Page 66 of Guarded from Sabotage

Shit. Why did I come to Austin? Why didn’t I take Niall up on his offer to replace me on this job?

Now I’m imagining Sarah panicking before she goes in to the interview, the stress becoming too much for her. Or having a panic attack mid-way through. I’m picturing Sarah taking off, in her car or worse yet, on foot, her only thought to escape from an imaginary threat.

Shit. I should have at least stayed until she was done with the interview. I could have pushed our meeting with Winningham until tonight. It might have been a bit unprofessional, but…

“I’m checking,” I announce, and click on the icon. “Just this once. And I’ll tell Sarah I did it. I won’t be sneaky about it.”

“She’ll understand,” Rhiannon says. “If the situation were reversed, I’m sure she’d do the same thing.”

As I wait for the program to load, I’m already anticipating the relief. I’ll see Sarah’s tag at the little building on the outskirts of Seguin, just where she’s supposed to be. And soon, she’ll text me that she’s on her way home, and I can set aside some of my worry.

Except.

My heart lurches into my throat.

She’s not there.

Not in the office building. Not back at Blade and Arrow. Not even in Seguin.

She’s headed east on I-10, which is the opposite way she should be going.

Fear wraps around my chest, squeezing. Cold sweat breaks out all over my body.

“Dante?” Rhiannon’s voice sounds like it’s coming through water. “Is everything okay?”

No. I know with absolute certainty everything isnotokay.

While I could come up with a dozen explanations, some of them even reasonable, in my gut, I know something is terribly wrong.

“She’s not there,” I manage. It’s hard to speak through a narrowing throat. “She’s going the wrong way. Something’s wrong.”

In a blink, Erik and Rhiannon are huddled on either side of me, staring at Sarah’s little blinking dot as it travels across the screen.

“Maybe she’s exploring,” Erik offers, but he doesn’t sound convinced.

“Exploring?” I cast a disbelieving glance at him. “It’s three-thirty. Even if her interview had finished, she wouldn’t just leave to go for a drive without telling me. She wouldn’t.”

“Call her.” Rhiannon thrusts my phone at me. “See if she answers.”

For a moment, I let myself hope. Before the call goes through, I think,maybe she decided to go for a drive, and she forgot to tell me. It’s possible.

But she doesn’t answer. It goes straight to voicemail.

The three increasingly frantic texts I send after go unread.

And the panic inside me keeps getting bigger. More vicious. Clawing at me like a physical pain.

“I need to go after her.” Leaping up, still holding the laptop in one hand, I scan the room, searching for my keys. “I need to catch up to Sarah. If I take 130, I should be able to intercept her?—”

Shit. Where are my damn keys?

Erik touches my arm. “Wait.”

I spin around and bark, “Wait? Sarah’s in trouble. She needs me.”

Rhiannon gets right in front of me, pinning me with her gaze. “Dante. Think. Not like Sarah’s boyfriend, but a Special Forces operator. What should we do?”

Shit.

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