Chapter 10

"Eat your sausage, Antonio," Tony's mother insisted.

"I'm not hungry, Mama." He pushed away the plate that had been there since breakfast that morning. Though he'd stayed up most of the night guarding his family, Tony still seethed with restless energy. If only he could have joined Monty and Ben, he wouldn't be feeling so useless.

With his mother puttering around him, he watched Ruby's interview with Katz again on the Nikon's previewer, unable to take his eyes off the man.

Katz looked so clean cut, so upstanding. It was bad enough the man had shot a little boy dead, just because he'd gotten bad intel and the crying kid had gotten on his nerves. To have abducted Ruby—Tony's clever, glittering Ruby—made Tony want to wrap his hands around the man's neck and squeeze the life out of him. That was what Katz was doing to him. Tony couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't eat a thing.

Swallowing a bitter taste in his mouth, he wished someone had tried to hit his house last night. Not that he'd wanted Corinna or his mother in harm's way, but he'd been stewing for a fight. Still was.

"Are you going to kill him?"

The fearful question brought Tony's attention back to the present. He'd forgotten Corinna was sitting in the chair next to his, keeping him company. The dark smudges under her eyes and the pallor of her olive complexion told him she had hardly slept a wink herself. "No." He frowned at her. "'Course not. I'm not a murderer. He's the murderer."

Corinna nodded, her eyes watering. "But you wish you could kill him."

Tony examined the words with a pinch of shame. Wanting to kill someone was just as bad as actually killing them. What he ought to do was pray for Katz to come to his senses.

The tear rolling down Corinna's face tore him from his introspection.

"Hey." He lifted a hand to her soft cheek and wiped it away. "This isn't your fault, Corinna. No matter what happens, you remember that. Ruby does what Ruby does. You didn't force her into anything, did you?"

She shook her head, unable to answer him.

Just then his cell phone buzzed, and he snatched it off the table, his pulse leaping to see his CO calling him. "Whatchu got, sir?"

"Nothing yet."

The dampening news kept his expectations low.

"Just wanted you to know, I'm watching Katz's home, and Harm has a bead on his office. If anything happens on our end, I'll update you."

"Thank you, sir." Monty had to be hearing the agony in Tony's voice.

"Anything to report there?" His own voice was full of sympathy.

"No, sir."

A short pause. "I'll be in touch."

As Monty hung up, Tony lowered the phone to the table. A great weight sat on his chest. "I'm gonna go work out in the basement." His old punching bag still hung from a beam down there. He pushed his chair back. Mama and Corinna regarded him with identical expressions of worry as he headed for the basement stairs. "Call down for me if you need me."

He was going to beat the punching bag to a pulp. And then he was going to pray that Katz repented of his evil ways. He could only hope his prayers heaped burning coals onto Katz's blond head.

* * *

Ruby roused to the feeling of being moved. There were hands under her arms and a second set of hands around both ankles. Another person had joined them! She tried prying her heavy eyelids open and managed a quick glimpse of a well-dressed young man walking backwards as he carried her lower extremities toward a snow-dusted vehicle.

"Since when did you drive a Range Rover?" he asked.

Recognition shot through Ruby. Cullum's voice! Why was Katz's assistant getting involved?

"Had it for a while now." Her captor tried passing her car off as his.

Liar.She was dying to call him out, only she couldn't speak, couldn't move. God knew how her tiny baby was responding to the drugs in her body.

What could Cullum's arrival at the hunting lodge signify? Ruby racked her foggy brain. He didn't strike her as a killer.

He transferred her ankles to the crook of one arm as he opened his car door. Through her lashes, she saw him toss her purse onto the floor mat before lowering her feet next to it. Wow, so she still had her purse. Dead women didn't need purses.

Her captor grumbled as he slung her into the seat itself. "Be easier to put her in the trunk."

"Are you nuts? She'd freeze to death. I told you, the boss wants her unharmed for now. Just look at her! And what's with her wrist? Did you do that?"

"No. She threw herself out the window. She's crazy, this one. And she needs more sedative than most."

Cullum said nothing to the kidnapper's warning. The door closed, leaving Ruby in the much warmer car by herself. Her head lolled forward, causing her hair to fall around her face, hiding her fluttering lashes from both men.

"I want my money." The kidnapper's Eastern European accent was distinct. "Your boss hasn't paid me yet."

"I don't have anything to do with that, Yordan. Sorry. I'm–I'm sure he'll transfer the sum soon." Sounding afraid of her captor, Cullum rounded the car to the driver's side.

Yordan. Ruby filed away the name she'd overheard.

The driver's door opened and Collum got in quickly, his jerky movements communicating fear. The engine roared to life, and he executed a swift U-turn before pulling away. As they started downhill, Ruby's upper body tipped toward the dashboard. Her face was going to hit it.

"Whoa there." Cullum threw out an arm, catching her forward momentum in the nick of time. Whispering anxiously to himself, he slowed the car to a stop, then reached across her to draw the seat belt over her and snap it into place.

Her body still tipped forward.

With a grunt, he reached across her lap and hit a button that lowered the back of her seat until she was reclining.

"There." Breathing heavily, Cullum put the car into Drive again and started forward.

Ruby slit her eyes, taking stock of her situation. Unless Cullum looked back at her, he wouldn't notice her return to consciousness. They were wending their way down a slick, steep road. Given Cullum's white-knuckled grip on the wheel and the feel of the tires slipping on ice, the going was treacherous.

The digital clock read 2:03 P.M. Both her wrists and her ankles were bound again. She knew from her previous returns to consciousness that it would take another hour before she could move. But her fear was fading. Cullum was a far less dangerous adversary than the man who'd kidnapped her. She could probably persuade him to remove the zip ties. Confidence thrummed in Ruby.

Then, at just the right time, she was going to make a run for it.

* * *

Tony regarded his bloodshot eyes in the bathroom mirror. Having prayed as sincerely as he could for Katz to change his ways, his desire for vengeance had surprisingly subsided. But perhaps that was because he'd punched his old punching bag until his knuckles bled. Now he just felt gutted.

His thoughts kept drifting back to the day he'd first met Ruby. He'd been slogging through traffic, headed back to the Beach after dropping off some equipment at the Naval Base in Norfolk. Even before the rusty Oldsmobile behind him tapped his bumper, he'd known the driver wasn't paying attention. With his Italian temper at a simmer, he directed the young woman with a pointing finger into the breakdown lane, intending to scold her before getting her insurance information. One good look at the flame-haired beauty dressed in a mesh sweater and ripped jeans, and he could tell she didn't have insurance. He told her he would settle for a date—which had ultimately taken every ounce of determination he had to actually get, as Ruby hadn't wanted anything to do with a younger man.

But Tony kept showing up and, little by little, she'd become his best friend first, then his girlfriend, then his beautiful wife.

His nostalgic smile in the mirror vanished as he remembered she was gone. He tried to blink back the grief that welled in his eyes like a geyser, but then his chest convulsed. He sank onto the edge of the bathtub with his face in his hands and silently sobbed.

God, please keep her safe. Bring Ruby back to me, alive. I don't want to live without her.