Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 50710 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 254(@200wpm)___ 203(@250wpm)___ 169(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 50710 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 254(@200wpm)___ 203(@250wpm)___ 169(@300wpm)
“Yes, I do,” I said simply. “You’re not the only one who misses her, Sage.”
I felt Sage’s eyes on me, but didn’t look at him. I’d be too tempted to pull the car over again and drag him into my arms – anything to finally make him understand that I wasn’t angry or upset with him.
I’d just have to show him.
Besides, I had ulterior motives. “We’ll just pop in and say hi,” I said calmly. “And introduce ourselves to Dylan.”
I glanced at Sage and saw that he was staring out the window again.
But he was smiling.
He was finally fucking smiling.
Thank God.
“Daisy, honey, can you open up, please?” Sage called through the door. “We know you’re in there. We just want to make sure you’re okay.”
He knocked once more, and waited, but when nothing happened, he threw up his hands. When he looked at me I asked, “Can you use your computer to track her phone?”
Sage nodded.
I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of invading Daisy’s privacy by tapping into her phone, but after several hours of failing to get a hold of her and now with her not answering her door, my instinct that something was off was kicking up. Daisy’s role in Ronan’s group was to be available at the drop of a hat. If she was going to be offline for any length of time, she always let Memphis, the team lead, know so he could have either Mav or Sage act as Daisy’s backup during that time.
We’d called Memphis half an hour ago to ask if he’d heard from her, but he’d said he hadn’t. Since we were so close to her location, he’d agreed that we needed to actually lay eyes on her.
I tapped my fingers on my leg as I considered our options. I was leaning back against the wall outside Daisy’s apartment door while Sage was standing in front of it. It was well after midnight, so none of Daisy’s neighbors were around to ask if they’d seen her.
“Fuck it,” I muttered and reached into my pocket to pull out the tools I’d need to pick the lock on her door.
Sage stepped out of my way, but right as I was about to insert the first tool into the lock, I heard it disengage. I stepped back as the door opened just a crack.
I knew instantly that something was wrong. I felt Sage stiffen next to me as soon as he got a look at Daisy’s face.
What little of it we could see.
The one eye we could see was red-rimmed and swollen and she refused to look directly at us. Her knuckles were bloodless as she held onto the edge of the door. She hadn’t removed the security chain.
“Sorry, I was in the shower,” she said, her voice cracking. “What are you doing here?”
“We were worried about you,” I said as I tried to get a better look into her apartment, but there wasn’t enough of a gap to see much of anything. She was wearing what looked like jeans and a sweater and her hair looked tangled as it fell over her shoulder. It wasn’t even damp.
“I’m fine,” she quickly said. “Um, I’m just… I’m working on some stuff for Roman. You know what a slave driver he is. He’s got me doing two things at once,” she added with a fake laugh.
“Yeah,” I said carefully. “Well, we’ll let you get back to it. Maybe just call us later?” I said as lightly as I could. I saw that Sage was already reaching for his gun.
Good, he’d picked up on Daisy saying Ronan’s name wrong to send us a silent message.
She made a little bit of a choking sound and I desperately wished I could reassure her that I’d heard her loud and clear. “Sure, will do,” she whispered, then shut the door.
The second the lock re-engaged, I turned to Sage. “Two assailants.”
He nodded. I waited one more beat to give Daisy enough time to get clear of the door, then reached for the gun at my back. I pretended to turn away from it in case someone was looking through the peephole from inside the apartment, then turned in a flash and kicked in the door. I heard a rough grunt as the wood made contact with a body on the other side.
It took just a split second to determine that the assailant holding onto Daisy’s arm a few feet inside the apartment was too close for me to risk hitting her with my gun, so I launched myself at him. At the same time, Daisy elbowed him hard in the nose. My body hit his just as he let her go with a bellow of pain, so Daisy was clear of us when we crashed to the floor. I heard someone shout behind me, then the sound of flesh striking flesh. Presumably Sage was going after the guy I’d hit with the door when I’d kicked it in.