Page 81 of Hunted Hearts
But if she walked away, Emil could die.
She climbed inside.
Someone came out of the shadows to close the door and the limo pulled away.
Too late, horror crashed over her.
Oh God.
Oh God.
She’d just broken rule number one, something drilled into her since childhood—never go to a second location.
She’d let her feelings blind her, causing her to make a monumental mistake and she’d never see the man she loved again.
Panic clawed at her throat as she twisted in her seat to see a big man seated on the long bench seat beside her. “Where are we going?”
No answer.
She tried to see through the dark glass separating her from the driver but could only make out a shadow.
The man next to her didn’t look at her, his jaw a hard line under the shadow of a beard.
“Where is Emil?” she demanded with a strength in her voice she didn’t know she possessed.
Still no answer from the man.
She hugged the violin case to her chest like a shield. Her heart slammed against her ribs, each beat screaming her mistake.
What had shedone?
Theo would know she was missing. He’d find the phone, the message.
She knew deep down in the pit of her soul that he wouldn’t just come for her out of a sense of duty as her bodyguard. If she was right about what she saw in his eyes when he looked at her, then he loved her too. Or was very close to loving her.
He’d come for her. He’d stop at nothing.
Unless that “disruption” took him out.
She squeezed her eyes shut against the overwhelming sting of tears.
This was because they’d dug too deep, because Theo and his brothers had peeled back the layers of this so-called charity and exposed something foul. Trafficking and black-market adoptions. Greed wrapped in a veneer of humanitarianism.
They’d tried to silence her with fear, with fire, with scorpions and by hurting her friend Henrik.
Now they hadher.
The violin case pressed to her ribs where her heart pulsed out a staccato like a goodbye.
She imagined Theo’s face and the way his warm, callused hands felt cupping her cheek and the feel of his lips on hers.
As if he was with her now, she heard his voice in her head, low and rough.
I’ve got you.
But he didn’t.
Not this time. She had steppedrightinto their trap.
