The drilling ache in his chest eased, faded, stopped all together. Xander’s words came to him. Something inside me tells me where Isleen is. I’m sure you have it too. The pain. He’d thought it was from the gunshot, but it wasn’t. The pain was a compass. Nothing like pain as a motivator—go in the wrong direction and get hurt. Go in the right direction and feel fine. Terrified excitement bunched Lathan’s muscles. Alive or dead, he was going to find her.
Lathan lost track of time until Gill whipped the car into the driveway, the tires fishtailing before finding traction. A neat, nondescript home sat nestled next to a forest. It was painted a shade that perfectly matched the bark on the barren trees surrounding it. The yard was tidy and well kept, not picturesque. Nothing special.
Pent-up energy propelled Lathan out of the vehicle before Gill completed the stop. Lathan slammed into the front door at a full-on run, barely breaking his stride when the door caved and he burst into the house.
He stopped. Scented the air. Nothing. No honeyed undertones. His chest twinged. Wrong direction.
Gill entered the house, gun out, looking like the professional FBI agent he was.
“She’s not in the house.” Lathan followed the direction in which he felt no pain. It led him outside. The only other structure on the property was a tidy little shed tucked up against the trees. He found her scent—faint, so faint that if he hadn’t been hyper-focused on her, he might not have found it. The pain transformed into certainty. He ran. Flat-out sprinted. It was too late to prevent the dangerous dream from infiltrating his mind—her alive. Please, let her be alive.
He tore open the shed doors. Stopped. Brain struggling to assimilate the image.
A shiny, green riding lawn mower, hedge clippers, a weed whacker, bags of potting soil, fertilizer. And the scent of the Strategist. What the fuck?
She was here. Lathan fucking smelled her.
“Honey!” He yelled the word. His throat burned from the force of his vocalization. He whipped around to find Gill just reaching the open doorway of the shed. “Do you hear anything?”
Gill paused, cocking his head to the side, genuine concentration on his face. He shook his head.
“She’s here. I smell her.” Lathan tore the garden tools off the wall and threw them out the double doors. Together they carried the lawn mower out of the shed. Once they’d stripped the room, they searched. Every inch. Bottom to top. Twice. Three times. Nothing. No hint of her.
“You’re sure she’s here?” Gill asked for the seventh time, his face smudged with grime.
“I smell her. I know she’s here.” Lathan pounded his pain-free chest. The pent-up rage, the frustration of not finding her, vibrated his limbs with unexpressed energy. He slammed his fist into the shed wall, punching clean through the wood.
How could he know she was here if she wasn’t? Maybe he didn’t have anything that told him where Honey was. Maybe he’d wanted to find her so badly he’d convinced himself he had an ability he didn’t. He wanted to stab himself with the hedge clippers.
Lathan pulled his hand back into the shed, scraping his knuckles bloody. He invited the sting. The Strategist’s scent flowed in through the hole. Was he outside?
Lathan paced around the building, testing the air. The Strategist’s scent was strongest at the back. He knelt down, nose in the grass and inhaled. The guy had been here. Not long ago. Lathan ran his hands in circles over the ground, stirring up the scent. That’s when he noticed it. The grass his right hand touched was as cold as the environment. The grass his left hand touched was warmer. “Something’s here.”
Gill fell in beside him. Lathan pointed out the temperature differences. He dug his fingers into the earth and ripped out a clump of grass. Another. Another. Until he uncovered the straight line of man-made material. A door.
“She’s in there!” The lip of the door was no bigger than an eighth of an inch. Not enough to get his fingers underneath. “I need a crowbar. An ax. A sledgehammer.”
Dr. Jonah handed him a crowbar. Lathan had forgotten about the man until that moment. He braced it under the edge, leaned his entire body weight on it, and rocked it, but the fucking door didn’t budge.
Lathan grabbed the ax and slammed it down on the metal door with all the force he possessed. The impact reverberated through his hand, up his arm, rattling his bones all the way to his chest. Fucking metal door wouldn’t move. He smelled her. She was in there, mere feet away. The Strategist was with her. Every moment Lathan spent trying to get to her was another moment of torment she had to endure.
What was the Strategist doing to her right that moment? Carving out her insides, like he’d done the man in Indiana? Amputating her extremities one by one to see how long she could live? Slicing through her tendons just to immobilize her?
Stop. Lathan pounded his fists against his temples.
The drilling in his chest began again. Something was wrong.
Chapter 20
On the monitor, James watched the two men beat at the door with crowbars. They could beat for twenty years, and the door would not give. Explosives were the only way to get inside. The image was too distorted and grainy to tell exactly who was out there. He suspected Gill Garrison and Lathaniel Montgomery.
How did they find the bunker? No one knew about it. No one. And the entrance was perfectly concealed. He’d have to ponder those questions later. Right now, the priority was escape.
“I’ll tell them I kidnapped you. Made you take me here. Forced you to take care of me.” Evanee moved to stand beside him and watched the men beat at the grass. One rucked up huge handfuls, clawing and beating at the door.
He’d done a good job with her. She had no idea they were there for him, not her.
“They won’t believe you. I left today. Never called law enforcement. And came back here willingly. They’ll know that. Will know that I could’ve turned you in and didn’t. They’ll charge me with aiding and abetting. As an accessory.” He turned to her. “And you won’t get a fair shot with these guys. Look at them.”
Rage fueled the men’s movements. They weren’t simply doing their jobs; they were on a mission. A mission to capture him. But she didn’t know that.
“Do you trust me?” he asked, and waited for her to look at him.