Page 65 of Jacob

His cold voice was like a whip.

“Get up now and follow me.”

She hesitated, then got up on trembling legs, willing herself not to fall down.

ChapterFourteen

“Lost her.” Jacob wanted to hit something. Hard. Break something. Howl at the moon. “She’s lost.”

“No, she’s not,” Nick said sharply. “Goddammit, Jacob, stop fucking around. She’s not lost. She’s somewhere, waiting for you to go get her. That’s what’s holding her together, the thought that you are coming after her. So get your fucking act together. Follow the tracker.”

Jacob heard the words as if from a great distance. They didn’t make sense until he rolled the words around in his head.

And it was that picture—the picture of a captive Alex waiting for him to come—that snapped him out of the fog of grief.

Alex wasn’t dead. He’d have sensed it if she were. No doubt about that. It would have been like a tear in the universe. He’d have felt it. They were connected. Always had been, always would be. She wasn’t dead but she could be in pain, being hurt, right this minute.

The thought of that was like being knifed in the gut, but he couldn’t deal with that right now. Whatever was happening was happening. He couldn’t stop anything until he got to her, as fast as humanly possible.

He straightened.

“Glad to have you back,” Nick said sourly. “Now see if you can keep your head in the game instead of freaking.”

Jacob didn’t answer. He’d pressed a button on the side of his watch and opened his tablet on a sideboard. “Fucking transponder only has a range of about a hundred miles. If she’s been loaded onto a plane or a helo, we’re in trouble. If she’s on a vehicle, there hasn’t been time to drive a hundred miles. Let’s see.”

He’d been trembling, but not anymore. If there was any hope for Alex, he needed to keep his head and his nerves. He couldn’t waste any time panicking. His entire future—hislife—depended on him figuring out where she was and moving like an arrow to her.

He zeroed in on a teardrop and the blue dot that was her location, then enlarged the map. “There.” His finger traced a path from the hotel, along main roads, then secondary roads, to an out-of-town spot in the middle of nowhere on the maps.

Zalny.

“Fucker’s taken her to Crime Central.”

“Fucker?” Nick asked.

“The KGB Colonel. It’s got to be. Send out the coordinates to all the men you have here. How many?”

“Originally I had ten, but two are down,” Nick said, features tight. “If the fentanyl had been stronger, they’d be dead. As it is, they are out of commission.”

Jacob nodded, hoping the fucker had used a lighter dose on Alex. She was much smaller than the two operators, who were still out cold.

“Pointless going over security cameras and I have a horrible suspicion there was someone in-house providing help.”

Nick’s mouth tightened. “Not the owner or management. But yes, it is possible that someone in the cleaning staff or a porter could have been bribed. It’s a poor country. We can go over everything later, when?—”

“When I get Alex back,” Jacob growled, “we’re going straight to the airport and straight home. I’ll leave it to you to figure out the mechanics of it. Right now, the important thing is to get Alex out alive and, if possible, secure whatever bioweapons might be there.”

“Leave that to me.” Nick was filling their duffel bags with what would be necessary to infil into a hostile area. “This is a hopelessly corrupt country except for the Minister of Defense, who is a friend. He won’t be Minister for very long because he is not corrupt and that’s made him enemies. I just hope they don’t assassinate him. But in the meantime, he’d be horrified to know what was going on in his country. I’ll contact him for backup.”

Jacob froze. “No crossfire.” Horrifying thought. A shootout, with Alex caught in the middle.

Nick was busy with gear. “Not our first rodeo.”

He was throwing body armor and gas masks, breaching charges, jammers, flashbangs. And weapons: UMP45s, several Benelli M4s with high rates of fire in case of intense close combat, a couple of Remington 870s for breaching. The rest of the operators would arrive fully armed.

While Nick was quickly assembling their gear for what might turn out to be an assault on an underground complex, Jacob programmed ten drones with the coordinates of Zalny, opened the window and flew them out.

Then he sent a text message to the Queens asking them to take over the drones and provide real time intel on the area. By the time they arrived, they should have a complete mapping including any guards posted.

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