Page 103 of Critical Mass
“I’m going to talk to my father about this,” Natalie muttered.
Then Natalie turned on her heel and strode back upstairs.
He didn’t speak until they reached her room. “Natalie?—”
“Don’t.” She held up a hand, stopping him. “My father just confirmed everything, didn’t he? Every suspicion. Every fear. He’s not protecting me. He’s imprisoning me.”
“We’ll figure this out. I promise. When he gets here?—”
“When he gets here, what?” She laughed, but it came out broken. “What do you think he’s going to do, Hudson? Apologize? Let us walk away? He just had his security detail physically prevent his own daughter from leaving. What does that tell you about what comes next?”
Hudson opened his mouth, then closed it. Because they both knew the answer.
Richard Ravenscroft was coming home. When he arrived, whatever illusions Natalie had left about her father—about who he really was, about what he was capable of—would be shattered completely.
She sat on the edge of her bed. “So what do we do now? Wait for my father to come home and . . . what? What do you think he’s planning?”
Hudson was quiet a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was grim. “I think he’s trying to contain the situation.”
“He wouldn’t hurt me. He’s my father. He wouldn’t?—”
“I don’t know what he’d do,” Hudson admitted. “But I know what men like him are capable of when they feel cornered. And right now, we’re both loose ends.”
CHAPTER
FIFTY-EIGHT
Hudson’s phone buzzed.It was Colton.
He stepped away from Natalie and pressed his phone to his ear.
“You somewhere private?” Colton asked.
He glanced at Natalie before slipping into the hallway and pacing back to his room. “Now I am. Go ahead.”
“The bug in Ravenscroft’s office went dead twenty minutes ago,” Colton told him. “Either the battery died, or someone found it.”
Hudson’s blood ran cold. “Found it?”
“We heard scraping sounds, then nothing. If someone swept the office and discovered the device . . .” Colton didn’t need to finish the sentence.
If Ravenscroft or one of his security guards had found the bug, then he knew someone was surveilling him.
Hudson would be the most likely suspect—the boyfriend who’d been in his study, who’d asked too many questions, who’d shown up right when things started going wrong.
“You need to get out of there,” Colton said.
He glanced out the window at the guards patrolling outside. “Ravenscroft’s got security everywhere. This is place is like a prison. I just tried to leave with Natalie. Dimitri stopped us.”
“Then we extract you. We’ve got teams positioning now.”
Voices sounded in the hallway—Ravenscroft’s distinct baritone and Dimitri’s lower rumble.
Hudson lowered his voice before saying, “I have to go.”
“Hudson, be careful. If he knows?—”
Instead of ending the call, he slipped his phone into his front pocket. Colton needed to hear whatever was about to be said. He needed to send him the message not to send backup—not until Hudson gave them the signal.
