The Intelligence Unit Series

Roman circled the Crooked Angel twice and cursed no less than a dozen times before finding a spot to park. Although he'd gotten out of work a little earlier than he'd expected, he was still a solid twenty minutes late. He knew Camila would be inside, sharing her amazing news with her brother and Delia and all of her friends. He'd just hated running late for something that was such a big deal to her. Just got here, he texted. But the message didn't pop up as delivered, and he checked his cell service, a twinge of worry sparking in his gut.

Five bars. No issues.

So, why hadn't his text gone through?

Roman sent a second text, a quick ask if she was okay, then strode toward the Crooked Angel. The place was packed, of course, and he had to wade through about twenty people before spotting Delia's white-blond hair. "Hey! Where's Camila?" Delia asked, although it crashed into the same question that he'd just launched.

"She's not with you?" Roman asked, adrenaline filling his veins in an icy rush.

Delia shook her head, her expression immediately concerned. "No. I thought she was with you and you were both just running late."

"No," Roman said, forcing himself to take a breath and not use it to scream. "I got stuck at work and she was supposed to meet me here." He pulled out his phone. "She texted me that she was here twenty-two minutes ago." Matteo, who had been standing next to Delia within full earshot of the conversation, snapped to attention. Whipping out his own cell phone, he pulled Camila's number up from his contacts and hit send.

His stare darkened. "Right to voicemail. This isn't right."

"No, it's not," Roman said. For a split second, his brain and his body froze in unison. Camila was everything. Everything. He couldn't lose her. He couldn't let her die.

No, his inner voice said, and he latched on to it with all of his might. Camila was not going to die, because he was going to have her back. He was going to find her. He'd need every shred of training and every ounce of calm he'd ever known, but he would do this. He was going to get his woman back. Right. F*****g. Now.

Instinct roared at Roman to tear a path to the exit, to personally search every street and kick in every door until he found her. But he was only one man, and f**k. F**k, he needed to think. "I'm going to call Calloway."

"Getting back to the FBI field office and looping her in will take too long," Matteo argued. Roman opened his mouth to snap back-they were absolutely not going to have a jurisdictional pissing match about this-but then Matteo added, "We'll have to do this ourselves. What do you need first?"

Roman didn't have the luxury of time to feel shocked, so he nodded. "Let's see if the restaurant manager will give us access to the computers in the office. Is Capelli here? He's the best person to start an online search." Knowing the guy, he could probably log into the RPD database remotely, too.

Delia nodded. "I'll go get him. I'll get everyone," she said, then spun on her heel to disappear into the crowd.

"Hurry," Roman called after her. "Capelli might be able to work some magic remotely to tap into street cams. Someone will need to call Sinclair and Calloway and at least give them a heads up."

Matteo was already leading the way to the front door, where Isabella, Maxwell, and Capelli, and his girlfriend, Shae, already stood. "Camila is missing," he said, "and we're going to find her."

Roman had to give the Intelligence detectives credit. Not a single one of them blinked. By the time he'd reviewed what little he knew about when Camila had left and when she'd texted him that she'd arrived, all the cops and first responders had amassed in the space.

"Okay," Capelli said, "I'm going to need access to a computer. Do you know if Camila is wearing the lavalier tracker?"

Roman's heart vaulted against his sternum. How had he forgotten about the tracker? "I think so. Yes."

"That's where we'll start."

"Good. Everyone else, start a canvass," Roman said. "See if you can find her car, her phone...anything at all. We'll pull street cam footage and see if we can catch sight of her."

"I'll get canvass teams together," Isabella said, and Maxwell nodded.

"I'll take point on getting Calloway and Sinclair into the loop."

Roman sent up a silent prayer of gratitude that they were such a well-oiled machine. "Go." Turning to Capelli, he said, "How fast can you tap into that tracker?"

Five minutes and some highly questionable internet skills later, a grid map of the city appeared on the desktop computer that the bar manager, Kennedy, had given them full access to in the back office of the Crooked Angel. A red dot appeared on the screen, and a fresh bucketful of adrenaline dumped into Roman's system.

"There," he said, lasering his stare at the coordinates. "That's down by North Point Pier." Damn it, between the water, the industrial parks, the docks, and abandoned buildings, there were no less than three hundred places to stay good and off the radar out there. "Looks like she's moving," Capelli said, his fingers flying over the keyboard.

"That buys us a little time, but not much," Roman said, already out of his chair.

Matteo was on the move, too. "Capelli, we're going to need an open line to you in here while we're in pursuit," he said.

Roman blinked. "What do you think you're doing?" he asked.

Matteo didn't budge. "Backing you up. You go in there alone and get yourself hurt, or worse yet, killed, and my sister will never be the same. No f*****g way am I going to let that happen. Plus, Archer is a sadistic son of a bitch. It's going to take more than one of us to take him down."

"I'm going, too," Hale said. "I've got my Charger here. I'll drive."

Roman almost argued, but Matteo shook his head. "Trust me. You want that. Hale's got a radio and half a f*****g arsenal in her car. Plus, she drives like she has an advanced degree in grand theft auto."

"Fine," Roman said. It was going to take every last one of them to find Camila, and they were running out of time. "Let's go."

Now all he could do was hope they got to her before it was too late.

***

Camila's head felt like it weighed conservatively seven hundred pounds. She had a fuzzy awareness that she needed to wake up, although she couldn't quite remember why. It was important, though. Something major had happened-a bank robbery? No. No, that had already happened. But there had been a gun, the same wet, dark fear swallowing her whole, and no time for Roman to tell her to breathe.

Wait. Roman hadn't been there. He'd been waiting for her. She was supposed to meet him, but there had been a lady. A dog?

Oh, God.

Camila forced herself to focus, although it took all of her effort to get halfway there. Her head was spinning, lights swirling around her head, cutting through the darkness. It took longer than it should for her to realize she was moving-was she lying across the backseat of a car? Yes. Yes, that was it, she thought, and her stomach tilted along with her vision. She must've made a noise, because the woman driving the car let out a soft laugh in the shadows.

"Oh, good. You're waking up. I was starting to think I'd given you too much sufentanil. Although, I guess that would've maybe saved me some trouble in the long run."

Camila blinked slowly, her memory coming back to her in a slow trickle. Portia Whitlock, luring her into the alley. Pointing a gun at her. Telling her she'd murdered her own brother. Telling her she was going to do the same to her.

Camila opened her mouth, although to say what, she had no idea. Dread slithered through her on a fresh wave of nausea as she realized she'd been not only gagged, but her hands had been bound behind her. Panic grew in her chest, compressing her lungs like a steel vise and making her breath arrive in fast, shallow gasps. She couldn't see anything other than the lights intermittently flashing over her head, had no sense of how long she'd been knocked out or where she was, and oh, God, Portia was going to kill her. Breathe, came the voice, calm and clear as a morning sunrise in her mind. Breathe, Camila. Breathe...

She did. Marshaling all of her strength, she inhaled for a count of five, holding it for three beats before slowly releasing it all past the fabric tied over her mouth. The oxygen gave her clarity, and she repeated the cycle two more times. She turned over on the backseat to try and get a better sense of her surroundings, and something small and cold pressed against the hollow at her throat.

The tracker. Oh. Oh. Portia had taken her phone, but she'd completely missed the lavalier.

"Yeah, sorry," Portia said, her tone betraying the lie. "Guess by now you're realizing I had to tie you up and gag you. I had to make sure no one heard you, just in case you woke up while we were still downtown. Thank God my car was on the other side of the alley. Getting you into that backseat after I knocked you out was a pain in the a*s. Shit like that makes me miss having Thorn around, although it's the only thing."

The comment cut through the fog in Camila's brain even further, honing her focus. She wasn't going to get out of this by fighting-Portia had a gun, and Camila had been drugged, both tactical advantages that made trying to fight or run horrible ideas. Portia also knew where they were, along with where they were headed. Who knew how long Camila would have to run in order to escape, or if there was anywhere she could hide undetected? If she screwed this up, Portia would kill her and be done with it. She was going to have to stall, to keep Portia busy until Roman and the Intelligence Unit could find her.

She couldn't die. She couldn't leave Roman.

Camila grunted against the gag. Portia slowed to a stop, put the car in park and turned around to the backseat, gun in hand.

"|

I suppose this is close enough," she said, tugging the bandana from Camila's mouth. She gulped for air, swallowing past her parched lips and tissue-paper tongue to test out her throat.

"What...what are you going to do now?" Camila croaked. She blinked at the dashboard, pretending to regain her focus. 7:58. Roman had to know she was in danger by now. All she needed was a little more time to get herself out of this.

Portia lifted one shoulder. "My brother might've been a double-crossing bastard, but he did have some pretty great f*****g ideas. You'll go out just like Thorn did. With four in the chest and a blaze of glory."

Terror threatened to commandeer Camila's brain, just as it had on that bank floor. In that instant, she tumbled back, the memory of being in the vault as sharp as if it had just happened, the fear that she would die just as real. Wait. The vault. The vault.

That was it.

She needed to dig deep for every scrap of bravery she possessed.

Mustering as much confidence as she could, Camila said, "You're right. Thorn was an a*****e, and he got what he deserved."

Portia laughed. She looked so much different than her photo, with her cropped dark hair and what Camila guessed were contacts, her stare so flat and cold that it sent a shiver racing down Camila's spine. "You have no idea."

"You could tell me," Camila said, and please, please, please let this work.

Another laugh. "What do you care?"

"I kind of don't," Camila said, her heart kicking faster when Portia started at the bald-faced admission. "But it looks like you pulled off one hell of a f**k you to both of them. Seems kind of a shame that you'll never be able to tell anyone what you did. I mean, unless you want to risk that person possibly telling the cops, one day. You're going to kill me anyway, right? You might as well let it fly. I'd sure want to brag about getting the better of those two assholes, if I were you."

A beat passed. Then another and another, and oh, God, maybe she wasn't going to bite. Camila scrambled to come up with a Plan B that didn't involve her getting shot in the chest and stuffed into a trunk, but then, finally, Portia said, "You know what? You're right." Keeping the gun trained on Camila, she got out of the driver's seat and yanked open the door closest to Camila's head, tugging her to her feet with shocking strength.

"They both wrote me off as weak. Stupid. But I'm the one left standing. All that money we stole? That's mine now. I do deserve to brag. You want the story? I'll tell you the whole f*****g thing."