Page 75 of Fighting for Lucy

Only when his gaze fell on the table he found it empty.

Lucy was gone.

A whistle was the only announcement he got before black-clad figures entered the courtyard.

Without that whistle, he would have opened fire without thought, eliminating whoever it was.

But the whistle told him it was someone on his side.

Still, he kept the weapon in his hands, aimed at the dozen men who were cautiously entering the courtyard, their own weapons trained at the sea of bodies on the ground, no doubt searching for anyone who moved.

The only one left moving was him.

“Zander, you hurt, man?” a man asked, approaching him slowly. Despite the adrenalin pumping through his system along with fear for Lucy, he was able to identify the man as Rex, a SEAL on the team who had been working with Prey to bring down Raul Castillo.

Giving a single nod, not sure whether his answer was truthful or not, he scanned the mass of bodies, still searching for the only one he cared about. But there was not a hint of the lavender sweater Lucy had been wearing when they’d been taken.

“Lucy,” he said, seemingly unable to get more words out.

“Do you know where she is?” Phantom asked, coming up beside Rex.

“She was here. When the shooting started, she was here. There, on the table,” he said, pointing to the table that was stained with her blood. Where was she? How had she gotten free and where had she gone? Was she hiding somewhere, scared by all the shooting?

“Start looking for Lucy,” Rocco called out to the men, who immediately began walking amongst the bodies searching for the only woman.

“Lucy?” Zander called out, too wired to do anything about the desperation in his tone, and even if he could, he didn't care that these men knew how important she was to him. In fact, he wanted to stand on the mountaintops and scream it to the whole world. To let everybody know that Lucy was his, that someone like her would want to be with a man like him. “Baby, answer me! Are you hurt? Lucy, you can come out now, it’s okay, please, baby girl, answer me.”

This was his payback for being unable to answer her that first night, it had to be.

The terror pulsing inside him was karma, reminding him that at every turn he managed to fail the woman who held his heart in her hands.

“We’ll find her,” Gumby said, kneeling at his feet and using bolt cutters to snap the chain that bound him.

As soon as he was free, Zander began to help the others search through the bodies looking for Lucy.

With every one he turned over, he was painfully aware that Lucy could have been hit, that she could be bleeding out at this very second, or already dead.

No.

He couldn’t allow himself to think that.

Not without proof.

Lucy had to be alive. She had to be. Because how was he supposed to go on without her?

“Where is she? Lucy, where are you? Why isn’t she answering?” he demanded of no one in particular, all too aware of how close he was to falling apart. A few more minutes with no response from Lucy and he was going to lose it. Already he was wavering on the edge, a single misstep, and he’d be in full-on meltdown mode. Completely useless to anyone, including the woman who needed him.

“She has to be here,” Bubba reminded him.

That was cold comfort given the SEAL team and the men from Prey appeared to be the only living people inside the courtyard.

If Lucy was in there then she was dead.

It was already too late.

He’d already lost her.

Something ripped open inside him, an invisible wound, one that tore through his heart leaving a shattered mess inside his chest. Lucy was gone and that meant she’d taken his heart along with her because it belonged to her.

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