As badly as I want to ransack the cabin to find something, anything, I know I need to slow down before I act. I want to keep my captor from knowing I’m awake for as long as possible.
My blood roars in my ears and I hold my breath as I ease open then close each cabinet door.
Nothing. No cutlery, no plates, not even a cup in sight.
My exploration yields me bupkis. A bottle of liquid dish soap is the most lethal thing I can find after checking every nook and cranny of what is essentially my dungeon.
Where’s the frying pan when you need one? Hell, at this point I’d settle for a dinglehopper. I’m confident I could do some significant damage stabbing the tines into a meaty thigh.
The movement of the boat starts to slow, and then I hear the sound of metal clanging.
Oh my god we’ve dropped anchor.
That can only mean…
Spinning in a circle, I survey the cabin to make sure there’s no evidence of my snooping and scramble back to the bed. Slipping back under the covers, my head hits the pillow at the same time I hear a foot hit the first step. Maybe if I feign sleep, whoever is coming will continue to leave me alone.
I just need to hold on for a little bit longer, because one day my prince will come—or in my case, my pirate.
Chapter Fifty-One
When we first arrived, the vet was able to deduce that the dogs had been drugged with a sedative, but we needed to wait for bloodwork to confirm if they would need to stay overnight for observation.
The chaos over the exams and trying to work out how they were even drugged makes time pass in a haze of worry. The pungent scent of multiple animals and the cacophony of barks and meows fades when I finally check the time and realize another hour has passed since we spoke to Paul.
One hour. Sixty minutes. Three thousand, six hundred seconds have gone by without me once noticing Maddey is still missing.
Fuck me. How could I not have noticed?
Whipping my phone out of my pocket, I quickly dial Maddey’s phone, only for it to go to voicemail—again.
“Justin! Call Paul,” I demand, cursing myself for not thinking of getting his number myself.
He does as I ask, his head swiveling from side to side, going as far as to step through the adjoining door to check that Maddey and Paul are in fact still not here as he waits for his call to be answered.
“No answer.” The grim expression on Justin’s face matches the one I’m sure is on my own.
Every worst-case scenario there is starts to play like a movie reel inside my brain. Every molecule inside my body freezes, and my gut screams that something isn’t right.
Now is not the time to give in to the panic. I need to be able to think logically.
Ignoring and overriding is essential in my line of work, but I’ve never had the person I love above all else be my mission. There’s a niggling feeling in the back of my mind that it is my feelings that led to this.
“Can you have his phone pinged?” I ask—then it hits me.
Fuck I’m an idiot.
I allowed myself to be so blinded by the panic I almost forgot I have my own way of tracking Maddey.
Her anklet.
I need to stop acting like a goddamn tadpole and be the brilliant frogman I am.
Distantly I hear Justin on the phone while asking Ryan to call Jack to see if he can send a unit to check out the pinged location since his precinct is more local.
The weight of three sets of eyes fall on me, but all my focus is waiting for the tracking app Jamie’s guys installed to open.
Each flip of the hourglass feels like days as I wait for it to locate my girl, all my fingers and toes crossed she’s even still wearing it.
“What are you doing?” Justin asks.
I ignore him as every ounce of my being homes in on the satellite imagery zooming in.
“Dex?” Justin tries again.
“I’m trying to find Tink.” The global view of the United States closes in, the generic blocks of green and blue coming into focus.
“What do you mean you’re trying to find Tink?” Ryan’s tone is snippy, but I ignore it and keep my focus on the buildings coming into view.
“I put a tracker on her. I can’t believe I almost fucking forgot about it.” Blue becomes the prominent color on the screen.
“Shit, man. You better hide her taser because she will not be happy when she finds out you bugged her without her knowledge,” Justin declares, having relayed the information on Paul’s location to his dad.
As the image on my phone zooms in, it doesn’t look like where we were told Paul is, and it really sets in that Maddey’s stalker does have her. Closer and closer the image gets, and when it stops, it’s in the middle of…the ocean? Did this fucktard really take her on a boat?
“She’s on a boat.” I hand the phone over to Justin.
“Meet me at the harbor.” Jack McClain’s strong and angry voice rings out in the exam room, and it’s then I realize Ryan switched the call over to speakerphone.
The four of us are on the move, complying without comment and running for the parking lot.
“Dad?” Justin asks, gunning it the before the doors are even fully shut.
“Jamie has a speedboat we can use. I’ll loop in the Coast Guard and local LEOs, but if you think I’m waiting on them to mobilize to get my daughter, I messed up raising you, son.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
My ears strain to gather any details they can since I have my eyes closed, feigning still being under the effects of the drugs. It’s the only advantage I have at my disposal.
A maritime rescue may just be another day ending in Y for my guys, but it puts me at a supreme disadvantage. Even if I can overpower and subdue whoever it is that has me, I literally have nowhere to run.
The pad of footsteps gets louder the closer this asshat gets to me, and it takes every ounce of self-control my body has not to let my fingers give in to the twitch I feel to reach for a weapon I don’t have. (The soap doesn’t count.)
The sensation of eyes focusing on me makes my skin crawl, and I need to concentrate on keeping my breaths slow and steady when all I want to do is pant, I’m so uncomfortable.
Over the last few days, I’ve been undressed by Dex’s eyes more times than I can count. The difference is, when he does it, I feel sexy and cherished at the same time. It also makes me want to actually strip out of whatever clothes I have on and jump his bones, whereas this assmonkey makes me want to bathe in a vat of bleach to rid myself of the memory.
The bed dips as he sits. Allowing myself to roll with the movement is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do because it means my body is just that much closer to someone who has absolutely no right to be near it.
The urge to open my eyes and get a look at the person who has been fucking with my life for the last nine months is strong—like I’m pretty sure Gage could crush a person’s skull with his bare hands if he tried strong—but I resist.
It feels like spiders crawl across my skin when he reaches out to brush back my ponytail from where it has flopped over my face. He. Has. No. Fucking. Right. To. Touch. Me.
He lets out a sigh, and even my overactive writer’s brain doesn’t want to know what he’s thinking. I just want to get away, find out if my dog is okay, and get back to Dex’s arms where I feel safe.