Safe at Last (Slow Burn #3)

As soon as the plane touched down in Houston, Zack turned on his cell phone and then frowned when he saw his screen light up with more than a dozen notifications. Unease gripped him as he saw they were all from Beau. Beau knew he was traveling, in the air, so if he’d been blowing up Zack’s phone it wasn’t good news.

He didn’t bother reading texts or listening to voice mails. He went straight to the source and punched the call button.

“Come on, come on,” Zack muttered when Beau didn’t pick up on the first ring.

His gut was churning like hell and he had a tight grip on the handrest with his free hand. His knuckles were completely white and he wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t end up breaking the damn piece of plastic.

“You on the ground?” Beau demanded after the third ring.

“Just landed.”

“Fuck.”

Zack didn’t like this at all.

“What the hell is going on?” Zack demanded.

“It’s Anna-Grace.” Beau cursed again. “And Ari and Ramie. It’s a fucking mutiny and there’s not a damn thing any of us can do about it.”

“You better start talking,” Zack said in a deadly voice.

Beau sighed. “They got to Eliza. And there was this guy at the clinic when we took Gracie in for her checkup. Gracie said she was able to read his mind.”

Zack frowned. Hadn’t she said she’d lost that ability?

“What she saw, it wasn’t good, and worse, it turned out to be true. The guy was imagining waterboarding Eliza. Ramie confirmed that when she touched an item of Eliza’s. The women hatched this plan, you see. They pooled their resources and are hell-bent on getting Eliza back. Not that I’m not with them on that count, but goddamn it! I don’t want them anywhere near these bastards.”

“Back the fuck up,” Zack said. “Tell me you aren’t saying what I think you just said. You are not allowing any of the women and especially Anna-Grace to participate in a fucking takedown and hostage retrieval exercise! Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

“We didn’t have a choice,” Beau said harshly. “Ramie wasn’t coughing up the info unless they came and Ari threatened to incapacitate us all and the three women would go on their own, so our only real choice was to let them come with us so that at least we could offer them protection.”

Zack bit out a string of curses that had the neighboring passengers lifting eyebrows and staring agog at him.

“Tell me where, and then, Beau, swear to me you’ll keep Gracie safe for me. Swear it on your life. You have to give me the chance to make things right with her and I can’t do that if she gets herself killed.”

“I know, man,” Beau said quietly. “Believe me, I know. And we will protect her, all of us will—and Ari and Ramie—with our lives. Just get here as soon as you can. We could use all the backup we can get, because I have no idea how this is all going to go down once Ari unleashes her fury on them.”





THIRTY-ONE


DARKNESS shrouded the empty-looking warehouse on the outskirts of the city. But Anna-Grace knew better. It wasn’t empty. Somewhere in its bowels, Eliza suffered.

A knot formed in her stomach, dread gripped her in its menacing hold and squeezed until she could barely breathe. She clenched her fingers into a fist, anger rushing like fire through her veins. She was well acquainted with hate—or so she’d thought. But even when thinking she truly hated Zack, she knew there was still—would always be—a part of her that would never stop loving him. Or rather the young man she’d fallen in love with before he became another person entirely. Except . . . maybe he hadn’t? But the hatred she’d used simply to survive, to keep it together the many times she nearly fell apart, because she knew if she ever did truly break down, she would never recover . . . that hatred didn’t even come close to what she felt toward the people who’d beaten her, who’d nearly killed Ari and even now were putting Eliza through unspeakable torture.

Then she went utterly still as thoughts, a confusing mass of them, faintly brushed the edges of her mind. She closed her eyes while those around her stopped and she could sense their puzzlement—and impatience. They were in as much hurry to get to Eliza as Anna-Grace was.

Still, she focused on only those alien voices, narrowing her focus as well as she could since her gift was rusty from her not having been able to use it for so long.

Finally she managed to push everything else out and only listen to what was inside that building. Swearing vehemently, she suddenly strode forward because the sounds were just too faint. She needed to be closer to the source.