Colt swept the light around the bedroom, looking for anything that might help him figure out where they’d taken Angie. He didn’t see anything so he retraced his steps to the kitchen, checking the rooms as he went.
They’d come in through the dining room window at the back of the house. One pane was neatly cut out, the sash raised. The crappy alarm system the homeowner installed only monitored doors for breaches, not windows.
Colt returned to the kitchen. Angie’s handbag was gone. That meant they’d taken her phone and ID along with her computer. It was the first bit of hopeful news he’d had. If her phone was with her, BDI could track it. He wished her kidnappers had taken his computer because it had a tracking device inside, but they hadn’t. It was tucked into the bookshelf in the living room where he kept it when not in use.
Fuck.
Headlights swept across the wall. Ty and Jared. Colt opened the front door and they rushed inside.
“What happened?” Jared asked, looking pissed and worried at the same time.
“The lights went out, as you can see. The power was out up and down the block. Looked legit. I checked the house for a breach anyway, but didn’t see anything.”
“Looks like they took out a transformer. The power’s out for a few blocks. Didn’t reach as far as Jace and Maddy’s. It goes in the other direction.”
Colt rubbed the side of his face gingerly. He was scraped up and swelling, but he’d live. He’d decided he must have broken his fall on one of the dining room chairs, which was on its side, before he landed. Still hurt like a motherfucker though.
“I’m going to need to check you for concussion,” Jared said, taking in the state of his face. “But finish telling us what happened.”
“After I checked the house, I returned to the bedroom. They must have entered when I was there. Angie couldn’t see to find her clothes, so I went back to the kitchen to get a lantern so I could set it on the bedside table. Somebody hit me when I walked in. They came through the dining room. Used a glass cutter to remove a pane, then slid the window up and climbed in. I didn’t hear it happen, probably because of the chirping of the alarm battery and talking to Angie.”
Disgust ate at him. He should have been paying better attention. He shouldn’t have relaxed his guard for even a moment, no matter how legit the outage seemed. He shouldn’t have left her side. He could have held his fucking phone so she could dress, then he would have had his gun and been in a defensive position when the attackers were forced to come after her.
“I left my gun in the bedroom. They took it. When I came to, I was on the floor with my arms zip-tied behind my back. Angie was gone and so was the gun. They took her bag. Her phone’s in it, so we need to start tracing it.”
Hot anger and cold fear rolled together in his belly as he thought of Angie. She was probably scared out of her mind, and there was nothing he could do about it. Yet.
“Agreed,” Jared said. “Let me have a look at you, then we’ll check the house, see if we find something you missed while you call Ian.”
Colt nodded, holding onto his calm by a thread. “I didn’t see anything, but I welcome you looking. I’ve got no pride in this, man. I want Angie back safe. I fucked up.”
It nearly broke him to say those words. He had fucked up.
Ty put a hand on his shoulder. “Doesn’t sound like it to me. You cleared the house. The outage didn’t appear targeted. If anybody fucked up, we all did. We should have been watching. We were lulled because there’d been no movement from the other side.”
Colt shook his head. “This is my fault.”
Jared clapped him on the other shoulder. “Not buying it, dude. Now sit down and let me check you out. We’ve got work to do.”
Two hours had passed. Colt paced inside the war room at BDI. He had ice on his face and on the bump on his head, but Jared had pronounced him concussion free.
“It’s a miracle you’re so hard-headed,” Jared had said back at his place when he’d finished Colt’s examination.
Hard-headed he might be, but he was about to lose his mind. Dax Freed tapped on his computer and chased whatever leads he could find but so far he’d found nothing. Angie’s phone was either dead or somebody’d been smart enough to block the signal. They couldn’t get a position on it yet.
Ian had been on the phone, yelling in Russian at one point, cajoling in Italian at another. Slamming the receiver down and tugging his hair while cursing in Chinese. Or at least Colt thought it was cursing.
Jace walked back into the room from his trip down to the fourth floor where Maddy presumably fumed in one of the conference rooms. Colt met his gaze.
“Can you please go see her?” Jace asked. “She wants to talk to you.”
Colt’s gut twisted. He’d avoided Maddy so far because he didn’t want to see the accusation in her eyes. This time he nodded and strode from the room.
If anything happened, he knew they’d call him back. He exited the secure area and went down the stairs to the fourth floor. Maddy paced the hallway, spinning at the end and marching back toward Colt. When she saw him, she stopped. Her eyes were red-rimmed and his heart damn near broke.
“Oh Colt,” she said, rushing up to him and throwing her arms around him. He stood in her embrace, stunned. Then he
