Chapter 25

twenty-five

. . .

River

T he soft sound of my door opening pulled me from sleep. I hadn't meant to doze off, but the stress of the conversation I'd had with Cross had done a number on me, and after that hot bath, I couldn't keep my eyes open. Not even with the promise of Bishop visiting in the night.

I blinked a few times, trying to clear the sleep from my eyes, but with the lights out, I couldn't make out more than a shadowy figure standing between me and the still-open door. Soft light filtered in from the hallway, but it wasn't enough to do more than illuminate Bishop's bulky shape.

"So you did show up. I was worried if I fell asleep you'd just leave me to rest." I sat up and flashed him a smile he probably couldn't see. "Are you going to stand there staring, or are you going to shut the damn door and get over here?"

The figure froze, as if my voice startled him. Then he prowled closer without a word. Excitement zinged through me at the prospect of finally getting Bishop inside me. But there was something else there too. A little shiver of not right skittering down the back of my neck.

"Sterling... say something," I whispered. I hated how needy the request made me feel, but after the day I'd had, I just needed the reassurance of his voice. To know that he was here with me and even if I couldn't touch him the way I wanted to, that this was still special.

He held a finger up to his lips, the gesture so unlike my Sterling I stiffened. This wasn't Bishop. Curling my legs up, I prepared to launch myself off the other side of the bed so I could put space between myself and the approaching stranger.

"Who the fuck are you?" I hissed.

He didn't answer, but he was blocking my exit.

Instinct screamed at me to find another.

I didn't waste any time. There had been too many fucked up things happening lately for me to risk a single second. I threw my body toward the other side of the bed and the window just beyond it. My only thought was to get out of this room and as far away from this asshole as I could.

Rough fingers gripped my ankle, drawing a shriek from me as the stranger reeled me across my rumpled bedding and back toward him.

"No! Bishop! Cross! Walker, oh God, please."

He pinned my arms to my sides with hands like steel bands. Breath hot and reeking of cigarettes, his lips brushed my ear as he rasped with menacing calm, "No one is coming for you, malyshka."

My stomach roiled, and if I'd had anything to eat, I'm sure I would have lost all of it then and there.

This was so much worse than I thought. Volkov had gotten tired of waiting and sent one of his men after me. The only way this man was leaving without me was if he was the one in a body bag. I couldn't let him take me.

Leaning forward as far as I could, I brought my head back hard and fast, praying I'd connect with his nose. Pain burst across the back of my head as I did just that, and the satisfying crunch of his cartilage disintegrating sent a thrill through me. He just had to let go. Even if only slightly.

Instead he squeezed me tighter, his voice dripping with venom. "This could have been easy. My orders were only to bring you in alive. They didn't say anything about the condition you were in when I dropped you off."

"Cross!" I screamed, but he shut me up with a tight fitting gag across my lips.

"You're much prettier with something stuffed in your mouth." He jerked my hands behind my back and bound my wrists with the precision of someone who'd done it a time or twenty. "Time to go."

Then he tossed me over his shoulder, flailing and screaming through the gag. All I could hope was that one of my men would stop him.

Walker

A heavy thump from above had me squinting up at the ceiling.

"What the hell you doing up there, ladybug? Having a midnight dance party?" I glanced over at the clock on the bedside table of my temporary room on the first floor only to remember there wasn't one. It was weird not being surrounded by my usual stuff, but the convenience of not having to deal with stairs made it a lot more palatable.

I snagged my phone, ignoring the multiple texts I'd sent her with no answer. I didn't know what I'd done to piss her off, but as soon as I saw her, I'd sure as shit do my best to fix it.

Me:

You awake? Come down for a snuggle.

There was no read receipt, let alone a response, and no additional scuffles for me to gauge whether she'd even heard her phone go off. Maybe it was a stupid overreaction, but something about the situation wasn't sitting right.

I'd been sleeping in the room below hers for a few nights now and had never heard a peep from her.

Why tonight? What was she doing? Redecorating? Seemed like something she'd do if she was stewing on a problem. Lord knows Cross had given her more than enough reason to blow off some steam.

A noise filtered through the quiet house. Maybe a shout? I couldn't quite tell what it was, but the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

Something was fucking wrong. Goddammit, something was wrong, and I couldn't do anything to help.

Knowing there was nothing I could do to personally check the situation out, I hit Cross's speed dial on my phone. He answered on the first ring.

"You okay?"

"Something's wrong. Check on River. I think I heard a shout."

He hung up without another word, and I knew he was on it.

But that uneasy feeling in my stomach only grew, so I searched for another number on my phone. This time the call was picked up on the second ring.

"Bishop."

"I think River's in trouble."

I heard the familiar sound of a clip being loaded before Bishop said, "I'll get her."

"Wait—" I started, but he'd already hung up. With a sigh, I looked down at my phone and finished what I'd been trying to say. "Someone should let Bear know."

I'd call him myself, but I didn't have his number. How could I have known I'd need to be a one-man phone tree?

I felt so fucking useless lying in my bed waiting for one or both of them to get back to me with news. My heart was racing, my breaths uneven. And then everything stopped as the distinctive crack of a gunshot rang out through the house.

Cross

River had me all twisted up inside, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I'd promised myself I'd give her the night, let her have space to process everything I'd told her. But fuck me, it was harder than I'd thought. I wanted nothing more than to make her smile again, have her look at me like she had when she took me into her, and maybe, just maybe, hear her say she loved me again.

But all that had to wait, and I had to hope she'd come around.

I glanced down at the phone clutched in my hand. I checked it every few minutes just to torture myself with the knowledge that she still hadn't responded to any of my messages. While I was thumbing through our message thread, my phone vibrated with an incoming call.

Walker. Shit. Did he need his meds? Did he try to take himself to the bathroom again? Was I going to find him on the floor with his ass hanging out like last time?

I hit answer, my thoughts a tornado of increasingly more involved scenarios.

"You okay?"

"Something's wrong. Check on River. I think I heard a shout."

Before I could reply, River's faint scream of my name had me bolting out of bed, my phone clattering to the floor, forgotten.

"River!" I shouted, catching myself before I could burst through my bedroom door.

My gun. I needed to grab my gun.

Each second felt like a lifetime as I spun around and snatched it from my bedside drawer, doing a quick check to make sure it was loaded before I resumed my frantic race to get to her. A crash came from the stairs, sounds of a struggle following, and that was all I needed to flick the safety off and train my gun in front of me.

Heart pounding, I raced toward the noise, catching sight of her open bedroom door at the end of the hall. I couldn't quite make sense of the shadow at the top of the stairs in what little light the hallway offered, so I took a few more running steps and slapped my hand against the light switch, activating the custom antler chandelier. The entire main floor and the central part of this hallway lit up.

River was bound and gagged, thrown across the shoulder of a beast of a man. He was dressed head to toe in black, the balaclava he wore hid his fucking face, but that didn't matter. He was dead either way. I didn't need to know who he was to put him in the ground.

"Put my wife down, right the fuck now!" I screamed, cocking the gun and waiting for a clear shot.

Dead blue eyes met mine. "Are you so sure the whore is yours?"

Of course this was one of Volkov's goons. Part of me had known that would be the case the second I spotted the intruder. No one else would be so bold.

Or stupid.

River struggled against his hold, muffled shouting coming from behind the gag. Her legs flailed, and my girl landed a kick right to the fucker's groin. He let out a pained grunt, but stayed standing.

If not for her body draped across his, I'd risk a shot. But one wrong move, and I'd take her out with him. I couldn't take that risk. Instead I was forced to watch as the Russian bastard pulled out a gun of his own, brandishing it in front of him as he made his way down the stairs and toward my front door.

Panic tightened my chest. I couldn't let him get out the door with her. If he did, I'd never see her again.

"Stay down, sparrow." Taking the stairs as fast as I could, I closed in on him, firing one shot when she lay flat against his back.

The bullet went wide, shattering a longhorn skull mounted on the wall.

Fuck.

That was it. My only chance. This asshole wouldn't let me get another shot off.

Neither of us counted on the burly motherfucker storming out of his guest room like an enraged bull. Bear roared and sprinted for the would-be kidnapper. I could practically see the gears in his head turning. River's protector was planning on taking them both down with a brutal tackle. She'd get a little banged up, but she'd live. The Russian wouldn't be as lucky. I was willing to bet the biker had killed more than one man with his bare hands. Even as I was cheering him on, wishing I could do it myself, the Russian proved me for a fool.

In one seamless move, he twisted, and a gunshot rang out before any of us registered where it had been aimed.

Bear went down with a groan, blood dribbling out of the smoking wound right between his eyes. The floor and white tufted suede bench behind him were splattered with gore and stained crimson. River couldn't see her friend, and I sent up a silent prayer her captor wouldn't turn around.

My prayer wasn't answered. He turned, giving her a full view of the remains of the man she considered a brother. She screamed and thrashed so hard he almost dropped her. Hope bloomed inside me that this was the moment she'd get free, but he yanked her down until she was still in his hold but covering his entire chest before he pistol-whipped her so hard she went limp.

"One more step and she dies, Cross." The menacing words were spat with such fierce determination I didn't dare call his bluff.

"I will find you, motherfucker. And when I do, you'll wish you were dead."

The Russian laughed. "Good luck with that."

Hopeless fury burned through me as he backed out of the front door, his gun trained on River's temple the whole way. I had no recourse. Not a goddamn thing I could do. This asshole had not only broken into my house, he was getting away with my wife. And I was fucking letting him.

"Fuck!" I roared, my body shaking with the need to mete out punishment. I'd never been so scared and so damn useless in my entire life.

"Cross!" Walker bellowed, frustration and terror lacing his voice as he hobbled into the foyer, one hand holding onto the wall for dear life. He was clearly in pain. While he'd just been put in a walking cast for his broken leg, the burns on the bottom of his feet weren't quite healed enough to take him standing on them. His skin was pale and dotted with sweat, and he was swaying where he stood, but had our roles been reversed, I would have done the same thing. "What the fuck is happening?"

God, how was I going to tell him I lost her?

I had to. He had to know because I was going to need all hands on deck to get her back.

Before I managed to come up with something, Bishop barreled down the hallway, heading toward us from the back of the house.

"Where is she?" he demanded, eyes sharp, but there was no masking the worry in his tone.

"Where the fuck have you been?" I snapped. "They took her right out from under us. Walked her out the damn door."

"You just let them take her?" Walker rasped.

"Who, Cross? Who took her?" The fear in Bishop's voice echoed my own.

"The Russians have her. He killed Bear, had a gun to her head. I couldn't... Jesus, I couldn't stop him."

Whatever force had kept Walker upright left him. He sagged to the floor with a strangled whimper. "We have to get her back. We have to find her. We have to. They'll hurt her."

"Don't worry. Volkov is using her as leverage. He won't do anything that threatens his ability to blackmail us."

"You think he's going to ask for a ransom?" Walker asked.

I started to nod, but Bishop stopped me dead. His voice was hollow and defeated. "If we're lucky, that's what he'll do. But his fight with you is deeper than money. You cut off his income stream and then sent his uncle to prison. Which makes this personal. He wants to hurt you as much as you hurt him."

How the fuck could my ranch hand know all this? Who was this guy? What did I actually know about Sterling Bishop?

"You shouldn't know that. Who the fuck are you?"

When his stormy eyes met mine, it was clear he knew what I was really asking. He didn't play dumb, didn't try and act like he hadn't been found out.

"Who I am doesn't matter. All you need to know is I'm the man who's going to bring your wife home. Alive."