“Webb was with him when the men picked him up. I’m hoping they’re still together at the new location.” Reese was counting on DeMarco keeping Griff alive at least as long as the Poseidon deal was still in motion.
“You have Webb’s number?” Tabby asked.
Reese checked the screen and rattled off the digits, which started with Shreveport area code 318. “I tried calling him earlier, but the call went straight to voice mail. Hoping you can do something that will help.”
“I’ll get back to you as soon as can. It might take a while.”
“Thanks, Tab.” Reese tossed Eddie’s phone back to Kenzie.
“You think there’s a chance this will work?” she asked, tucking the phone back into her purse.
Reese put the truck in gear and drove out of the parking lot. “Let’s hope so.” Because they didn’t have much of anything else. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
But if something didn’t break soon, their luck was going to run out.
THIRTY-TWO
Griff shivered. There was no air conditioning and though it was burning hot in the tiny, airless bedroom, he couldn’t seem to get warm.
His eyes stung with tears. He wasn’t in the fancy hotel room anymore, that was for sure. Just a dirty old wooden shack out in the swamp.
At least he was still alive. He thought he’d be dead by now.
Just before the sun came up, Nolan had come into the room with two other men, big burly dudes who liked kids even less than Eddie. They had jerked his arms in front of him and bound his wrists together with plastic ties, tied his ankles, and stuffed a gag in his mouth. They’d put a bag over his head, lifted him off the bed, and dumped him into a laundry cart.
A rattling elevator took him down to the bottom floor. The next thing he knew they were loading him into the trunk of a car and slamming the lid.
He’d started crying then. Last night, he had pulled off Eddie’s ski mask and seen his butt-ugly face. When Nolan and his creepy friends showed up, they didn’t bother with disguises. He knew what they looked like. That was how Griff knew they were going to kill him.
He’d thought it would be over by now.
Instead, after what seemed forever but was probably less than an hour, the car pulled off the highway onto a bumpy road. He was sweating inside the trunk, so scared he was afraid he would wet his pants and embarrass himself. He could feel the car turning this way and that, following some kind of curvy lane. Out in the boonies, he figured, where they could dump his body and no one would ever find him.
Not even his mom and Reese.
His throat clogged up and his eyes watered.
During the uncomfortable ride, he’d managed to spit out the gag and scrape the hood off his head, but it was too dark in the trunk to see. When the car braked and finally stopped, he took a deep breath and gathered his courage. He wasn’t going to die crying and begging. No way.
Then the trunk lid popped open and he was surprised to see a dilapidated old cabin among the trees, mostly hidden by tall grass and thick green leafy foliage. The ground was wet and swampy, so the cabin sat on stilts a couple of feet off the ground. Through the undergrowth, he caught a glimpse of water slugging its way along an overgrown creek.
The two men lifted him out of the trunk. They were wearing guns but they didn’t shoot him, just carted him into the cabin, into a tiny bedroom that smelled like a dead rat or something worse, and tossed him up onto a saggy bed with a rusted iron headboard and creaky springs.
They didn’t say a word. He flinched when Nolan pulled his pocketknife, but the guy just leaned down and cut the plastic tie around his ankles and the one biting into his wrists.
“There’s no way out, so you can forget trying to escape. Even if you managed to do it, there’s nowhere to go.”
Griff glanced around. There were windows, but they were all boarded up. The only way out was the old plank door they’d come in through.
“Sooner or later, someone will show up with food,” Nolan said. “You need to take a piss, use the bucket in the corner.” Nolan walked out of the room and closed the door, latching it behind him.
So here he was, still alive. He wasn’t sure why until he heard Nolan say they needed him for something called proof of life during a phone call tomorrow morning. After that, they could get rid of him.
Griff closed his eyes, trying to hold back more tears. He figured they wouldn’t want blood all over the cabin, so they would probably take him out into the woods to shoot him.
He thought about what might happen once he was out of the cabin, but instead of getting more scared, his eyes popped open. It was thick and swampy out there. If they didn’t tie his hands and feet, maybe he could find a way to escape. He was a Boy Scout. He’d been camping more than once, and he wasn’t afraid of snakes. Well, maybe the poisonous kind. But he could figure that out as he went along.
If there was any chance at all, he had to take it.
It was better than just dying.
* * *
Kenzie and Reese went back to the Holiday Inn to wait for Tabby’s call. As they approached the door to the room, Kenzie heard voices inside. Hawk would be meeting them there, but there was more than one person speaking.
Reese eased her behind him and pulled his weapon. It surprised her how naturally it fit in his hand, as if he had held it dozens of times. After watching him with Eddie, everything she’d thought she knew about Reese had changed. He was harder, tougher, less forgiving. And yet he was still Reese, the man she was so desperately trying not to love.
Using his key card, Reese turned the knob and shoved the hotel room door open with his boot, taking a shooting stance as he surged into the living room.
Three semiautos drew down on him at the same time.
“So I guess we’re all a little on edge,” Chase drawled as he holstered his weapon. Hawk did the same.
Kenzie recognized the third man as Brandon Garrett, youngest of the brothers. Dark brown hair and eyes a lighter shade of blue than Reese’s, his complexion less swarthy, though his carved features were no less handsome. Reese had once mentioned that Bran was a highly decorated former special operations soldier.
Seeing the dark look on his face and the hard line of his jaw as he holstered his weapon, Kenzie didn’t doubt it.
Then he grinned and the impression vanished as if it were never there.
“I thought you were in Denver,” Reese said to him, gripping his brother’s shoulder in greeting. “What are you doing here?”
“Chase has been keeping me up to speed. The way things were going, I figured you might need some help. Got to Dallas just in time to catch the jet.” He walked over and pulled Kenzie in for a quick, hard hug.