Page 68 of Hunted

“Fifteen to twenty miles,” Kira said. “Maybe up to twenty-five, but I doubt it.” She measured with her finger, then drew a crooked ass circle encompassing the search area. Then she looked up, confidence in her eyes. “How many big blue buildings with white metal doors and busted out windows do you figure there are within that radius?” Then she drew a line through the center of the circle, “And even less if we rule out the ones back in the direction we came from. We’re gonna find her.”

“We’d better hurry,” Romano said. “Once White has the formula, he won’t have any reason to keep her alive.”

Her back thudded from the car to the floor, then scraped over rough, cold concrete as one of White’s lackeys dragged her. She heard voices from some other part of the building, but didn’t dare open her eyes to look around.

He let go of her shoulders, and her head dropped onto the floor. She had to clench her jaw to keep from yelping in pain.

“… pay me now,” Darren Wade was saying in the distance. “I kept my end of the bargain. You have the formula.”

I should’ve torn those pages out of that notebook and flushed them. I knew I should’ve. Dammit, why didn’t I?

“If it proves to be legitimate.” That was White’s vibrato voice. “More legitimate than your loyalty.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you really think I don’t know what you’ve been up to? That you’ve been negotiating with certain … competitors, trying to get a better offer?” White made a little clucking sound with his tongue. “You’re a fool, Wade. I know everything you do.”

“I did ask around,” Darren said. His voice was different. Pitched with fear. “But I didn’t go through with it?—”

“You might have, though, if I hadn’t arrived here and monitored your every move. You’ve put me to a lot of trouble, you know. All the expense and effort of trying to take the formula from Romano before he turned it over to you, just in case you grew the gonads to betray me.”

“None of that matters, now,” Darren said, his voice trembling. “I gave the formula to you. You have it in your hands right now.”

“Indeed,” White said slowly, calmly. “You did deliver what you promised. So your reward will be that much greater.”

“It will?”

“Yes,” White hissed. “I’ll kill you quickly.”

A single gunshot exploded, and Lexi jerked in reaction, then forced herself to be still while the echoes of it died. She’d be next unless she was very careful.

She heard White speaking, as if to himself. “You sold out your best friend for a price, Mr. Wade. You let me kill his family to cover your own crimes. I knew all along you’d turn on me as well.”

Lexi cringed, trying not to envision the bulky Darren Wade lying on the concrete, bleeding, dying as White stood over him, watching with those terrible pink eyes.

And then White’s words sank in, and she understood that Connor had been betrayed by his best friend.

The thug was back to dragging her again. Then suddenly there was no floor beneath her anymore. The shock of suddenly falling made her suck in a sharp breath. She couldn’t have screamed if she’d wanted to, though because her back slammed onto a hard floor and the impact drove the air from her lungs. Her head snapped backward, hitting concrete. Pain was a blinding white light before her eyes. And that was all.

Chapter Seventeen

She lifted her head slowly, blinked past the dizziness. Gingerly probing the back of her head, she found a goose egg the size of a golf ball.

She tried to focus on her surroundings, but there wasn’t much to see. She was lying on her back on a cold cement floor, in total darkness. Dankness. Forcing herself up into a sitting position, she closed her eyes against the new waves of dizziness washing over the beaches of her mind, carrying things like balance and depth perception away in their brutal undertow.

Okay, just take your time. Get your bearings.

Right. She had to stay calm and stay sharp. She was thinking clearly now.

She’d gotten to know Connor Romano very well in the past few days. Probably better than she’d ever known anyone in her life. He was too sharp not to figure out the truth. He’d have to figure it out. Maybe he’d want to check in on her, or maybe when White never showed up to Connor’s planned ambush, it would dawn on him to find out why.

And once he realized his boss had been working for White all along, he’d know who had her, and he wouldn’t give up until he got her back … or died trying.

That was what she was afraid of. That he’d get himself killed trying to rescue her. Dammit, she couldn’t let that happen. She had to do everything she could to save herself before he did something desperate.

Rising, a little unsteadily at first, she moved forward until she felt a cool, rough wall against her palm. Then she ran her hands along the wall and explored the space.

She was in an eight-by-eight square concrete pit. No windows. No doors. No stairs or steps or any possible way out, other than the way she’d come in. She walked every inch of it, in search of anything she could use. Her shins banged against a wooden crate that almost tripped her. Her heart gave a rimshot, ba-dump-bump, then settled.

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