Laughing as she remembered that first phone call, she began to utter a sultry reply about becoming wetter by the minute. But those words died in her throat.
“Oh, my God.”
A thought burst through her mind, sudden and completely unexpected. She hadn’t given her best friend a thought after she’d read that awful message on her blog post tonight. Her thoughts had gone in only one direction, toward her mother. For the second time in as many hours, she lunged straight up in the bed, gasping and terrified.
“What is it?”
“Tricia.” She stumbled out of the bed, wanting to get to her phone. “God, Alec, what if the target was Tricia?”
Quick impressions… Voices. Pain. And cold.
Tricia tried to open her eyes. Couldn’t. They were disconnected from her brain somehow.
Where am I? God, what happened to me?
She didn’t know, could barely think. Something about a meeting. Showing a property, an old warehouse. Buyer had been on the hook for weeks. Was coming through town, wanted to meet. She’d unlocked the lockbox, stepped inside.
Then blackness.
“Hey, baby, looks like you don’t need no more of that bottle. How ’bout sharin’?”
Strange voice, echoing. Every word repeated twice in her head.
“Mm-mm, girl, I think you had enough.” Another voice. Deeper. Laughing.
“Yeah, she looks wasted.”
How many were there?
“What’s that on her chest?”
Someone moved closer. “Help me,” she whispered, though her voice was so weak, she barely heard it herself.
A loud bark of laughter split her skull. “Check this out. Bitch wants to get it on!”
Movement. More voices. Hands reaching for her. Groping. Sliding up her bare leg. Where are my clothes?
“No need to beg. I’ll give it to you.”
“Hey, motherfucker, back off. I saw her first.”
“She got enough to share. Gonna slice me off a piece of that.”
Fingers digging into her thighs, pulling them apart. She struggled, managed to get her eyes open. Blinked to bring her vision into focus, saw she was outside, on the ground, men around her, beside her, above her.
“Wha…?”
“Shh,” the closest one said, leaning close so she could smell the reeking breath. “We’re gonna give you what you wanted.”
He reached for his pants. She tried to scream.
“What the fuck is going on out here?”
Another man. Loud, strong-massive.
“Please… help me,” she whispered, staring up at him as he tossed the others out of the way. She stared into his dark brown eyes, kind eyes, despite the huge, beefy body, the gangsta clothes, the gold jewelry.
“Please.”
She felt hands on her. Moving her. Lifting her.
The light faded as she slipped into unconsciousness once more.
16
They located Tricia at a city hospital a little before dawn, after making frantic phone calls throughout the rest of the night. A woman of her description had been brought in a couple of hours earlier. Though nearly incoherent, she’d come around enough to say her first name.
For what seemed the dozenth time in a week, Alec found himself driving between the nation’s capital and Baltimore, a panicked Sam sitting beside him. Only now, she wasn’t just a witness, not just an attractive stranger. She was his lover, in every sense of the word. And she was on the verge of shattering into a million pieces.
His fault. Jesus, it was all his fault. If he had never shown up at her place, never knocked on her door, never gotten her involved, perhaps she wouldn’t have drawn the attention of a madman. A madman who now wanted to punish her by hurting those she loved.
Of course, if he’d never shown up at her door, they wouldn’t have shared the amazing hour in that hotel bed. But he’d trade it in a second to make her happy, safe, and whole again.
He had tried calling Wyatt, but had received no answer. Even after working for him for only a week, Alec already knew that was very unusual for the man. Leaving him a message, he’d then called the others, reaching everyone except Lily. They all sounded as exhausted as he felt, but every one of them said they’d be in Baltimore as soon as possible.
“What exactly did the police say?” Sam asked.
He’d told her twice but knew she needed to fill the time until they got there. “That she was found in an alley in a bad part of town, wearing next to nothing, holding a half-empty bottle of booze, with an obscene note pinned to her bra strap.”
It was a miracle the woman hadn’t been raped. Apparently Tricia had been at the center of a gang of young hoods when a bar owner had spotted them and put a stop to it. The bystander had brought her to the hospital.
“I guess Good Samaritans really do exist,” he murmured, feeling a quick stab of satisfaction that at least part of the Professor’s hateful plan hadn’t worked.
When they arrived at the hospital, they were escorted to Tricia’s room, finding a city police officer standing guard, as Alec had requested. He flashed his badge as Sam peered in, her bottom lip between her teeth. When she let out a cry of relief and flew through the door, he knew Tricia wasn’t quite as bad off as they’d feared.
He glanced in, watching their reunion for a moment, realizing Tricia, while weak, was conscious and able to talk. He’d need to question her, but wanted to give the women a few minutes alone. In the meantime, he had other things to do.
“Can you direct me toward the man who brought her here?” he asked.
The officer pointed toward a nearby waiting area. “You can’t miss him.”
Something about the officer’s tone warned him, so when he walked into the room and saw Tricia Scott’s rescuer, he wasn’t entirely taken by surprise. Because the Good Samaritan, who immediately rose as he entered, was one of the most intimidating-looking people he’d ever seen. Truly huge, he dwarfed Alec in height, and had enormous shoulders, thick hands, and a shiny, boulder-size bald head. He was the kind of man who made nervous women cross the street on sight. But right now, he looked genuinely concerned, worried about the one he’d rescued last night.
This guy broke every stereotype the Professor had relied on.
Alec extended his hand to the man. “I’m Special Agent Lambert, and I want to thank you for doing what you did.”
“She gonna be all right?”
“I think so. But I hear it was a close call. You really saved the day.”
“Those asswipes were too drunk to realize she’d been attacked and was drugged out of her head. Like any woman would really write something like that on herself.”
“The note?”
“I gave it to the detective who was here earlier.”
“What did it say?”
The other man growled in disgust. “ ‘ My boyfriend dumped me. I need to be fucked bad.’ ”
Every muscle in his body flexed. Alec wanted to hurt the Professor. Wanted to take the bastard’s neck between his hands and squeeze the life right out of him.
But arresting him and throwing his ass in jail was the best he could do. So he’d damn well better get to work doing it.
Thanking the other man again, and asking him to wait a little longer until his colleagues could show up for a more thorough questioning, Alec went in search of the detective. The guy was in a nurses’ station, sipping coffee from a foam cup, yawning between each sip.
“You the FBI?” he asked.
“Yes. Can I see the note?”
The man reached for a satchel, retrieving a plastic sheath in which a single sheet of paper had been placed. Despite Alec’s first impressions, the guy seemed to be at least somewhat professional. He’d had the common sense to treat the evidence carefully.
Holding the plastic by a corner, Alec lifted it in the air and read the hand-scrawled words. But they were hard to read because light shining through the cream-colored paper made writing on the other side bleed through.