“You’ll see.”
Chapter Sixteen
Luc
I’m worried. Terrified, if I’m to be honest, because while I have a tracking chip in Ashley’s engagement ring—please, roll your eyes at a less stressful time—the blasted signal was lost an hour ago.
We have a general direction to start searching, but I have this terrible fear that she’s in a lot of trouble right now. Time…I’ve never been this furious at something so simple before in my life.
“Are ya gonna go fetch her now, Luc?” Ben asks for the hundredth time in the hour and forty-seven minutes since I’d almost lost all control of myself.
After that initial roar of outrage…well, I have a son to think about, so calming down despite my feelings was hard, but here I am, calmly assuring my son while anger and terror blaze through me.
I hadn’t lied when he’d run down and seen the kitchen and that handprint. Instead I’d wrapped him in my arms and promised him that I was going to go get our girl and bring her home.
“We’re ready to move, sir,” Frank, my security man, says from my left.
“Give me a minute.”
When he nods and walks away I turn to Ben and get down on my haunches, meeting his stare head on. I find that he’s easier to deal with when you’re honest.
“Yes. I need you to stay here with my secretary and do what she tells you to. Eat whatever she gives you and stay calm. Ash will need you to be calm when she comes home. Okay?”
He nods, his lip trembling slightly before he firms it and stands up straighter.
“Yes, sir.”
The kiss I drop on his rumpled hair is all I allow myself before turning and marching out to the car, my mind already planning a hundred miles a minute as we pull away and leave the estate.
“You’d better know where my woman is, Frank.”
The hardened soldier turns black eyes on me and nods, keeping his own emotions under check as we race through the streets, trying to beat the sinking sun.
“I have an idea, sir. We’ll find her. I’ll find him.”
I smile despite myself and cast a sardonic look at Frank. The man is Ashley’s personal security and has taken her disappearance very personally indeed.
It’s my fault that Wesley had gotten to her at all; I’d pulled Frank off house duty to get to Ben faster than I could, and thanks to that monumental fuck up he’s not only pissed at himself or Wesley Munro. He’s furious with me.
Seems I’m not the only besotted fool panting around my wife.
I could almost pity Wesley when Frank manages to catch up with him because, if I were a betting man, I’d lay odds that Wesley won’t walk away from that meeting fully intact. If he survives at all.
It just depends on the condition Ash is in when we get to her. From the bloody hand print I’d say that arse is in for at least a kneecap and a few important bones.
“Here we are, sir. We lost the signal here.”
I look out of the window and squint at the landscape as evening settles, throwing everything into a shadowy darkness.
“Oh, fuck.”
Trees. Everywhere.
Ash hates the wilderness due to some strange fear of a serial killer that doesn’t even exist. I know it’s crazy, but the thought of my woman wandering the woods alone, terrified out of her barmy mind, makes me even more crazed than the sight of that handprint did.
“Find her fucking now,” I growl, feeling my muscles tense with every minute that ticks by. “She’s afraid of the woods, Frank. Our girl is terrified of these places. Especially at night.”
I see his almost expressionless face harden, maybe enough to match my own violent emotions before Harry comes to a stop, pointing out an almost hidden dirt road.
“You want me to keep going, boss?”
I want to crack a smile at that Bostonian tough guy accent but refrain when Frank leaves the car and jogs to the road. He comes back a minute later, smiling so savagely I feel an icy draft creep down my spine.
“Fresh tracks. Let’s go. We go in on foot.”
My two thousand dollar shoes protest violently as I vault out of the car and follow him at a dead run while he hisses commands into his phone, his pace never slowing as we crash through the tree line, keeping adjacent to the road.
“Sloan says there should be a cabin about two miles up ahead.”
I grunt in answer and keep going, sweating buckets despite the chill in the air.
Minutes, hours later, I crash into Frank’s back when he stops, his eyes scanning our surroundings. A derelict cabin stands up ahead, the place a dark hovel that makes no sound, no signs of life as we creep closer.
“It looks abandoned.”
Good. That motherfucker better hope he doesn’t have my woman stashed in that piece of shite lean-to. If he has…well, I can’t say for certain if I’ll be able to keep my civilized mien in the face of finding my baby in that filthy hole.