Page 73 of Unexpectedly Wanted
There were several cops on the scene, but I had a feeling they wouldn’t tell me anything. The last thing I needed was to get wrapped up in waiting for them to question me. I had nothing for them, and sitting around wasn’t going to help me find Milo.
Austin was back before I knew it. And three minutes after that, I realized that we were nearly on top of Milo’s phone.
Hopeful, I looked around. But he wasn’t there. He wasn’t just standing off to the side, watching the chaos.
Which meant that his phone was here and he wasn’t.
And that also meant that I had no way of finding him.
Austin bent over and picked something up next to a drain grate. He held it up, but there was no look of victory on his face. He knew it too. Finding the phone meant something bad had happened.
“Let’s get up to the office. I’ll call some people in,” Austin said.
“I have to move my car,” I said numbly. I grabbed Milo’s phone out of his hand and made my way back to my car. With shaky hands, I drove around the block to the parking garage at the back of the building. It only reminded me of how Milo hated this place. I knew it was a fear, but I cursed the fact that he hadn’t parked here. It would have been safer. We had cameras and security and everything to keep him safe.
None of that mattered now, though.
After I parked, I snatched up his phone.
I nearly snorted when I saw he didn’t have any kind of lock security on it. But I knew that meant that he didn’t have anything important on there. It might have been a smartphone, but to him, it was just a way for people to get up with him if they needed to. It would be useless in telling me anything.
No, everything I needed was more than likely on his computer.
Whatever he’d been working on was going to be the thing to help me out.
My stomach dropped as I saw what was last on the screen.
He’d typed out a text to me that never got sent.
It said he was on his way home.
But he never made it there.
Just like this message never made it to me.
26
Milo
“Move,” a deep voice called out right as I was yanked sideways. I stumbled. And fell. My knees hit the pavement, taking the brunt of the impact, since my hands were tied behind my back. I couldn’t see shit because there was still a bag over my head. This felt like something out of a movie, and I had never understood the true terror of those scenes until this moment. I knew I’d never look at them the same.
Oh, I was scared.
Terrified.
I’d gone most of my life with only scrapes and cuts that required a little ointment and a small bandage. I’d never been majorly hurt. Even my psychological scars were small. Most of them had built up over time, and I hadn’t really noticed the damage they caused.
But I had a feeling that whatever lay ahead for me would not be something that would be taken care of by ointment and a bandage. Not something my coping skills of dealing with being ignored most of my life could help me with.
I had been stupid to think that nothing like this could ever happen to me. You would think that given my work, I might have at least been a little prepared for something like this.
That was not the case.
I was sweating and also somehow freezing cold.
A big, meaty hand roughly wrapped around my arm. My shoulder screamed in protest as I was yanked to my feet again.
“Might be easier to carry him,” another voice, this one high-pitched and nasally, said with a snicker.
