if she’s worth cash.”

I heard Elliott suck in her breath. My hands itched to hold her, to get her the fuck away from those monsters.

“I’ll find you, Elliott,” I promised her, even though she couldn’t hear me.

Then the phone died.

The elevator chimed.

“Give it to me,” Lukas ordered, and I did.

He headed over to where I had an extra charger in the kitchen.

Two suits walked in.

The first was an older man who looked like he had one foot in retirement, and the other was a blonde woman with her hair in a tight braid.

“Mr. Porter?” she asked.

“You guys got here fast,” I said, offering my hand to shake, which they both did.

“I’m Agent Daniels, and this is Agent Armstrong. Of course, when someone with such a...high profile calls, we make certain to move quickly,” she said.

“Money talks, right?” I asked with a grimace.

“Have you been asked for money?” she asked.

“Looks like he’s going to be,” Paulson said, lifting the note that had been left on the entry table with a pair of tweezers.

A moment later, Agent Daniels had it bagged.

“That’s not Shea’s handwriting,” I told her.

“There’s a phone number on the back,” she remarked. “Get the equipment set up,” she ordered Agent Armstrong.

“I have a tracker on Elliott,” I told her. “Shea’s phone is dead, but give it a few minutes, and it will come online.”

“A tracker?”

“How much of the history do you know?” I asked.

“Only what her security filled us in on. Domestic abuse? Stalking?”

“Pretty much.”

We moved toward the living room, and Agent Daniels’s eyebrows shot up at the group of guys.

They all scattered from the couch, and she took a seat, taking over my coffee table as binders and a box appeared with Armstrong.

“You did the right thing calling us,” she said. “Not trying to go it alone.”

“Look, I’m a big guy. Pretty skilled with my hands, too. But I’m a hockey player, not Liam Neeson. Do we look like the cast of an action movie?” I motioned to the guys.

“Speak for yourself,” Lukas muttered.

“I just want my girls back,” I told Agent Daniels.

“Then let’s get you your girls back.”

I filled them in on the rest of the story, including the fight we’d had. I didn’t care how it looked. They needed all the information. Agent Daniels tilted her head when I told her I’d walked out last night and why, but hadn’t commented.

“It’s back,” Lukas said from the kitchen.

I jumped from the couch, nearly running for the phone.

As I turned it on, the screen flickered. “No, don’t you fucking dare,” I warned it. I quickly entered the security code and fired up the tracker app.

The screen flickered again, going fully black for a few moments before coming back.

“Lay it flat,” Agent Daniels ordered, and I did so, putting it on the kitchen counter, still plugged in.

The app opened, and I hit the “listen in” button, then watched as the map started to zero in on their location.

The screen failed, going entirely black.

“Shit,” Agent Daniels muttered.

I could hear Elliott lightly humming to herself, but nothing else.

“We’re all set up,” Agent Armstrong called out from the living room.

“You monitor this,” Agent Daniels said to another suit who had to have arrived while we were in the living room.

“I’m not leaving this phone,” I told her as she ushered me to the living room.

“Mr. Porter, I need you to call your wife’s kidnappers. If they hear your daughter in the background, they’ll search her until they find that tracker, and right now that’s the only link to her you have.”

I was hung up on one fact that wouldn’t let go.

“Shea isn’t my wife.” But God, I wished she was. I wanted that connection, even if it was only vows and a last name. What was the point of waiting when you already knew? What if I was too late?

“I’m sorry I misspoke,” Agent Daniels apologized. “Now, I need you with me. I need you to walk away from this phone into the living room and make this call with me. Can you do that?”

“We’ll stay with the phone,” Connor said, Noble nodding with him. Somehow that made me feel better than just knowing the other suit was there.

I nodded my thanks to them.

“I can,” I assured her. Every step away from Shea’s phone was torture.

“Okay, call this number,” Agent Armstrong said, pointing to the digits they’d left on the back of the note. “Biggest things you want—” he took out a laminated sheet.

Holy shit, they had laminated kidnapping sheets.

“You want proof of life. You won’t get it instantly, but ask.”

“They don’t know that you have the tracker,” Agent Daniels reminded me.

“Second, you want their demands,” Agent Armstrong added. He walked me through everything I was supposed to ask, then made me repeat it.

By the time they handed me a phone that had been cloned to my number, I was ready to crawl out of my skin.

I dialed the number.

It rang twice.

“We have what you want,” the voice answered. The guy wasn’t even disguising his voice.

Agent Armstrong nodded at me, having checked his machinery.

“I’m well aware. I want to talk to them.”

He cackled like a deranged witch. “Not going to happen.”

“Can you at least tell me if they’re okay?” My voice tensed.

“Girl is fine. Woman is still napping.”

“She’s been unconscious since this morning? I’ve seen the security footage. I know you hit her.” I barely contained my rage.

Lukas put a hand on my shoulder, grounding me.

“We gave her a little something extra to help her relax. She’s a feisty one. My guess is she’ll be out until morning.”

Fuck me, they’d drugged her.

I put the phone against my forehead for a second as my throat worked, trying to breathe through it. Elliott was alone with her. Abandoned. Probably scared to death.

“You there?” he asked.

“I am,” I answered.

“Good. Now, first. No cops,” he demanded.

I looked Agent Daniels square in the eye. “I won’t call a single police officer.”

God bless her, she smiled.

“You’d better not!”

“What do you want for them? I’m assuming you didn’t want me to call just for fun.” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.

“A million.”

“Done,” I answered without even looking at Agent Daniels.

The man breathed heavily into the phone for a moment before responding.

“A piece.”

Two million dollars.

They either had no idea what I was worth, no idea what they were doing, or both.

“Did you hear me?” he asked.

“I did. I’ll pay it. Do you take checks?”

“What? No. Cash only. Unmarked, nonsequential hundred-dollar bills.”

How original.

“I can’t get that kind of cash until tomorrow,” I told him, my stomach rebelling at the thought of leaving my girls alone with them overnight.

“Sure you can.”

“No, I can’t. The banks aren’t exactly open seeing as it’s eight pm on a Friday night, and I’ll have to liquefy some assets.”

I had a few hundred thousand in cash in the safe, but nothing close to two million. I’d have to empty every account I had in Seattle to get that much cash, and I honestly didn’t know if I had that much liquid.

Everything else was in investments.

I’ve got you. Lukas’s handwriting scrawled across a piece of paper that he waved in front of me.

Gentry waved his hands, and once he had my attention, pointed his thumbs at himself and then held up two fingers. Me, too.

If I hadn’t been terrified for the girls, I would have lost it in gratitude.

“Fine, tomorrow it is. You’ll meet us at—”

No. I couldn’t trust that they’d let the girls live.

“You’ll meet me,” I said, allowing the menace in my voice leak through. “We have the second game in our Ontario series tomorrow. Two p.m.”

“Want to trade off at center ice?” he cackled again.

My fist clenched, but I kept my temper. “No, I want to meet after. Too many people will notice if I’m missing from the game, and then you will have the cops involved. You bring the girls to the arena, I’ll tell you how to get to the tunnels that run under it. I’ll meet you there right after the buzzer ending the third period. We’ll make the trade, and you can walk out with the crowd. No one will even notice. You’ll be free.”

“Walk out with the crowd?” he asked.

“Nothing like twenty thousand people to help you get lost.”

“Good point. Guess all you hockey players aren’t as dumb as people think.”

Out of the two of us, I wasn’t the dumbass, that was for sure.

“You’ll have to get there before the end of the first period,” I told him. “They shut down the entrances to those areas after first period because they assume the staff is inside. But there are no cameras down there,” I promised, telling him the truth. “You’ll be able to watch the game, or listen, or whatever. You’ll know I’m on the ice, that I’m telling the truth.”

“You don’t show up at that game, or we see a cop, and they die.”

My heart froze. Just because they were stupid and rash didn’t mean they wouldn’t kill the girls.

“I’m not going to do anything to jeopardize my family.”

He grunted.

“You harm one hair on their heads, and I’ll burn the fucking money,” I warned, despite the grimace Agent Daniel gave me.

“Don’t you worry. You’ll get your pretty little girls back. We’ll get our money. It’s all business, right?”

“Right.”

“See you tomorrow, pretty boy.”

He hung up.

I put my head in my hands, taking deep breaths.

“Okay, not-Liam-Neeson what exactly were you thinking?” Agent Daniels snapped.

“Those tunnels lock down after first period. I wasn’t lying. There’s only one way out until about an hour after the game, and it’s with the crowd. They’ll be trapped until after the game.”

“Which is when you show up, and those tunnels open,” she argued.

I shook my head. “I’ll be there when they arrive. They’re not going to shoot the girls when they see I’m standing there with the money. Then you guys can come save the day while they’re trapped.”

“No offense, Porter, but how the hell are you going to do that? They’re going to notice that you’re not on the ice.” Gentry commented.

I looked at the clock. Ten-thirty on the East Coast.

There was only one person I knew who could impersonate me on the ice well enough to cover for the first few minutes of a game. Just warm-ups. Coach could keep him on the bench after that. Hell, he could probably carry off a shift, and we’d just leak a story that I was skating like shit because I was sick. Hell, unless the cameras got right up on him, they’d never know, that’s how close we looked alike.

“Porter?” Lukas prompted.

I grabbed my phone and dialed the number by heart.

“I love you, but you’re interrupting what promises to be a very interesting threesome.” His voice was almost enough to make me smile.

“Yeah, well kick your right and left hand out of bed. I need you to get on a fucking plane right now. I need you in Seattle by morning.”

“I’m on my way.”

Zero hesitation.

“Oh, and bring your skates. Your feet are a size smaller than mine.”

“What the fuck?”

“See you in the morning, Maddox.”