The machine hooked up to read my vitals screams at us as my blood pressure skyrockets. I don’t care who the hell these guys are with their fancy bureaucratic titles. It seems they’re just as efficient and effective as everyone else who works for the damn government. It’s a good thing I have an IV needle buried in each arm, or I’d probably be getting arrested for assaulting one of these fuckers.
A nurse rushes into the room as a result of the monitors blowing up, probably thinking I’m suffering from a massive heart attack. But as soon as she realizes the three of us men are involved in a heated standoff—or sit-off, in my case—she pulls up short of the bed, eyeing each of us warily.
“Gentlemen? Is there a problem?” she addresses Doherty and Diomassi with a no-nonsense tone. Apparently, she’s not impressed with their badges and guns either. “If you’re going to upset the patient to the point he’s bordering on a code blue, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Marshal Doherty offers her a complacent smile. “No need to worry, Kristin,” he replies, his gaze lingering a few seconds longer than necessary over the nametag pinned above her left breast. “Mr. Decker just got a little upset, but everything is fine here. We assure you it won’t happen again.”
She turns and eyes me, clucking her tongue. “You press that call button if you need me, okay? I have no problem asking them to leave.”
I don’t hesitate. “I want them to leave. And I want to leave, too. Please have the doctor prepare my discharge papers.”
Her face morphs from concern to surprise to suspicion in less than ten seconds. “But, sir, Dr. Rodner recommended that you stay until we do another MRI tomorrow.”
“I’m well aware of the recommendation, Nurse Kristin, but I’m ready to go home,” I respond with forced politeness. “So either you can discharge me, or I can get up and walk out. Either way, I’m leaving this hospital today.”
Five hours later, I’m sitting in a first-class window seat on a flight back to L.A., washing a pain pill down with a vodka cranberry, minus the vodka. My entire body throbs in agony. My face looks like I got in the ring with Floyd Mayweather, and feels about the same. But it’s the gaping hole in my chest slowly filling with helplessness and despair that hurts the worst. My body and face will heal in time, but I’m not sure I can survive losing Blake forever.
“What if we don’t find her?” I ask as I lean my head back on the leather seat and close my eyes.
“We will find her,” Marshal Doherty, who’s in the seat to my right, grunts. “People don’t just vanish off the face of the earth. She’s somewhere, and whoever has her is just waiting for the right time to do whatever they’re planning.”
I open my eyes and stare at the rounded ceiling of the plane, ignoring the sharp pain that shoots through my mid-section with each breath I take. After the nurse left my hospital room earlier, Doherty, Diomassi, and I decided to call a truce after they ensured they’d keep me in the loop about what’s going on with the investigation, as long as I promised not to do any more renegade missions. I’m aware they were lying to get me to agree, and that they’ll probably feed me as little of the information as possible to make me think they’re holding up their end of the bargain, but so was I.
My only problem now is that Diomassi is insisting I have an agent assigned to me for protection purposes. He claims after my stunt at Capo’s I put a target on my back for not only the Ricci clan, but also for whoever really has her. And though I understand his concern, I think the point of the detail is more to make sure to keep tabs on me than anything else. Whenever I figure out what my next move is, I’ll have to figure out a way to be extremely discreet. I already have plans to get an untraceable phone first thing tomorrow. There’s no way the feds won’t be tracking my current phone for calls and texts, making sure they know what I know.
“Do you have any leads at all? What’s the next step?” I want to wrap my hands around Doherty’s neck and shake him until everything he knows falls out of him.
“We don’t have a lot, to be quite honest,” he replies, his voice low. “The thing I keep coming back to is the text that came from your phone, arranging the meeting. Whoever sent that message had to know your role in her life and had to manage to get your phone away from you. It can’t be a coincidence that the day your phone just happened to disappear, this whole thing went down. It was premeditated. And either someone close to the situation is the mastermind, or was used as a middleman.”
Emerson. I still think she’s involved. I need to figure out a way to get her to talk.
Clearing his throat, he squirms uncomfortably in his seat. “Are you sure you don’t remember when you had your phone last? What you could’ve done with it?”
Blood roars in my ears at the accusation in his tone. “Are you fucking serious?” I hiss incredulously. “You think I’m involved? That I’ve been making this all up? That I would nearly get myself killed by those guys if I had something to do with this?”
He holds his hands up in surrender as he scoots as far away from me as the armrest will allow. “No! No! Not anymore, at least. Before you showed up in Chicago, I have to admit you were moving up the board of potential suspects, but after your rash and reckless near-suicide mission, you’ve been removed.”
Blowing a huge sigh of relief through my pursed lips, it takes me a few seconds to calm down before I can speak. I was about to lose my fucking shit on this guy. Thinking I was somehow involved with Blake’s abduction . . . I want to beat his ass just for entertaining such a preposterous idea.
“Madden, we have to carefully explore every possible option . . . including you,” he continues, relaxing his posture once he sees I’m cooling down. “I understand your life has been completely flipped upside down in the last week. The woman you’re in love with goes missing. You find out she’s a member of the WITSEC, and the life she lived before you met her was something you only thought happened in twisted, psychological thrillers. And to top it all off, someone used your phone to set the whole thing in motion. I know you feel like you’re spinning out of control, but you can’t make impulsive, thoughtless decisions. It hinders our efforts, puts you in danger, and possibly jeopardizes Blake’s life.”
I nod my understanding. Before I made the trip to Chicago, I hadn’t really thought about any other consequences besides me getting hurt, and I was willing to risk myself if I could save her. The overwhelming need to do something, anything, controlled my actions, and though the trip was successful in finding out Vincent Ricci isn’t who kidnapped Blake and clearing my name from the list of suspects, I’m now afraid I’ve made things worse for her.
“I told you I wouldn’t make any more careless decisions,” I grit through my teeth, more upset with myself than anything.
“Good.” He tips his chin approvingly. “I expect, with the excitement we just left in Chicago, for whoever has her to lie low for a bit, but if you are contacted in any way, or if anything seems off to you, call me immediately. We’ll have to act quickly.”
Mumbling my concurrence, I’ve already started to tune him out and focus on what all I need to do when I get home. In my head, all signs still point directly to Emerson, and I’ve got a plan.
RAZE’S PHONE CHIRPS WITH AN incoming text, and I jump nearly ten feet in the air, praying it’s an update on Madden. Yesterday evening we learned about the FBI’s raid on Vincent’s car shop and Madden’s subsequent hospitalization. It was now over twenty-four hours after everything had gone down in Chicago and since then, there’s been minimal contact with whoever it is feeding him the information.