Christian’s whole body clenched, but before he could answer, Piers turned and spoke. “The patient is fine. Go away.”
Faith waited for the man to argue but an almost bewildered expression crossed his face and he turned and left. She glanced at Ryan who shrugged.
“Faith, this is Christian Roth, Tara’s husband,” Ash said. “He’d like you to go through what happened again.”
She bit her lip but nodded. Closing her eyes for a second, she tried to gather her thoughts, then started to speak slowly, from the point where she had noticed the bodyguards. Christian interrupted now and then with questions. Had she seen the van before?
“No, and I didn’t get the plates, but I’m sure one of the bystanders did.”
“I already got them; we’re running the plates now,” Ryan said. “But I don’t expect to find anything.”
“Well, try anyway. Go on,” Christian said to Faith.
“Tara told me they were after Roz, so I went back, but they—”
“Do you think they could have been mistaken?” Piers interrupted. “Could they have been after Roz and taken the wrong woman?”
She thought back. They’d gone straight for Tara, but that didn’t mean anything. Both women were small, both had been similarly dressed, the only major difference was hair color and they’d both been wearing caps. She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
She finished up to the point where she’d blacked out. And waited.
Christian turned away and paced the room, which hardly seemed big enough to contain him. Finally, he stopped by the far wall and slammed his fist into the concrete.
Faith winced.
“We’ll find her,” Ash said.
“We’ll tear the fucking world apart until we do,” Piers growled. He cast Faith a glance and then looked at the other men. “Let’s go next door.”
Christian paused at the door, came back, and stood gazing down at her, making a visible effort to hold in his emotions. She caught a glimpse of the charm he could no doubt show under other circumstances.
“Thank you,” he said. “You were shot trying to save my wife, and I won’t forget that.”
He nodded and left the room. When the door closed behind him, Faith dropped her head into her hands and pressed her fingers to her forehead as though she could force the thoughts from her mind. Guilt gnawed at her nerve endings.
Something had come back to her during that second telling. Something that had hovered on the edge on her consciousness the first time.
The last thing she’d seen before she was shot. Out of the corner of her eye. The window of the white van gliding down.
A face.
The security guard she’d spoken to on her first day at her new job. Just before he’d raised a pistol and shot her.
Which meant what?
Ryan had told her to tell Christian everything. How the fuck was she supposed to tell him that this was all her fault?
That, in all likelihood, her employers had kidnapped his wife.
Chapter Eleven
Ash led the way into the private room next to Faith’s. He was trying to hold his fears at bay. One of them had to stay in control, because he could see that Christian was on the point of imploding.
Once, Ash would have loved to see this—Christian losing the woman he loved. But not now. And certainly not at the cost of Ash’s daughter.
“Christian, you need to get a grip.”
The other man turned on him and snarled showing razor-sharp, white fangs. His eyes glowed crimson as he reverted to what he really was. A bloodsucking monster.
Ash stood his ground. “You’re being fucking self-indulgent. You’re no help to Tara like this.”
The humanity bled back into Christian’s features and a measure of control swept over him. He took a deep breath and nodded.
“So we work on the assumption that they took Tara by mistake,” Piers said.
“Until we find anything to the contrary, I think we have to.” Ash didn’t like it though. Angels didn’t make mistakes. But maybe this was a subcontracted job, and the contractors had bungled it. “I’ll get people asking questions see if there could be any reason for taking Tara.”
“What about the fae?” Christian asked. “Could they have decided to finish what they tried to do and taken her?”
“I can’t see it,” Piers said. “Much as I hate the fae, they’re not underhanded. They might have killed Tara but they wouldn’t have pretended to be go along with us and then done this behind our backs.”
“She’s not dead,” Christian growled.
“No, she’s not,” Ash agreed. “But I can’t sense her, which means they have her warded.”
“Which rules out a straight human kidnapping for monetary gain.”
Ash nodded. He shared his blood with Tara and could usually sense where she was in the world. That he couldn’t, suggested something of supernatural nature had her imprisoned. “Which brings us back to the angels and that they took Tara by mistake.”
“Will they give her back when they realize?”