Page 48 of Bound By Valor

Zarek

“Are we good?” I asked Logan as we walked back to our escalade with the shipment. The mission had been pretty easy. Too easy. I shook away the thoughts of Leora being in danger yet again. No alarm went off, everything went smoothly, and the squad was unharmed. Logan had been right. I was compromised for the last mission.

“We’re fine. As long as you realize you were being uncharacteristically paranoid,” Logan smiled.

“Thanks for saving my ass back there,” I said.

“That’s twenty, Ghost.”

“I’ll do anything for you to stop counting,” I shook my head and Kabir glanced at us in confusion.

“Counting what?” he asked.

“Nothing,” both Logan and I muttered at the same time, although his tone was heaps lighter than my scowling one.

Dylan, overhearing us as he loaded the last of the shipment into the car, couldn’t suppress a grin. I fought the urge to roll my eyes at his amusement.

“Men,” I heard a faint huff from Amelia.

The squad poured into the Escalade and we drove back to the warehouse. An hour later I was ready to walk back in with Leora waiting at the door ready to jump in my arms as she always did.

But the jump never came.

Maybe she’s resting, I thought, considering she hadn’t been feeling well. While the rest of the squad secured the shipment and shed their gear, I went straight to our bedroom. Leora was nowhere to be found, and panic set in as my heart raced.

Something is wrong.

I flicked on the lights. My eyes dropped to the floor, and my breath caught. A large pool of blood was smeared across the floor near our bed. My knees buckled, and I collapsed to the ground.

“Logan!” I yelled, my voice cracking as the room spun around me. I heard footsteps rush in, but my stomach churned violently, bile rising up my throat. I vomited.

Leora was gone, hurt, or worse. I was losing it, and I didn’t care how weak I looked, vomiting again, powerless and terrified. This is what I was afraid of. Losing her.

This was really happening.

“Zar,” Logan’s hand landed heavily on my shoulder, his voice a mix of panic and sorrow.

I barely heard him as he spoke. Kabir was setting up his laptop on the bed, Amelia was examining the room with clinical precision, and Dylan was trying to hold Logan together.

“No alarms were triggered, nothing else was missing,” Kabir reported, frowning at his screen. “The security cams were offline for 43 minutes this evening.”

Logan was pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off a breakdown. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”

“Could it be Casteel again?” I managed to ask, struggling to breathe.

“This blood…” Amelia interrupted, looking closely at the pattern on the floor. “It’s too deliberate. There’s no blood trail on the bed or out the door. It looks staged.”

My head spun with her words, and rage mixed with fear as I shouted, “Stop saying blood!”

Amelia placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Listen, this could mean it’s not her blood, or it was taken in a controlled setting. She’s likely still alive. I’m 99% sure.”

“99%?” Logan’s voice thundered with a mix of hope and fear.

“She has to be alive,” he added, his voice cracking.

“Logan, she’s trained for this. She’ll hold on,” Dylan tried to reassure him.

Seeing Logan so shaken was surreal; Leora meant as much to him as she did to me. I closed my eyes, trying to block out the sight of the blood, the room spinning around me.

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