Page 68 of Fast Justice

“Hey, what are you doing?” someone called out in English, sounding far away.

Montoya let out a savage curse and Rowan jerked when gunshots sounded a moment later. Someone had seen her! Had Montoya shot him? Please no, whoever it was might be her only chance. If he was unhurt, maybe he was calling for help right now.

“Undele,” he barked, and the man carrying her broke into a jog.

She bounced up and down, his shoulder slamming into her tender ribs and stomach with every step. She tensed her muscles to minimize it, but it didn’t do much good.

Just when the pain got so bad that she had to grit her teeth to keep from crying out, she was dumped onto something softer. A seat of some sort. Then a door slammed and an engine started up and the car sped away, its tires squealing. Not the van. It smelled different. Cleaner.

This time the drive didn’t take long, only a few minutes. She was thrown once more over that thick shoulder and carried somewhere else. The man was climbing now. Winded. Where were they? Had the man who’d spotted them called for help?

Montoya’s voice snapped out a command. Metallic doors squealed as they opened and she was dumped inside. Even through her hood the smell hit her. Stale air. Unwashed bodies. Sweat.

Fear.

The doors squealed shut and someone ripped the hood off her. She winced against the bright beam of a flashlight aimed into her face. It lowered, and as she blinked her vision began to clear, filling in the details of where she was.

Her heart lurched when she saw Montoya towering over her…and the frightened faces of the handful of naked young women all cowering against the far end of what appeared to be a shipping container.

“Meet your new traveling companions,” Montoya said to her, the satisfaction in his voice unmistakable. “You’re going to be part of my next shipment—if I decide to let you live that long.” His boot caught her square in the chest, knocked her backward hard enough that her back slammed into the metal floor. Her skull bounced off it, and a cry escaped her tight throat.

Montoya planted the sole of his boot against her sternum, pinning her in place as he stared down at her with pitiless black eyes. “Now are you going to give me any worthwhile information that I can actually put to use to find Oceane? Or will I have to use my powers of persuasion after all?”

Instead of pulling out the switchblade, this time he drew a pistol from the back of his pants and chambered a round, the deadly sound echoing throughout the container.

****

Too much time had passed.

Mal sat silent at the back of the briefing room, alone, his eyes on the analog clock on the far wall. Too much damn time had passed between when Rowan was taken and now, yet to him it felt like they were still sitting here on their asses while every other law enforcement agency in the city was mobilized, conducting grid searches, roadblocks, monitoring CCTV or satellite footage, red light cameras.

His commander and teammates were all in the room speaking in hushed murmurs, giving him a wide berth so he could have a little privacy as he struggled to compose himself. He bounced his knee up and down in a rapid rhythm, the movement uncontrollable. While inside, he was slowly coming unglued.

The cops and the FBI had sightings on the van using various cameras throughout the city, but they didn’t have a current location yet. By now the kidnappers would undoubtedly have ditched the vehicle. And they’d also had more than enough time to do…other things.

He swallowed past the baseball-sized lump in his throat, dragged a hand over his mouth and chin. The waiting, the inaction, was killing him. It sliced him up inside to think of Rowan frightened and alone, facing those fucking animals and the things they had repeatedly proven they enjoyed doing to female captives.

Fuck. He lowered his head into his hands, closed his eyes and struggled to clear his mind. In place of all the horrific things he feared Rowan was facing right then, images of them together replaced them. Her smiling up at him. The soft look on her face after he’d made love to her. The trust and hope in her eyes.

“Hey, man.” A hand landed gently on his shoulder. Mal looked up at Lockhart, who lowered himself into the chair beside him. “You hanging in there?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”Barely.I don’t know how the fuck to handle this.Exhaustion, sleep-deprivation, hunger and pain, he could handle. But not this. He couldn’t accept that there was nothing he could do to help Rowan. Nothing to study or get ready. Everything was done. All he and the others could do now…was wait.

Lockhart didn’t say anything else, just leaned his head back against the wall and maintained that solid, silent presence Mal was so used to but hadn’t fully appreciated until that moment. He couldn’t have handled being around the others right now. They all meant well, were all good, solid operators and he liked them all a lot as people.

But if someone like Maka or Granger came over and tried to lighten the mood with some lame attempt at humor in an effort to lighten the moment, Mal was afraid he’d punch them out. He was that keyed up. So having Lockhart sit beside him quietly while his mind screamed in the silence was actually a relief of sorts.

“We should have heard something by now,” he finally said, feeling the need to say something. Someone had to at least know the van’s current location. That would be a start.

“Taggart’s holding the updates until we get something solid. He and Hamilton are monitoring all the channels.”

Mal glanced first around the room, then at Lockhart, and realization hit. Taggart and Hamilton were missing. Running interference on the investigation from another room, probably Taggart’s office, hoping to make it easier on him.

Mal exhaled hard, appreciative of their efforts and annoyed at the same time. “They don’t need to do that.” He was point man and a former SEAL. He didn’t need to be shielded or sheltered from any of this. “But Christ, I want to be out there searching for her, not sitting here doing jack.”

“We need to be here so we can deploy as soon as we get a solid lead. When that call comes, every minute’s gonna count, so we need to be ready. And we are. Hamilton and Taggart are both on top of it. Let them do their jobs, wait until they have something concrete to give us.”

He opened his mouth to respond but the briefing room door suddenly burst open and Hamilton came in, Taggart a few paces behind him, speaking on his cell phone. “Okay, boys, listen up,” Hamilton began, his gaze halting on Mal. “We just got confirmation from a witness that someone matching Juan Montoya’s description was seen carrying a female hostage from a warehouse district near the Port of Baltimore. At the time of the sighting, she was very much alive.”

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