The last hour had been the most stressful of my life. I’d been kidnapped, drugged, and questioned before making a daring daylight escape from my captors, only to come home and find my apartment trashed, my boyfriend missing, and my dog terrified. The horrifying blood stain on the living-room carpet was enough to set my nightmarish anxieties a-rolling. Wes was gone, and the bastards who had taken him hadn’t provided me with a whole lot of options to get him back. The warning note they had left me lay furled in my coat pocket. I clenched my hand around it then unrolled it to read it again as if I hadn’t already memorized the contents.
Dearest Miss Costello,
We regret to inform you that, due to your misbehavior and inability to cooperate, we were forced to take drastic measures. You will find that you have been relieved of your research, and your record at Waverly University has been expunged. Furthermore, we have taken Weston McAllen into custody. Our previous offer to fund your exit from Waverly has been redacted. You have twelve hours to leave the area. If, at midnight tonight, you are still in town, or you have made any attempt to contact the authorities, McAllen will die.
Our sincerest apologies,
BRS
Twelve hours. If it were a plane ride, it would feel like an eternity. Instead, the minutes were disappearing faster than a mouthful of cotton candy on a hot summer’s day. I checked my watch again. I was already down to eleven hours and forty-two minutes. There was only so long I could wait for my contact to show up. I’d give her another five minutes. If she didn’t show, I’d have to get started on the investigation into Wes’s ransom situation by myself.
A whimper met my ears, and Franklin looked up at me from where he sat against a cracked concrete parking curb. I knelt down to give him a warm-up rub. Even his thick oily fur wasn’t enough to keep the cold at bay. It was a stroke of luck that Franklin had remained unharmed in all the chaos, but now I didn’t really know what to do with him. Dogs weren’t conducive to rescue missions, and all I wanted was for Franklin to stay safe.
As I stood up again, I felt the grip of Wes’s Glock press against the small of my back. I’d found it in the bedroom of the apartment, which had been a disconcerting omen. Wes would never leave his gun behind. Now, it was tucked into the waistband of my jeans, hidden from view by my puffy winter coat but readily accessible. I wasn’t licensed, but Wes had taken me to the shooting range a few times. If worst came to worst, I was at least capable of getting off a defensive shot or two.
The echo of footsteps resonated from across the garage, and my head snapped up to attention. It was impossible to be stealthy in a parking garage, which was one of the reasons why I chose the location to meet up with my informant. No one would be able to sneak up on me. I tugged on Franklin’s leash, pulling him behind a concrete pillar, and listened as the footsteps halted.
“Nicole?” a voice called out.
I took a moment to listen for clues that she hadn’t come alone, but there was only the sound of her breath, slightly out of synch from her climb up the stairs of the parking garage. I stepped out from behind the pillar. “Here.”
Lauren Lockwood, secret double agent and daughter of my main problem, rushed to my side. Over her shoulder, she carried a nondescript black bookbag.
“Are you okay?” she asked, looking me up and down.
Franklin, who had met too many unfriendly people in one day, bared his teeth. I shushed him. “No, I’m not okay,” I told Lauren. “You said that no one had gone to my apartment, but when I get there, it looks like a category-five hurricane has blown through. Wes is missing—what happened to your face?”
The right side of Lauren’s face was decorated with a nasty purple bruise that spread from her temple inward, coloring one swollen eye. “I had to make your escape convincing, remember?” she said, wincing as I turned her chin toward the flickering overhead light for a better look. “They would’ve known it was me otherwise. By the way, the Raptors now think you got loose on your own and hit me over the head.”
“Does your father suspect anything?”
Orson Lockwood, Lauren’s father, was the current head of the society that had ruined my life. I reveled in ugly satisfaction that his daughter wanted to take him and the society down.
She shook her head. “Not of me. Donovan went missing though, right before I helped you out. My father has no idea what to make of that.”
“I do,” I growled. Donovan Davenport was the most assholish of the Black Raptor Society’s members. He was a hot-headed, power-hungry elitist disguised as an even-tempered, well-dressed Waverly graduate, and I would’ve bet anything that he had been the one to facilitate Wes’s vanishing act. I shoved the warning note at Lauren. “What is this garbage, Lauren?”
She read it quickly, her eyebrows furrowed together.
“You lied to me,” I said.
“I didn’t, I swear,” she promised. She held up the note. “This wasn’t sanctioned. My father would’ve never approved of something so rash and poorly planned. It’s Donovan’s handwriting. He went after Wes on his own.”
“Wes would’ve kicked Donovan’s ass and served it to him cold,” I snarled. “Besides, when I got there, I had to knock out Buchanan before he hurt Franklin, and someone else made a quick escape out of my bedroom window before I could catch him. Obviously, Donovan had backup.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Lauren, rolling her eyes. “There are a couple of BRS members who worship the ground he walks on, including Buchanan.”
“And who else?”
“Holden Hastings, the dean’s son. Ashton Brooks—he’s
