Page 16 of Carter
I tightened my jacket and fished for my keys. Carter had texted earlier—Safe detail. Counting days.I’d smiled like an idiot at my phone, already imagining him storming into my apartment once his assignment ended.
The thought carried me right up until I heard footsteps behind me.
Fast. Purposeful.
I turned, heartbeat spiking. A man in scrubs—too clean, too new—was closing the distance. His eyes weren’t tired like staff. They were flat. Wrong.
“Can I help you?” I asked, voice sharper than I felt.
He didn’t answer. Another shadow peeled out from between two cars. Then another.
Shit.
I spun, sprinting toward the hospital doors, but a vanscreeched across the exit, cutting me off. A hand clamped around my arm, rough and unyielding. I slammed my elbow back into ribs, heard a grunt, but the second one was already there, a rag pressed over my face.
Chemical sting. Sweet, choking.
I kicked, thrashed, tried to scream, but the sound stuck halfway. The world blurred—lights bleeding into shadows, the ocean roar turning distant.
“Easy,” one of them muttered, as if I were cargo, not a person. “The boss wants her alive.”
Alive.
The word spun in my head as the darkness closed in. Carter’s name was the last thing I thought before the world dropped out.
18
Carter
The call came in at 0200.
I was sitting in a sterile apartment, guarding a rich kid with too much money and not enough sense, when Faron’s voice hit my earpiece like a hammer.
“Robinson. It’s Harper.”
My blood iced. “What about Harper?”
“She’s gone. Abduction in the hospital parking lot. Witnesses confirm three men, white van, no plates.” A pause. “They knew exactly who they were after.”
The walls closed in. My chair scraped back so hard it hit the plaster. “When?”
“Two hours ago.”
Two hours. That was a lifetime. Too long.
The kid I was assigned to guard said something smart from the couch, but I didn’t hear him. My pulse was a drumbeat in my ears, my vision narrowing to red. Harper. Taken. Because of me. Because I let my guard drop for one damn second.
“I’m coming in,” I growled.
“Robinson—”
“I don’t care about this assignment. You hear me?I don’t care.You can put me on every punishment detail for the next year, but I’m not sitting here while she’s out there.”
Silence on the line. Then Faron’s voice, grim and sure. “Good. Because I wasn’t planning to stop you.”
I was already moving—gear in my bag, Glock holstered, knife strapped. My hands shook, but not from fear. From fury. Every scar on my body burned like kindling.
They’d taken her.
