Page 51 of Rescuing Nathaniel

“When he let me go, I pressed the nurse’s call button and screamed as loud as I could. He knew it was over, so he turned and ran. He didn't say anything, Nathaniel, but it has to be them. They know where I am.”

Her whisper was so small, vulnerable, and scared that his arm around her shoulders tightened convulsively, locking her against him. If he hadn't been such a coward and bailed the second he realized just how different the worlds they had grown up in had been, she wouldn't have been alone. He would have been watching over her, protecting her.

“How did they know where I was?” Ava asked.

“They must have a mole at the hospital. It would explain how they choose victims.”

“I was here a few weeks before I was taken. I needed a tetanus shot after I caught my arm on a rusty nail.”

That explained it then. Someone from this hospital was linked to the trafficking ring. If they could find out who, it would be another lead, another step toward shutting them down.

“What happens now?” Ava asked, lifting her face to look up at him. “I'm not safe here anymore.”

What happened next was he did whatever it took to keep her safe, even if that meant risking his heart in the process. He just had to hope he wouldn't come out the other side with a crack in his soul that would finally shatter him.

CHAPTER13

March 6th

5:39 A.M.

It had beena long night and she’d got no sleep whatsoever. To say she was running on fumes would be the understatement of the century.

Yet all things considered, Ava didn't feel completely horrible.

She knew why.

The man standing beside her as they walked into Prey’s main office building in the center of Manhattan.

Nathaniel had been a tower of strength for her through the hours of recounting in detail repeatedly what had happened until she felt like she was going to lose her mind. Still, the benefit of going over and over it, examining it in detail as she answered the dozens of questions the cops had for her, was that it had provided her with a little distance from the event. It started to feel like something she’d seen rather than something she’d experienced.

Now he was there with her again, his steady presence soothing in a way she wouldn't have expected. It had been clear when he’d been with her in the hospital that he was scared for her, and while he hadn't completely shut down his emotions, he’d checked them so he could focus on her.

Knowing he cared helped though.

And the fact he’d come to the hospital not because she’d almost been abducted but just because he’d changed his mind and wanted to helped even more.

Later they were going to have to talk things through. She needed to know where he was coming from, why he’d let her parents scare him off, and if he was in the least bit interested in her, but for now, she had bigger problems than her potential love life or lack thereof.

Much bigger problems.

Like the fact that the organ trafficking ring could come back for her at any moment.

They rode in silence—a companionable one—in the elevator after she scanned her card to access the cyber division floor. Apparently, her purse had been left on the street after she was kidnapped, which was what had first alerted Prey and her friends to her disappearance. Nothing had been stolen from it, and Chelsea and Teresa had taken it back to their shared apartment in the hopes that one day she’d be found.

Filled with the sudden need to be surrounded by her people, Ava hurried as fast as her exhausted body could go once the doors dinged open.

As soon as she stepped into the large, open, airy space she relaxed. This was her happy place. It might not look like much to anyone else, just desks covered in computer screens interspersed throughout the room, and a huge conference table in the middle, but it was where she felt the most comfortable. It was where she did everything in her power to keep the people who worked for Prey safe, and to help them make the world a better place.

Raven Oswald, the second oldest Oswald sibling who ran Prey’s cyber division was the first one to spot her. Immediately, her boss pushed out of her chair and hurried over to fold Ava into an embrace. Raven was a decade older than her, although with her long, silky black locks, intelligent blue eyes, and flawless complexion, you would never tell the woman was approaching forty.

Nor could you tell just by looking at her that Raven had been through a lot in her almost four decades. Almost dying in the same attack that stole her parents’ lives, she’d married the man she loved a couple of years later and had a daughter, only to have then three-year-old Cleo snatched off the streets. A decade later, Raven and her daughter’s father had managed to track down Cleo, and the now sixteen-year-old was adjusting to normal life again. Raven and Max had split in the aftermath of their daughter’s abduction, but then reconciled when they were following a lead, and were now happily married again with a four-year-old son Roman in addition to Cleo.

“We’re all so glad you're okay,” Raven said as she pulled back. “And we are allsoproud of you. What you did was amazing. Literally amazing.”

“I always knew my girl had it in her,” Chelsea teased, bumping her shoulder.

“That’s because you only ever see the best in everyone, even when they don’t see it in themselves,” she said, only half joking as her gaze drifted to Josiah Fleet.

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