Page 47 of Falling Fast

Now his face reflected the truth of what lay inside. The cold, hard look on his face sent her stomach plummeting to her toes.

He knew.

The spiked beer curdled in her stomach, threatened to come right back up as all the blood drained from her face. She didn’t dare speak. What had he done to Jamie?

“You won’t find him.” The smug edge of a sneer colored his voice.

“W-where is he?” she managed, her tongue thick in her dry mouth, her heart trying to pound its way out of her chest.

“You’ll see soon enough.”

She’d never save Jamie on her own. She needed to contact the team, get to the rendezvous point.

Run.She took a lunging step toward the brick wall.

Running footsteps crunched over the fine gravel of the path. Hard, cruel hands grabbed her by the hair a second later, yanked so hard her head snapped back on her neck. She jerked backward, a scream breaking free of her tight throat.

Another hand clamped across her mouth and nose, cutting off her air. Baker. She could taste his cologne, almost threw up.

Twisting, she tried to bite the hard palm, but Baker wrenched her backward and dragged her into the seclusion of the thick yews. A burst of terror detonated in her veins. No. She couldn’t let him take her.

“Take her inside.” He released her with a shove at his men, the muscles in his jaw working, brown eyes flashing with fury.

She fell to one knee, then his men dragged her backward and lifted her off her feet, one of them pinning her so tightly to his chest that she couldn’t breathe.

“Scream and you’ll regret it,” he warned.

He tugged sharply at the hem of his jacket once to straighten it, and that eerie, calm mask he usually wore slipped back into place. The cold stare burned through her, filling her with ice as the men dragged her away. “You’ll excuse me while I go attend to the rest of my guests. I still have hosting duties to take care of before I deal with you.” His upper lip lifted in a cold sneer. “Oh, and a word of advice before you leave.” He paused, that coldly livid gaze sending a shudder through her aching body. “It’ll go much easier on you if you tell them what they want to know immediately, rather than making them work for it.”

With those dreaded words echoing in her ringing ears, the goons whisked her across the labyrinth and through a door on the west end of the house, away from prying eyes. Charlie continued to twist and struggle but it was no use. She was no match for the strength of the men carrying her, even without the drug circulating through her system.

She was being swept out to sea on a powerful rip current, being sucked farther and farther away from land, and she was powerless to escape it.

Chapter Twelve

In the passenger seat of the cube van they were waiting in, he let out a jaw-cracking yawn and rubbed at his watering eyes.

“We keeping you up, rookie?” Easton asked from next to him behind the wheel, not bothering to look up as he texted with someone. Probably Piper. Apparently she was going full throttle with all the wedding plans.

“Nah, I’m good.” Just bored as hell. It was just like back in his undercover days during those mind-numbing hours of surveillance. Except normally he was the one pretending to be someone else while trying to infiltrate a gang or drug dealer’s circle. This time, he was on the sidelines. He’d volunteered initially to be in Rodriguez’s position for this op, since he had the most undercover experience. The taskforce higher-ups had decided on Rodriguez instead because of his connection with Charlie.

Logan stretched his legs out in front of him and reached for the now cold thermos of coffee resting in the cup holder between them. For some reason he hadn’t slept well last night. He turned his head to look toward the back. “How you doing there, accounting wizard?”

Taylor stopped inputting numbers into whatever program she had open and looked up at him, her brown eyes sharp behind the lenses of her stylish glasses. “What?”

She was so cute, in an anal-retentive, bookworm kind of way. “I asked how you were doing.”

She frowned at him. “Fine. Why?”

“Just making conversation.”

She stared at him for another second, eyes full of a combination of suspicion and confusion, as though she couldn’t fathom why he would do such a thing. “Oh. Well, I’m good.” And then she went straight back to typing, dismissing him completely.

For some reason it stung his ego. He couldn’t resist digging a little more, just to see how she’d react. “Find anything interesting yet?”

He swore he heard her sigh before she looked at him again with strained patience. “Not yet, but if you’d let me work without interrupting me, I might—” She froze, her gaze jerking back to the screen of her laptop. “Some files are coming through.”

At the excitement in her voice, both Logan and Easton swiveled in their seats to stare at her. “From Charlie?” Logan asked.

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