Page 66 of Zain

She carefully opened her eyes. A dim room filled her vision. Even the low light streaming in from a high window made her temples scream. She closed her eyes and breathed through her nose to steady the swell of anxiety and the roiling in her stomach.

Damp, musty air touched her nostrils. She shivered and squirmed. Her hands. She couldn’t move them. A rough material held them together.

Memories hit her like the bruising balls of a paintball gun. Flames. Zain’s mom’s house. A firefighter. Pain and darkness. Being shoved into a vehicle and—

Oh god.

The silvery scar through the man’s eyebrow.

She whimpered and forced her eyes open again. Garbage and stains covered a cement floor. She lay on a small, thin, scratchy blanket. At one point, the concrete walls had been painted blue, but now they were chipped and peeling. Her eyes landed on a door across the room.

Instinct told her it’d be locked.

Determination told her to hell with that.

She pushed herself up to her elbows. The room spun. The nausea intensified and she retched. Her arms and legs shook as she vomited. Water and bile splattered the floor feet away. She gasped and wiped her mouth with her shaking, bound hands.

Inhaling rapid breaths through her nose, she waited for her heart rate to slow. Some of the nausea settled, and the room gradually steadied.

She refocused on the door. Whoever had taken her hadn’t chained her up, nor were her feet tied. She turned her wrists over as she examined the rope around her arms. He’d done a number on the knot, but the binding wasn’t overly tight. Just enough to be irritating.

She got to her feet, and her legs shook like wet noodles. She forced her feet to cooperate as she took one step after another to the door. Her pulse thundered in her ears. The wheezing of her breath was almost as loud as thunder on a quiet night.

If he was close, he’d hear her.

She didn’t give a damn. She closed her fingers around the cool doorknob and turned. It didn’t budge. A sob escaped Dana’s chest. She seized the handle harder and shook, twisting with all her strength.

Nothing.

She jammed her shoulder into the wood. It shook but didn’t give way. She slammed herbody against it again, to no avail.

Footsteps thudded above her. She tilted her head back and watched as dust fluttered down with every stomp of her captor’s feet.

Terror clamped around her bones as she backed away from the door.

***

Meet you allat the office in 10.

The message in the group chat had come from Toth. As much as the guys’ willingness to come together touched some deep part in him, something else took hold of Zain’s hope. Something sinister.

The assassin didn’t want Dana alive. He just hadn’t been able to kill her right there with firefighters and cops so close. Zain didn’t want to acknowledge that she could already be dead. Because if he did, he’d break in two.

Taschen elbowed him. “That the neighbor? Maybe he’s got footage of Dana.”

Next door, a man was getting out of his car. He paused to stare at Zain’s mom’s house. Zain quickly walked toward him.

“S’cuse me. Do you have security cameras? Someone went missing just a little while ago.”

The man jerked back his head. “Oh my. Yes, yes, I do.” He moved the bag he was holding to his other hand and pulled his cell phone out of a pocket. His eyes held the fatigue of someone who’d just worked all night. “Let me pull up my app.”

Zain watched as the guy tapped on his screen, and a minute later, he handed over his phone. “Looks like there was a lot of commotion this morning. The sensors turn on with any activity. Go ahead and see if you can find anything useful.”

Zain swept through a handful of videos of firefighters and people milling about on the street. There was nothing that indicated who might have started the fire.

In a more recent video, there were a lot fewer people. For several seconds, there was just grass and sidewalk on the screen.

Taschen huddled in next to him.

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