“What do you know?” Wolf asked, getting right down to business.
“Abigail says that she doesn’t remember how she was abducted. Said that the last thing she remembered was packing up after work and walking to her car.”
“Someone grabbed her in the parking lot,” Sam “Mozart” Reed said.
Spider nodded. “Her car and purse were found there. Whoever took her wanted to make sure that there was no way we could trace where she was taken so he left behind her car and her cell phone, both of which we might have been able to use to at least point us in a direction.”
“What’s the next thing she remembers?” Abe asked.
“Waking up in the same cell where I found her.”
The other men exchanged confused glances. “What did they do to her while they kept her in there?” Wolf asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Cookie repeated.
“That’s what she said. She said she was just left in there and someone came a couple of times a day to throw her some food, but no one would interact with her at all.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Wolf said.
“Agreed.”
“So they just took her and put her in a cage for fourteen months?” Dude asked.
“That’s what she said,” Spider confirmed.
“But?” Abe asked.
“But her fever spiked when I had her in the shack, I had to put her in the tub to try to bring it down. While she was delirious with fever she was hallucinating. She thought someone else was in the room with us, and she begged him not to hurt her again, said she couldn’t go through that again.”
“You think they beat her before they put her in there?” Mozart asked.
He didn’t even have to consider his answer, as much as it made his gut churn he nodded. “Yes.”
“They drug her maybe? That could have wiped out her memory,” Benny said.
“That would be my guess,” Spider confirmed.
“Why?” Dude asked. “Why would they kidnap Abs? Perez deals in drugs and guns, dabbles in human trafficking, as far as we know Abigail isn’t involved in anything like that.”
“It feels like she was targeted specifically,” Wolf said thoughtfully. “I mean, a typical abduction site isn’t a dance studio parking lot. They beat her up instead of either selling her or Perez keeping her for himself. And fourteen months is a long time to hold her prisoner. What did he have to gain from keeping her?”
“I don’t know,” Spider said, and that feeling of impotence he’d had while Abigail was missing returned. If he couldn’t figure out why she had been targeted then he couldn’t keep her safe.
“Abigail is beautiful, if he was smart he would have sold her quickly, she would have brought in a bundle,” Abe said.
“From what we know of him, Perez prefers blondes,” Cookie added.
“Could the hallucinations have been just that, hallucinations? Not anything related to her abduction and imprisonment?” Benny asked.
“Anything is possible, but it was like she was seeing someone specific,” Spider replied.
“Either way none of this makes sense,” Wolf said, running frustrated hands through his dark hair.
Spider echoed those frustrations.
Nothing about Abigail’s abduction made sense. The idea that she was targeted, the fact that she might have been beaten, that she had been kept so long and yet never touched even though she was on the compound of a known human trafficker, all of it tied together and yet he couldn’t seem to find the start of that piece of string. How could he unravel this if he didn’t know where to begin?
“We’re not going to get any answers until she wakes up,” Wolf said, gesturing to the unconscious Abigail. “When she’s strong enough we’ll debrief her, see if she remembers something now that she’s safe and feeling better.”
As much as he hated to admit it, Wolf was right.
There was nothing more they could do right now. Abigail needed time to rest, heal, and regain her strength, they weren’t going to be able to get any answers until then. Even once she was better there were no guarantees that Abigail would remember anything, they didn’t know what had been done to her or what drugs she’d been given, and the mind was a funny thing, it could block things out to protect itself.
The others filed out of the room leaving him along with Abigail, and he did the one thing he’d been longing to do since he walked out the door three years ago and never came back. Kicking off his shoes, he lifted the covers and slipped in beside Abigail. Careful not to disturb the IV lines, he pulled her into his arms and fell asleep holding the woman he loved.
3:44 P.M.
Abigail groaned and tried to roll over, but instead she just rolled into a big, warm, solid wall.
No.
Not a wall.
A man.
For a moment panic flooded through her veins. Where was she? Who was the man? Why was he in bed with her?
Then just as suddenly as it had come on her, the panic faded. She knew that smell, she knew that body, she knew those arms, it wasn’t someone here to hurt her, it was Ryder.
“You’re awake.” His voice rumbled through his chest, and she hated how much comfort she got just from being held in his arms.
“Yes,” she replied.
“How are you feeling?” He shifted as he asked the question, releasing his hold on her and propping himself up on an elbow so he could touch the back of his hand to her forehead.
“Better,” she replied. She felt weak, drained like she didn’t have an ounce of energy left inside her body, but she felt cooler, no longer plagued by a fever, and her breathing felt a little easier too.
“Your temperature is definitely down, and the antibiotics you’re on seem to be working.” Ryder sounded satisfied like he had hoped that the medications would make her better, but hadn’t allowed himself to believe it until he saw it with his own eyes.
“We’re home?” she asked hopefully. She knew that they had gotten onto the helicopter but she didn’t know where they had landed. Were they back in the US or had they had to fly someplace else?
“We’re home,” Ryder said, smiling down at her.
She opened her mouth to ask a question but started coughing instead. It hurt, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been which was a plus. “What time is it?” she asked when the coughing finally subsided.
He glanced behind her then said, “Nearly four in the afternoon, you’ve been out for about sixteen hours give or take.”
“That long?”
“You needed the rest. Actually, you need a whole lot more rest. Why don’t you close your eyes and go back to sleep?”
“Can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said simply. It would be so nice to go to a real bathroom, use a real toilet. After so many months of going in a hole in the ground, she had realized just how lucky they were to have running water and plumbing.
“I’ll carry you,” Ryder said, climbing out of bed and unhooking the IV bags from a pole beside the bed.
“I can walk,” she said firmly.
“Sweetheart, I don’t think you can stand on your own let alone walk.”