Page 39 of Captivated with Them

“Are you okay?”

She gave me a tight smile and nodded.

“Did they touch you?” I murmured, flicking my attention to Clay. He was standing by the door, scrolling through his phone, apparently bored with watching over us. I didn’t want to hear the answer, but I needed to know.

“Not badly,” she replied, her gaze shifting away from mine, her cheeks pinking with embarrassment.

That embarrassment filled me with fury. She shouldn't be the one to be ashamed. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Hey!” Clay shouted from the doorway, clearly having lifted his attention from his phone and noticing us. “No talking and step back.”

I clenched my teeth.The fantasy of snatching up Ryan’s knife and plunging it into the chest of this man then bursting out through the door and hacking Frankie Capello to pieces, together with the men who worked for him, filled my head.

It was tempting.

But I knew I would end up shot before I even managed to plunge the knife into Clay’s heart.

I tried to work out the logistics of my plan. With a passport, all we’d need to do was grab Rue and get her out of the country. Of course, it would mean we would have to find Dillon before then. We wouldn’t just abandon him here.

I wished there was a way we could explain to Rue what we were planning. In her eyes, it must just look as though we were going along with whatever Frankie Capello wanted, no matter what the result.

“Are you okay?” Rue asked Ryan, when Clay’s attention was once more taken up by his phone.

I imagined Frankie wouldn’t have been overly impressed if he’d seen him.

She nodded to Ryan’s leg. “I’m worried about you.”

Trust Rue to worry about someone else when she was in the worst position of all of us.

“It’s only temporary, Rue.” Ryan gave her a tight smile. “Don’t worry about me, okay?”

“It’s hard not to.”

He nodded. “I know. Me, too.”

Her gaze flicked over to Clay then back to Ryan. “Do you think Dillon is okay?”

“Yeah.” He gave her a tight smile. “I hope so.”

“Hey,” Clay snapped, pointing his gun in our direction. “What did I say about no talking?”

We all fell silent and got on with our work.

I took photographs while Ryan inputted everything into the computer. I stood over him, and once everything was uploaded, I nudged him in the arm and nodded toward the flash drive already sticking out of the computer’s USB port. He understood what I was getting at and quickly saved all the information onto the flash drive, as well as the computer’s hard drive. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Clay wasn’t looking and swiped the flash-drive and pocketed it.

“Okay, we’ve got what we needed,” I said, raising my voice. “We can get out of here now.”

I shot a look to Rue, hoping she’d know we were doing our best to save her.

Clay opened the door, and in the apartment, Frankie rose to his feet from where he’d been sitting on the armrest of our couch.

“Done?” he asked.

“The completed passport is going to take at least twenty-four hours,” I told him.

His lips thinned with displeasure. “That will only leave another day before the trial.”

“Are you likely to need it sooner?” There was both a challenge and a question in my words.

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