Her eyes widened, and she looked at the rumpled bed. “He’s coming here?”
“No, not here specifically. Atlanta. I was going to meet him.” He spotted his phone on the floor, half hidden under the bed. It must have fallen out of his pocket in his mad scramble to undress. He scooped it up, checked the screen. Sure enough, he had several missed calls from Cam. His twin was probably so pissed off right now. Wincing, dreading the upcoming convo, he called back. It rang only once before the line picked up, and he didn’t give Cam a chance to light into him. “Hey, bro. Sorry, I was busy. Did you make it to Atlan—”
“It’s about time you called,” Giuseppe Bellisario said amiably.
Vaughn’s blood froze solid. “Where’s my brother?”
“Safe, for now. Is Dahlia there with you?”
Vaughn glanced over at her, watched the color drain out of her face. She knew. Without him saying anything, she knew who was on the phone.
“Is Cam okay?” she mouthed.
He shook his head, and she covered her mouth with both hands as tears brimmed in her eyes.
“Imagine my surprise,” Bellisario continued, “when I discovered you had already located the very person I intended to hire you to find. You are good at what you do. And now you’ll bring her to me.”
“No.” The word burst out of him, emerging from somewhere deep inside his heart. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Yes, it is. Because if you don’t bring her to me, your twin dies.”
“How do I know he’s not already dead?” Voicing the question was like coughing up broken glass. So painful, his eyes started to water. Cam had to be alive. He would know otherwise, wouldn’t he?
There was a beat of silence on the other end of the phone, then a grunt of pain. “Vaughn…”
He sank to the edge of the bed at the raw sound of Cam’s voice. Bile burned up his throat. “Bro, I’m coming for you, okay?”
Silence.
“Camden!”
Bellisario returned. “You have twenty-four hours to get back to DC and hand Dahlia over.”
“That—” He swallowed down the fear, the rage. There would be time for that later. Right now, he had to think. “That’s not enough time, Bellisario. It will take at least half that to drive back to DC.”
“Then you’d better drive fast, huh? Twenty-four hours.”
He exhaled hard as the line went dead. Okay, he had to think. He’d been in plenty of hostage situations before—only he was always the guy busting in behind a flash-bang to solve the situation with an assault rifle. He was never the hostage’s family, and he had no idea what went on during the negotiation part.
Panic threatened to overtake him, but he beat it back by sheer force of will. His first instinct was to call his oldest brother. Greer would know what to do—but even as he dialed, he knew he wouldn’t get a response. Greer had dropped off the radar weeks ago.
And… yeah, he got nothing but Greer’s voicemail and his terse voice ordering, “Leave a message.”
He thought about it for a half second, but what was the point? Even if Greer was in a position to check his messages, he wasn’t going to make it back to DC in time.
He hung up. Tapped the phone against his hand a couple times. Who else could he—
Marcus Deangelo.
He started scrolling through his contacts, searching for the former FBI agent’s number, when the unmistakable sensation of a gun barrel pressed against his spine. He froze.
“Drop the phone,” Dahlia said, her voice shaking. “And lock your hands behind your head.”
He did as she asked, slowly lifting his hands and interlacing his fingers. The phone bounced off the end of the bed and landed somewhere on the floor by his feet. “What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t go back. I-I can’t. Where are your car keys?”
“On the dresser by my wallet.”
“Don’t move.”
The gun left his back, and he heard the clatter of his keys against wood as she picked them up, then the door creaked open. He dropped his hands and turned to face her. She was backing out the door, his keys and wallet in one hand and his own fucking gun in the other.
He took a step forward. “Dahlia—”
“Don’t move!” She raised the gun again. “I mean it, Vaughn.”
Betrayal coated his tongue, hot and bitter. “What? You going to shoot me?”
“I will, but please don’t make me.”
Goddammit, he believed her. She was shaking all over, tears streaming down her face, but she held the gun steady.
He lifted his hands again. “Dahlia, listen to me—”