Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 168121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 841(@200wpm)___ 672(@250wpm)___ 560(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 168121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 841(@200wpm)___ 672(@250wpm)___ 560(@300wpm)
“Jay?” A deep baritone.
“Colson?” He spun toward the voice.
“Yes, sir. You need to get off the bus. It’s going to blow.”
Blow? His heart rate spiked, and his shoulders stiffened. “I can’t find Charlee. She was right here. She must’ve tripped. I don’t know. I can’t fucking find her.” His hands swung over the floor, slamming into furniture and bouncing off the luggage and can goods strewn over the aisle.
“Okay,” Colson said from behind him. “I’ll search the front. You take the back.”
She couldn’t be anywhere but right fucking there. Tears mixed with smoke and poured down his face. His lungs wheezed and labored. He crawled over the floor, dread rising with every lift of his legs. “Charlee! Charlee!” His voice shredded his raw throat. Fuck, where was she?
“I’ve got her. I’ve got her,” Colson shouted from the front of the cabin. “I’m getting her off the bus. Hurry.”
“You have Charlee? You’ve got her?” Jay scrambled to his feet and plowed through the shit in his way.
“Yes, sir. I’m taking her to safety.” Colson’s voice floated in from outside the door.
His blood pumped faster with the urgency of his strides. He crashed into the front dash and stumbled down the stairs. The billow of smoke followed him as he pitched across the asphalt, staggering to stay upright, coughing and blinking through stinging eyes. “Charlee? Colson?”
He swung around, the landscape obscured by the pitch-black sky. No streetlights. No headlights. The road appeared deserted except for their motorcade. The Suburbans and buses angled haphazardly around him, submersed in plumes of smoke and swarmed by the silhouettes of his protective team. Charlee was nowhere amongst the mayhem.
The door behind him swooshed closed, and the engine turned over.
Blood drained from his face. No, no, no, no. He spun, drew his gun from his waistband. The bus rolled forward, accelerated.
He ran, raised the gun, fired at the door. The glass cracked. Just the surface. Fucking bulletproof. His heart thrashed in his chest, and his legs burned from the exertion of his sprint. Pain exploded through his jaw from the force of his clench.
The smokescreen within held its thickness. How the fuck could the driver see?
The bus picked up speed, moving faster than Jay could run. He shot a tire. Another and another. They continued to spin. Too many tires. Too far away. The gun clicked. Out of ammo.
Nausea tore through his stomach and boiled through his chest. He didn’t slow his strides. He couldn’t. Couldn’t let the taillights out of his sight. “Tony! Nathan!”
The taunting red lights faded, vanished, swallowed by the night. His heart fractured, releasing unbearable agony. He clutched his chest, his eyes swelling, his throat constricting. No, he wouldn’t give into it, wouldn’t let his grief take the wheel and drive.
He pulled out his phone and dialed 911, hoping the police could track a tour bus in the middle of goddamned nowhere, fucking praying they weren’t on Roy Oxford’s payroll.
91
Charlee’s eyes flew open and collided with Roy’s. His face hovered inches away. The pungency of his cologne set off her gag reflex, and her heart banged against her ribs.
She jerked her arms where they stretched above her head, her hands imprisoned by rope. The leather couch creaked beneath her. Still on the bus, the only remnant of smoke was the burn lingering in her lungs.
The strips of lights on the ceiling cast a muted glow, highlighting the creases in his pale face. He raked a hand through his black mass of hair with an uncharacteristic yank and inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring. “You’re awake.” He released his breath. “I was worried. Propofol is…tricky.”
“Propofol?” Her head spun, not with a post-drug fog, but with the will to overpower, to control how this would end.
A hush enveloped the bus, but she refused to let her thoughts leap to the cruelest explanation for Jay and Nathan’s absence. Outside the windows, metal walls surrounded them. She’d been transported somewhere, hidden in a building.
He brushed her hair behind her ear, sparking shivers where he touched. “The injection was Propofol. The milk of amnesia. How do you feel?”
How did she feel? Seriously? She gave him her coldest glare. “Like you care.”
He hung his head, and his hand crept over her belly. “I care, Charlee. I’ve always cared. Perhaps a bit too much.” His fingers whispered over the waistband of her jeans, slipped the button free, and lowered the zipper.
Everything inside her bucked, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction. “Where are we?”
“Mississippi.”
Helpful. Not. “Are we in a shed?”
“A hangar.” His eyes followed his fingers as they slipped inside her pants.
She recoiled uselessly into the cushion.
“Our plane will be ready shortly.” He spread the fly open, lowered his head, and pressed his lips against her silk-covered mound.
A violent tremble invaded her body. She could tell him Jay’s semen still coated her pussy, but the backlash might be more forceful than her bones and skin could withstand. His lips delivered light kisses over her belly button, and she tensed up, magnifying the tremors. She sucked in a breath. “There are cameras on all the vehicles that feed live footage to a remote location. They have evidence of you boarding the bus and driving it away.”