LACHLAN
Saff should have been back already.Searching Gracie’s room should’ve taken no time at all. It was clear she was in the wind. Except how the hell had she gotten past us with no help?
“Hey, Rook, give me a location on Saff.”
His voice was concerned when he said, “I keeping pinging her, but her comm unit isn’t on.”
Fucking hell. I ran toward room 604. When I shoved the door open, my heart stopped.
The room was in complete disarray, and there had clearly been a struggle. The desk lamp was knocked over, papers were strewn around the room, and there was a shoe print on the wall. Saff had fought someone, and now she was gone. Something had happened to her.
Fuck, she'd been taken.
I wasted no time. I quickly searched the room in case she was just down. And as I ran back to our working suite, I was already on the phone with Tabs.
“Why are you calling me, Lock?”
"We have a problem. Saff's gone. And I don't think she's gone by choice."
To her credit, Tabatha didn't ask a lot of questions. “Fuck. All right, we launch Babylon protocol."
"What? We're not fucking leaving her."
“You need to familiarize yourself with all the protocols. Babylon protocol is when your teammate is captured. Get to a safe house. If she’s conscious, she’ll activate her secondary tracker."
"That’s bullshit. I can’t leave her."
“Listen to me. She knows what happens, and she knows what to do."
“I shouldn't have left her. I fucking knew it."
“We will get her back. But if you're going to be in the field, you have to learn the way we do things. Don't forget, preserve the mission at all cost. If the mission cannot be preserved, we return, regroup, and analyze. Now focus, so you can go get Saff when we locate her."
This was my fault. I hadn't listened to my own instincts telling me something was off with Graciella. I ignored it all. And now Saff was gone and I had no one to blame for that but myself.
Fuck.
* * *
Saffron
When I woke,my hands were tied.
Of course, the motherfucker had tied them.
“Glad to see you're awake. Now maybe you and I can have a conversation." His voice was smooth and deep like I remembered. His cultured accent gave no definitive clue as to his upbringing. He could be British, Swedish, hell, even an American who had spent some time in boarding schools.
I struggled against my restraints.
Drake Webster leaned forward into my view, and his dark hair fell over his brow. "Easy does it. I don't want you to hurt yourself."
"Why? You want the pleasure of doing it yourself?"
He grinned. “I'm not so much into the physical pain thing."
"Hey, if that's your kink, have at it."
I struggled some more. All I had to do was activate my secondary tracker in my belt.