“We will, you know,” Miles vowed. “Get her, I mean.”
Brand nodded at Miles. “Call the old guys. See if they’ve found out anything from Grant.”
“Douglas Grant?” Scott asked.
Again they ignored him. “And see if they’ve found a way to contact Ross Moran.”
“I know how to contact him,” Scott offered quickly.
Everyone went still.
Scott cleared his throat. “I paid him, you know. Left the money in his apartment, then texted him and told him so. I figured that’s why they were after Sahara, trying to get what I owed. I wouldn’t have asked her to meet me if I didn’t think that shit was already settled.”
“How?” Justice demanded. “How did you find him?”
“I spent a hell of a lot of time tracking him down, that’s how. He’s key to exposing the bastards who tried to murder me.”
“Tried being the operative word,” Miles murmured.
Scott nodded. “Ross had done a job for me, but then I was attacked on my yacht and never got a chance to pay him.”
Everyone went silent while Enoch gave more directions.
When he finished, Leese ordered, “Start explaining, and make it fast.”
They now had something to go on. Brand couldn’t think about anything else or he’d lose the fragile grip on his control. “I’ll bandage while you talk.” Examining Scott’s arm gave him something to focus on besides his worry.
Miles held the flashlight. Neither of them reacted to the raw, ravaged wound in Scott’s arm. Inch and a half wide, about three inches long, already blackened around the edges, it looked painful.
Knowing it would burn like hell, Brand swabbed at the blood, cleaning enough off around the damaged area so that the wrapping would hold.
Scott hissed in his breath, but held perfectly still.
“You need to go to the hospital—”
“Not until I have my sister back.”
“—but no one is taking you there yet,” Brand finished. It required everything he had not to blame the brother.
Still on an open line, Enoch asked, “You found her brother?”
“Yeah. And a whole shit-ton of trouble.”
Enoch surprised everyone by gritting out, “Son of a bitch. I don’t believe this.”
Scott looked momentarily guilty, then rallied. “I have Ross’s number. The bastard moved around a few times, but I found his new apartment. I left the money there that I owed him, then texted him to let him know. He should have found it already.”
“You paid him everything?” Justice asked.
“Twice what I owed him, actually. I thought that would be the end of it.”
“You thought your ass was finally safe,” Miles accused.
“If that’s all they wanted,” Leese asked, “then who took Sahara today?”
“I recognized voices.” Scott’s face showed the pain he felt, physically and emotionally. “Not Ross’s, but I definitely heard Olsen Winger. Maybe Terrance. There was so much chaos—”
“And that damned flashing light,” Justice muttered.
Scott nodded. “They work with Ross Moran.” Levering carefully to one hip, he dug the phone from his pocket, thumbed the screen and pulled up Ross’s number.
Miles took it from him.
Scott started to object, but the dark stare from Miles convinced him to stay quiet.
“Let’s not call him yet,” Leese decided. “We need to get closer first. We don’t want to push them into doing anything...rash.”
Brand squeezed his eyes shut. No, they didn’t want the bastards doing anything rash—like kidnapping her a second time, or shooting her brother. In comparison, rash could only mean one thing, but he couldn’t contemplate that.
She had to be okay.
Trusting his friends to think clearly, to accurately gauge the situation, Brand busied himself by layering gauze pads on Scott’s gunshot wound, then he wrapped and taped it down. “I have aspirin.”
“I’ll take three.”
Brand handed them over. Inside, he felt like a bomb slowly ticking, the explosion getting closer and closer.
Enoch interrupted with more directions. “They’re off the highway and driving through Darville.”
“Never heard of it,” Leese said.
“Just looked it up,” Enoch said. “It’s a dead little town, most of the businesses gone.”
A perfect place to hide a victim.
Enoch went through directions for the exit to take, and then the roads to follow. Justice put everything in his phone to use GPS.
“Tell us if they stop,” Leese said, speeding fast now that he was on wide highway. Luckily the traffic was low, which allowed them to make up some time.
In the distance, lightning shattered across the black sky. A few seconds later, thunder rumbled.
The storm matched Brand’s turbulent mood. Sitting back against the wall of the SUV, he narrowed his gaze on Sahara’s brother. “Now,” he said, his voice evenly modulated to hide his rage. “Finish explaining.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SAHARA SHIVERED IN her wet clothes and bare feet. Why hadn’t she dressed reasonably in jeans and boots instead of hoping to look her best when she reunited with her brother? It wasn’t like he expected her to wear her classiest business outfit to a clandestine meeting at the riverbank. No, the choice of outfit was all her doing. She’d wanted Scott to have a good impression of her after all this time.
Her only concession to the weather and location had been a longer skirt, snug-fitting sweater and booties instead of stiletto heels.
The booties should have stayed in place, damn it, but somewhere along the way she’d lost one of them, maybe while getting dragged into the small boat. She had a vague recollection of a long scratch along the back of one calf and a solid crack to her elbow.
In the process of her second kidnapping, she’d also lost her umbrella and, unfortunately, her phone.
Worse, they’d taken her gun from her.
She blamed her stupid panic for that. If she hadn’t seen Scott shot, hadn’t seen him fall, she might have kept a cool head. Instead, blind rage had driven her and she’d jerked out the gun without thinking through the fact that three men surrounded her at close range.
The redheaded goon had backhanded her so hard she’d nearly toppled out of the rickety boat. The blow was strong enough that darkness had temporarily closed in. It had been an easy thing for him to wrest the gun from her slack fingers.
Her face still stung. She was so damned cold that she appreciated the throbbing pain; at least it was something she could feel besides worry and stark, gnawing despair.
One guy looked back from the front seat. “Have you called Ross yet?”
The redhead who’d struck her in the boat and then tied her hands too tightly in the car muttered, “He’s meeting us there.”
Sahara cocked a supercilious brow. “Does he know why he’s meeting you?”
For an answer, Olsen’s frown deepened.
The driver leered at her in the rearview mirror, licked his lips and murmured huskily, “Ross won’t object, not anymore.”
“You’d be wise to leave her alone,” Olsen said.
“Right before he left, he agreed it was a good plan to get her.”
“With him, Andy. Not without him.” Olsen slumped lower in his seat. “Don’t fool yourself. When he finds out, he’s going to be pissed.”
Sahara memorized the names as they said them, and the faces now that she could see them. Eventually they would pay.
If she lived long enough.
She eyed Olsen. “So Ross is going to join us?” The more she heard, the more she thought Ross might be her best bet for surviving mostly unscathed.
Olsen spared her a glance. “You’d do best to keep quiet.”
A tall order. She couldn’t be quiet on her best days, so how could he expect it of her now, when she was so miserable that she really wanted them to be miserable, too?
If it was just physical discomfort, she could be all stoic and brave, no problem, but her heart ached, both for her brother and for the anguish she’d heard in Brand’s voice as he’d shouted her name.
The two men she loved more than life...would she ever see either of them again?