Page 64 of Love Undercover
“Where is she?” Chase demanded.
A dark, husky chuckle filled his ear. “Right here with me.”
Chase’s fingers became a fist at his side, air shooting out of his flared nostrils. Pain ran along his ribs like little fissures of agony with every breath, but his fury relegated it to background noise.
“You want her?” Santiago said, a smile in his voice. “Come get her.”
“Where?” Monosyllables were all he could manage. He wanted to rip something—someone—apart. His body shook, his blood screamed with the need.
Santiago rattled off an address. “You have a time limit,” he added. “Get here before the boss does, and you can have her. Seven p.m., Lundgren.”
Santiago hung up before Chase could respond. He chucked the phone into the cushions of the couch, stalking away. His hands ached from being clenched so tightly, from fighting the urge to destroy something.
A plan. He needed a plan—something productive to channel the rage into.
There was a time limit.
A quick search of the address and for any info on the web to help him get his bearings yielded little more than a few images of a warehouse in the middle of nowhere. Everything in his duffel bag seemed insufficient against it.
He prowled through the house, looking for any secret stashes of weapons or supplies, finding hardly anything but a couple of extra handguns. Then he realized it would probably be the garage where he’d find anything that might be of use.
He wheeled back toward the living room, snatching his bag and the laptop, and strode to the back door, out, and to the garage.
The space was expansive when no vehicles sat inside, but it was cluttered all along the walls like Kyle had wanted to create too much visual noise as a distraction. It was a smart way to discourage people from looking through his stuff.
Chase took a coil of thick rope from a hook on the wall, figuring it would come in handy at the warehouse, then searched through the overflowing, disorganized toolboxes until he came across a crooked drawer. Pulling it out revealed a mess of dirty tools, but he felt along the lip of the drawer until he found a catch and pressed it.
A hidden panel slid out, and his eyes traced over the guns and knives at his disposal, a cold, calculation taking over like a computer program. Specs played through his mind as he perused. Which would be easiest to conceal and get to, which was most accurate, what was practical.
How many guys would Santiago have on his side? He wanted to believe that Travers would be an easy target. He was an idiot. But Santiago was no idiot, and there had to be some reason he kept him around.
And given that fact, Chase couldn’t underestimate what he was walking into.
25
Stolen
Sadie couldn’t stop staring at the laptop, even when the screen went dark. The names she’d recognized made her stomach churn. It didn’t help that Chase was so thrown and that she was now alone in the house with a big question mark in front of her.
Maybe if they could figure out the end-game, like maybe what Greg’s plans were, they could do something other than run and hide. She tapped the mouse pad lightly, wishing it would somehow make something that wasn’t there appear in her mind. A clue about Greg’s whereabouts, a hint about what would happen next.
But nothing would magically change about what she knew—or didn’t know—because it simply didn’t exist.
At least they’d finally figured out what Greg had done to pull her into his mess. A stupid, tiny, innocuous flash drive she never would’ve noticed because she never cleaned out her purse.
And she still had no idea why he’d dragged her into it, what his motives were. They’d broken up months before, and though it hadn’t been exactly amicable, it hadn’t been fraught either. At least she hadn’t thought it was, despite her growing sense of his deficiencies as a boyfriend.
She checked the clock that ticked benignly from the wall above Kyle’s TV, pretty much the only decoration in the room. Maybe his ex had taken all the homey touches when she’d left. If that’s what had happened. It was as good a guess as any.
The need to feel useful, to do something vibrated through her, making it hard to sit still. She chewed her lip, stood to pace the room, simply held herself to still the thundering unease from shaking her apart. It was hard not to watch that clock. She knew from a lifetime of experience as the least patient person on the planet that sitting on the clock would make it move slower.
The laptop screen dimmed and one of her fingers tapped against her elbow. They hadn’t scrolled through the entire list. How long was it?
The rest of the names would probably mean nothing to her, but she couldn’t make her mind settle, couldn’t figure out how to dispel the dread that moved like sludge through her body, giving her a sick feeling she couldn’t shake.
Down she scrolled, names rolling past with no click of recognition. She swallowed and looked at the clock. Twenty-five minutes.
Still, the list went on. Then, at the bottom, a name that made her pause, a flash of familiarity blazing bright.
