Page 8 of Sackett
After what seemed like way too long, she pulled the phone away from her ear without ever saying a word and stared at the screen.Sackett couldn’t see what she was looking at.
“What’s wrong, babe?What did the judge say?”Savage asked.
“I don’t know.That wasn’t Selena.”Her voice shook, even as it had gone soft.Selena must be the attorney’s first name.He hadn’t caught it before but thought it fit.
Sackett scowled.Who had the attorney’s phone and would call Donna?She hadn’t struck him as the kind of person who would let anyone borrow her phone, not to make a call that was obviously distressing.That meant something had gone wrong.A weight settled in his stomach as he waited to hear the rest.
“Who was it?”Savage’s voice took on a hard edge he almost never used when talking to Donna.
“Noah.”The single word was barely more than a whisper.
Noah was Donna’s ex, the one who claimed they were married, and the reason Selena had been meeting with the judge.This could not be good.
“Son of a bitch.”Savage closed his eyes and took several deep, slow breaths.“I take it he has the attorney?”
The weight in Sackett’s stomach turned to anger.He thought they’d scared the little shithead off when he’d tried to take Donna from the ranch.Apparently, they’d been wrong.
Donna nodded.She swallowed several times then picked up the bottle of water and took a sip.
“Her for me.Front gate of the compound.We have twenty-four hours.”She spoke in short sentences, taking a breath between each as if she’d just run a mile and was struggling to breathe.
“What happens after twenty-four hours?”Sackett asked, the anger turning to a ball of dread, and worse.He wanted to yell at Donna to spit it out, but he held back because he knew it would do no good and you don’t beat up on the already abused, and that’s what Donna had been when Savage had found her.Abused by the same fuckwad who’d taken Selena.Now that he knew her first name, it was the only way he could think of her.
“He said they’ll start cutting pieces off to show us they’re serious.Oh,” Donna said this as if an afterthought or she just remembered it, “and if we contact the police, they’ll kill her, and her body will never be found.”She rolled her lips inward and bit them.
Sackett suspected it was an attempt to keep from crying.He’d barely met the woman, and he wanted to rip this asshole’s head off personally.Why was he reacting so strongly?
“What are we going to do?”He looked at Savage, knowing they would do something.It wouldn’t be turning Donna over to them.That he was sure of.The rage he saw in Savage’s eyes did nothing to calm the burning in his own gut.
“Call Tuck and the others.We need to figure this out now.”Savage turned his attention to Donna and did his best to reassure her while Sackett started making calls.
8
Herstomachchurningwasthe first thing Selina became aware of.She kept her eyes closed, trying to remember where she was.Something jostled her, then there was a series of thumps under her left ear.That’s when she realized she was moving and lying down.
She might have fallen asleep in a car, but not lying on her side like this.How had she gotten here?She tried to keep her body as relaxed as she could because she had no idea if anyone was watching her, but at the same time searched her memory.What was the last thing she remembered?Her head hurt as she tried to recall what she’d been doing today, but she pushed past it.She had to know.
She’d met with Judge Harris.They had discussed Ms.McKinney’s situation.What had he told her?She couldn’t remember that right away, but she did remember leaving his office and the courthouse.The walk from the courthouse to her rental was clear, but as hard as she tried, she couldn’t recall getting into her car, nor driving back to Boulder.
Struggling to push through the pain throbbing in the back of her head she tried to recall step by step.She’d left the courthouse and walked across the street to the parking garage.She remembered considering stopping at the Thai place for something to eat, but deciding to find something in Boulder when she realized they weren’t yet open.She’d gone to the elevator and stepped inside.The door had almost closed before someone hurried up and triggered the door to open.She tried to remember who had joined her on the elevator, but for some reason the face kept coming up blank.
What had happened after the elevator door closed?She couldn’t recall.She could see the elevator doors closing, she saw the hand reach out and hesitate when he noticed the button for the top floor had already been pushed, but then nothing.She didn’t remember being hit, though that might explain why her head hurt so badly.
Slowly, she became aware of voices, muffled, as if through a wall or something else.The more she pushed, the more aware of her surroundings she became.Her body ached, not just her head, though that was worse than the rest of her.she lay on her side, but curled in a tighter ball than she normally would lie.She preferred to stretch out a little more.The roughness against her cheek was odd, but it was the chemical scent, with odd hints of rubber now and then that made it really strange.
She still hadn’t figured out where she was or what had happened when darkness swam up and engulfed her once more.
9
Worrysatlikealead weight in Sackett’s stomach.He was acutely aware that every moment that ticked by was one moment closer to when Donna’s ex and the crazy group she’d once been mixed up with got closer to their deadline.Whether or not they would actually cut pieces off Selena he didn’t know.He wasn’t willing to find out.
Forty-five minutes after he’d started making calls, Savage, Sackett, and the club leadership, along with Krissi and Gizmo, sat in the locked back room of the clubhouse.There hadn’t been time for more to get to the clubhouse, but unless they were needed for something specific, they weren’t need anyway.They’d managed to distract Donna by asking her to keep an eye on Amber, Ruger and Krissi’s baby.She was somewhere around six months old, small enough that Sackett didn’t want to have to pick her up.She looked too small and fragile.He didn’t want to accidentally hurt her.
“Driving up will take too long.It’s more than half the time limit, leaving us little time for recon and planning.We’re going to need to fly at least one person up,” Tuck said, scanning the table.“I’m torn.I don’t want to send Donna.I don’t want her that close to this group of nut jobs.I also think Savage should stay with Donna if we can manage it, but we need at least one person who this attorney has met.Someone she’ll recognize, so she doesn’t fight the rescue.”
“I’ve met her,” Sackett spoke up.He didn’t say he wanted to be there.He wanted to beat the ever-loving shit out of this son of a bitch.He didn’t have to.
Tuck watched him long enough he fought the urge to shift in his seat, but he managed to meet the president’s gaze without flinching, or hopefully, revealing what he was thinking.
