“Isn’t it your job to hack the hackers?” Carter growled at James.
The other man’s head whipped about, and he shoved a hank of dark hair out of his eyes.
“Damn you, Carter. Isn’t it your job to protect Ellie? I’ll do mine. I’ll find whoever did this. You do yours. You find whoever took her.”
“That’s pretty hard to do with no idea where she’s gone!” he snarled back, but James was right. This wasn’t only on James’ head. In fact, it was more on his.
He spun about and jogged from the room, hearing Liberty call out behind him, “If we find anything, we’ll let you know.”
He raised his hand to acknowledge he’d heard but kept going without slowing. On his way to his rooms to change clothes, he called Goren, who was on lead with the night guards, following that call with rings to Beverly, then to Boris, who kept the hounds. He’d been intending to wait until morning to get the dogs out there searching, since Beverly hadn’t been able to pick up anything earlier, but with the attack on Ellie everything had shifted. This was no longer a simple—or, not so simple—case of sabotage. This was Ellie stolen, kidnapped, right out from under his nose. It was more than a challenge to him as her protector, more than a slap in the face to his ability to run security for Sean Costas. This could be life or death. Ellie’s life or death.
Prickles of fear raised the hairs on his flesh as Carter picked up his pace, running for his rooms.
Ellie, where are you, damn it?
Chapter Twenty-Four
I had no idea where we were or where they were taking me. One of my kidnappers held a flashlight, which created more hulking, quivering shadows than it provided light, or so it seemed to me without my glasses. The way they hauled me along, half on my feet, my toes skimming the ground, my head hanging down, made it almost impossible to discern anything. If I craned my neck to look up, pain volleyed through my skull, most likely a result of the blow earlier that had knocked me unconscious. I rolled my eyes as far as they’d go in each direction, but it was simply too dark to pick up on much.
Wherever we were, the building had an empty, musty smell, like it was old and abandoned. Like rats and mice, squirrels and no telling what other critters had made it their home for a long time. It was cold inside, with drafts that wafted eerily over any exposed skin. Occasionally, I could catch glimpses of what I thought were holes in walls, explaining the drafts, but with the flickering flashlight beam, the fuzziness, it was impossible to get a read on any firm details.
I could tell when they dragged me down steps. One of the men grunted, adjusting his hold as we started down. I pitched forward, gasping around the gag in my mouth, afraid they were going to drop me and fearing I’d tumble headfirst down the steps and into who knew what at the bottom of the staircase. No, he fixed his grip and I was caught securely, half-dragged, half-carried down a short flight of stairs into an even colder space below.
I was pulled the length of what seemed a long, single room.
“Here’s where it gets tricky,” muttered one of the men, as we paused at the opposite wall.
“I could just carry her,” offered the other.
“That might be easier.”
Nobody asked my opinion before they changed holds and I felt myself lifted in the air, nearly tossed, dropped over one of my captor’s shoulders. Air left my lungs in an Oomph, but neither man noticed nor cared as they clomped on, their footsteps echoing dully against the floor.
“Open it,” growled one.
I heard a loud squeaking, squealing metallic noise, like a metal lid being opened. I had no idea what was going on, but when the man carrying me stepped forward I felt a draft of cold, damp, dank air snaking up from below.
“I’ll go first with the light,” said the other man. The one holding me grunted assent. I heard the clunk of shoes against maybe the metal rungs of a ladder as the first man started down. My kidnapper switched his hold, boosting me up higher on his shoulder. Then I felt him step out, up, down.
“Watch her head now,” ordered the second abductor.
The man carrying me chuckled snidely.
“Why? She’s about to be split wide open and have her blood drained. What’s it matter if she gets a bump on her head?”
“It’ll matter to Nosizwe if you damage the goods or kill her,” responded his partner, tautly. “Just be careful, is all I’m saying. I don’t want to get on Nosizwe’s bad side.”
My captor didn’t respond. Maybe he was too busy trying to negotiate climbing down a hole by way of a metal ladder while carrying a bound woman. I couldn’t see much, except for what my hazy vision and the weak flashlight beam bouncing around revealed, but that’s what I discerned from my upside-down perch.
If I’d been terrified before, my assailant’s casual illustration of what was about to happen to me made cold sweat break out all over my body, cold sweat that had nothing to do with the chilly air wafting up from below.
Split wide open? My blood drained?
Surely he was joking, right? I wasn’t a shifter—Nosizwe had to know that by now. I hadn’t done anything personally to her, except the one time I’d begged her to leave my family alone. That shouldn’t have angered anybody badly enough to risk kidnapping me off the Costas’s grounds. In fact, I simply couldn’t understand why she would’ve run that risk at all for me, knowing I was human, knowing I couldn’t be of any particular value. If she’d run that risk for Carter, or James, or one of Mr. Costas’s top-ranking shifters, it would’ve been understandable. Not only would they make valuable hostages, if a hostage was what she wanted for negotiation purposes, but they knew information that could be helpful to her. I didn’t know anything she could use. So, why? Why me?
Split wide open…have her blood drained.
The gruesome words pounded through my head. I felt dizzy with terror, but tried to hold on, tried to reason with myself. He had to be exaggerating, or else trying to scare me. There was nothing special about my blood. I was human. I didn’t have any supernatural abilities. It didn’t make sense!
We continued struggling downwards even as sweat leaked from every pore on my skin and my mouth turned dry against the gag. What if they really did intend to brutally murder me as an example to any other humans stupid enough to get involved in shapeshifter business? Wouldn’t they have taken someone easier to grab?
But what if? What if?
None of this was helping. I knew it wasn’t, and yet I couldn’t stop my mind from dwelling on those terrible words as we finished the descent. Finally, after what seemed an eternity of climbing downwards, we stepped off the metal ladder in the narrow manhole-like vent and onto a metal staircase. Here, with a grunt, my captor rolled me off his shoulder, lowering me not so gently to the ground. I fell on my side and tried to kick my feet and roll my shoulder; to scrabble away from him in a coiling, jerking motion, almost like a snake.
He laughed and put a heavy boot on my hip, pressing down enough to hold me in place.
“You ain’t goin’ anywhere, girlie.”
His accomplice scanned the flashlight beam over both of us.
“Why you stoppin’?”
“You want to carry her the rest of the way?” demanded the man pinning me down. “She’s small, but she’s heavy. My shoulder’s going to feel that in the morning.”