And everyone listened to him, like always.
I WAS at the food trucks a block away from the office because I’d called Bellamy, who was still posing as Hicks, and told her to meet me there so we could talk before I took her to see Jolie and Brett. She rolled up twenty minutes later and stopped the car beside the curb but didn’t park it or get out. I gave her a head tip so she’d know I’d seen her and continued to pretend to talk on the phone, when really I was just speaking out loud to my team, the earpiece picking up everything.
“Is she there?” Becker asked.
“Yep, right here.”
“Do me a favor and do not get in the car,” Ching told me.
“Like I’ve never been kidnapped before,” I scoffed and made a show of hanging up, for all it mattered with him and Becker on the open channel.
“He’s got a point there,” Becker agreed.
“Shuddup,” I groused.
“Enough with the chatter,” Dorsey grumbled.
Approaching the car, I leaned over as she lowered the window, not getting too close, instead sinking to my haunches on the curb.
“We going for a ride?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“And why not?”
“They’re coming here instead. That way we can just meet in the office,” I told her, realizing she looked the part of a marshal. The black suit, white shirt, badge clipped to her belt, gun holster, all of it seemed like she’d been putting it on for years. Instead I knew she’d memorized how the real Hicks dressed. It made me sick to see the badge clipped to her belt, but I swallowed it down.
She must have seen something there on my face: revulsion, hatred, loathing. Even though I was playing it cool, it might have seeped through. “What’s with you?” she asked, quiet, concerned, brows furrowed.
“Nothing, why?” I shrugged, standing, thinking the movement would stop her from staring at me. “Hey, you hungry? I haven’t had lunch yet.”
“Wait.”
I stopped moving, brows lifted, hoping I was the epitome of nonchalance.
“When I talked to you before, you said this wouldn’t be a problem.”
“It’s not,” I said, shrugging. “And it’s even less of an issue now, since instead of us taking an hour out of our day to drive out to where they are, they agreed to come to us.”
She stared at me.
“Food?” I prodded.
She took a breath and shook her head. “I’m sorry, but that’s not going to work.”
“What’s not?” I played dumb, standing there on the sidewalk.
“I need to see them at their home,” she pressed.
“But you know that’s not how we do things,” I reminded her, assuring her of the protocol and trying not to sound like a wiseass, maybe missing it a little bit. I was getting angrier by the second. How dare she pretend to be Hicks. It was disgusting.
“You’re going to have to do better, Jones.”
“And why is that?” I asked right as I heard a noise behind me. I didn’t get the chance to turn, the muzzle of the gun stilling me as it was shoved into my right side while a hand curled over my left shoulder, holding tight.
“Hold still, Marshal,” a man commanded, taking the device from my ear and crushing it under the toe of his boot.
“What’s going on?” I asked, feigning surprise.
She narrowed her eyes as she stared at me. “Give me an address.”
Letting go of all pretense, I glared at her. “You know I can’t do that.”
“I will kill you, Marshal,” she threatened. “I’m working against a deadline here.”
“And if you actually were a marshal, you’d know we never give up our witnesses,” I promised. “It’s the whole what-we-do thing.”
“Fuck.” Up until that second, I would have bet my life on the fact that I had the situation well in hand, but then another set of hands closed on me, and two men propelled me toward the car.
Bellamy got out and held open the back door of the Audi sedan so they could stuff me in, and I knew it was my one chance to get free. My team was coming—they weren’t far, I knew that—so I jerked back even with the gun pressed to my ribs because I was never being kidnapped again. Once was more than enough.
When Craig Hartley—the serial killer known as Prince Charming—had taken me two years prior, I was chained up and tortured. The whole ordeal culminated in Hartley, a former doctor, removing one of my ribs. And while I knew, logically, the same was not about to happen—I’d be shot and killed, not beaten and cut open—I still couldn’t stop my immediate terror. My brain shut down, and because there was no flight, all that was left was fight.
Twisting free, I rounded on the guy with the gun. But instead of shooting, he pistol-whipped me. I understood. A dead man could not lead them to Jolie and Brett; I was safe until I gave up their location. So even though it felt like my right eye exploded before I was suddenly blinded, I swung and caught the guy with an uppercut that flung him back against the passenger-side door.