She went to the door and opened it. Boone whipped around to face her.
“Everything okay?”
“Yes. I’m hungry. I wondered if you might get me something to eat.”
“I can order room service for you.”
She shook her head. “I was really craving Chinese. Would you be able to pick it up at the front desk if I order?”
He gave her a crooked smile. “I guess it’s the least I can do.”
She smiled in return. “Thanks. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.” She started to close the door. “Oh! Any word about what Ross is doing right now?”
“No.” His eyes took on a distant expression she read as he didn’t want to say.
“Thanks.” She closed the door, counted to a hundred and then opened it again. “The delivery person will be in the lobby in fifteen minutes.”
He gave her a Wynton nod, a single dip of his head she often thought the family had picked up from their horses.
When fifteen minutes was up, she opened the door, heart pounding. Sure enough, her plan had worked. Boone was nowhere to be seen, having gone to fetch her food, and she knew Ross and his men were tied up with Ryan Letters.
She quickly slipped out of the room and ran for the elevator. Ross would kill her when he found out she left. For that matter, he’d kill Boone for leaving his post. But surely they’d both understand when she told them it was for the sake of saving a long-time friendship?
She rode down the elevator, heart pounding each floor she passed. When she reached Meredith’s floor, she began to step into the hallway.
A cloth whipped over her head, wiping out her vision. She opened her mouth to scream, but a hand like a vise clamped over it, cutting off any sound. She struggled, her Aikido training jumping to the fore. But someone—she could only guess two or more people—bound her hands and feet. She bucked in their arms but was carried off with no sense of direction.
She attempted to scream again, heard the tearing noise of duct tape on a roll and anticipated what was coming next. She might have blacked out for a minute, but next thing she knew, the scent of Seattle filtered through the cloth over her head. A car door slammed. Then another.
Tires whirred on pavement as someone drove her away from the hotel. Away from Ross.
If she died at the hands of her kidnappers, it was her own damn fault. But Ross would never forgive himself for it. She couldn’t give up—she had to fight her way back to him.
* * * * *
Ross leaned over the table, his glare directed at the douchebag Ryan Letters. The man hadn’t told them a thing yet, other than yes, he did have a thing for Pippa. He always did. At that point, he broke down in tears and told them his ex-girlfriend had found him stalking through photos of Pippa in a work setting and called it quits.
Disgusted, Ross straightened. Behind him, someone knocked on the door. He twitched his head toward Noah, who went to see who it was.
“Fuck. What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be with Pippa.”
Ross swung around at Noah’s words, his gaze landing on Boone. His brother’s face was ravaged with anguish, and Ross’s heart flipped end over end, like that vehicle they’d run off the road on the highway.
In two steps, he grabbed Boone by the shirt front. “What the hell happened?”
“She sent me for food and now she’s gone.”
“For—” His throat clamped off the rest of the sentence and reopened on his bellow. “She sent you for food and you left? Jesus Christ! Find her!” He stormed from the room, Ryan Letters forgotten as he ran to the elevator. A quick sweep of the floor and her room came up empty.
He grabbed his phone. “Silas, get on the security footage. I want a man at every exit in this place. How the fuck did she slip past us? You all better start looking for jobs, because you’re fucking fired!”
Fear pounded through his veins. He could barely draw air. Gone? Where?
Meredith.
He knew her room number after meeting up with her in the bar, and he raced to her door. When he pounded on it and got no response, he kicked it in. Meredith wasn’t here either. The room was empty.
His brain pieced the puzzle together. She kept calling Pippa. She acted as a concerned friend, but what if she really was the evil behind the threats and attacks? Pippa said herself it was odd that Meredith attended a tech conference, a fact that wasn’t lost on Ross. It could mean she didn’t know her friend as well as she thought she did. It also gave Meredith a knowledge of technology that might get her into Pippa’s phone and laptop—and them out of this hotel without WEST Protection knowing.
He froze in place, fists clenched at his sides. Terror and shock and fury throbbing through his system. How would he find her? He had to find her.
He stuffed the comms device in his ear and bellowed at his team. “Man every exit. I want footage of the building inside and out. Stop all flights leaving Sea-Tac…” A thought hit him. “And get the authorities to the ports. They might try to get her out of the city by water.” He clicked off, sprinting for the stairs. “Goddammit!”
Where to even start? He didn’t know which way to turn. As he hit the bottom of the staircase and whirled around the landing to the next, he came up against Boone. Chest heaving, he faced his brother.
“I’m so goddamn sorry, man. I know you love her. This is my fault. Tell me what to do.”
Ross’s eyes blurred momentarily with tears and then cleared. “I don’t know. I can’t think where to start.”
“We need a lead.” Boone took control of the situation. “C’mon.” They took the stairs to the ground floor at a deadly pace, hurtling forward.
“I got something. The footage is blacked out, as if someone knew when to cut power to the camera, but it comes on again as a car drives away. The times mesh with the time Pippa went missing.” Silas’s voice overlapped with Josiah’s as they filled in the puzzle for Ross.
“The car?”
“Black sedan.”
“Plates?”
“Hard to see in the footage. I’m running it through the program now,” Silas told him.
Ross found no hope in what his team told him. He could only think of Pippa getting carried away and how frightened she must be. Sure, she knew how to fight, but anybody could be disabled easily if blindsided.
“License isn’t coming up,” Silas said.
Ross and Boone exchanged a look. “The fake plates,” Ross said.
Boone nodded.
A whoop sounded in Ross’s earpiece that could only come from a Wynton. Josiah’s voice penetrated his head, each word dropping into him like nuclear warheads.
“I’ve got eyes on the car. It’s traveling west. Ross, I think you’re right—they’re taking her to a port.”
* * * * *
Pippa’s lungs burned with the need for air. She didn’t relish the thought of going out by suffocation, but she teetered dangerously close.
The hood over her face and the strong tape around her mouth cut off too much oxygen. A dozen biology classes told her that adrenaline would only boost her heartrate, which demanded more oxygen in her veins to keep it beating.
She had to calm down.
All the meditation taught by Tibetan monks and her Aikido training with Japanese masters couldn’t stop the panic sweeping through her, though.