Tyler (Blue Halo Book 6)

“Talk to me, Callum. Is he still on the move?” Tyler just about growled the words to his friend through the car’s Bluetooth.

Callum had found that the white sedan holding Levi was stolen and the owner had a GPS tracker. Apparently, the guy’d had his car stolen before. It was their one small reprieve so far today.

The car was heading south, and Tyler was breaking every fucking traffic law to catch him.

“You’re not far behind him, Ty.”

His fingers tightened around the steering wheel, and he pushed the car to move faster. The anger was like hot lava in his gut, threatening to burn straight through him. Any calls to Emerson’s phone were now going straight to voice mail. She was gone. Out of his reach. And it was tearing him to fucking shreds.

They’d checked Rowan’s hotel room. Not only was he not there but he’d checked out and his rental car had been returned. So all Tyler could do was focus on catching the stolen vehicle that had driven away with Levi. That was their only source of answers right now.

They’d figured out the woman was an actual nurse at the hospital. His team had already paid her a visit with the police, but she didn’t know anything. Just that she’d been offered enough money to make stealing a patient and losing her job worthwhile.

Suddenly, a car appeared in the distance.

A white sedan.

“I see him,” he said quietly, pushing the accelerator to the floor.

He knew the second the asshole spotted him, because they sped up.

Too late, scumbag. I’ve got you.

His engine roared as trees whipped past his car. The second he was close enough, he swerved into the opposite lane, raced past the car, then swung back in front of them and stomped on the brakes.

Tyler braced for impact, expecting a massive hit.

Instead, the driver of the sedan swerved wildly off the road and hit a tree—hard.

Tyler pulled over and was out of his car in seconds. He tore the driver’s door completely off its hinges and ripped the male driver from the vehicle.

The guy groaned, blood gushing from a wound on his head, as Tyler shoved him against the car. “What did you do with Levi Campbell?”

“Oh God…I’m bleeding! I need a hospital.”

“You’ll need a fucking hole in the ground if you don’t answer my goddamn question.” He pulled the man forward and slammed him into the car. “What did you do with Levi Campbell?”

When the guy just groaned again, Tyler grabbed his wrist and squeezed.

Bones snapped. The man howled.

“Fuck!” he shouted. “You broke my hand!”

“Next is your knee.”

Stark fear widened the guy’s eyes. “Fine, I’ll tell you!”

Tyler loosened his grip, but only slightly.

The asshole coughed blood. “I’m Rowan’s thesis assistant. I do whatever he tells me to do, usually taking one of his test subjects to a certain location.”

Test subjects? What the hell was he—

“I never stab them, though,” he added quickly, “and I never set the house on fire! That’s always Rowan.”

Tyler’s entire world slowed.

Two people kidnapped, one stabbed. One in a burning house.

Fuck!

It was Steve’s case.

“Where are they?” Tyler growled.

More blood ran from the guy’s mouth. “F-fourteen East Fork Lane, in Hailey. But she’ll be given a choice. She might not choose to save him…”

The choice…what the surviving victim had mentioned.

Emerson would choose to save Levi if she had a chance. There was no doubt in his mind.

A car pulled up behind him. Flynn. A second later, he was beside them.

“Call paramedics and the FBI,” Tyler said, barely able to breathe. “We’ve found Steve’s killers. And I know where Emerson and Levi are.”

He ran back to his car, put the address into his GPS, and took off. The second he was on the road, he called his team.

“You get him?” Callum asked basically in unison with Steve, who was already on a call with the team.

“Yes. Levi’s at fourteen East Fork Lane, Hailey. I’m about thirty minutes away.”

But he planned to halve that.

“We’re the same distance,” Liam said quickly. “I’m leaving now. We’ll hopefully get there the same time.”

“I’ll alert my guys to go there now,” Steve added.

Tyler was grateful. He needed as much backup as possible in case there were any surprises.

“The guy who took Levi is Rowan Perez’s thesis assistant,” Tyler said quickly. “And they’re the killers you’ve been hunting, Steve. Rowan stabs the victims and sets the house fires.”

The guys swore violently over the line.

“Emerson doesn’t have much time then,” Blake said.

Tyler knew that, but every inch of him rebelled against the confirmation.

“What’s the fucking subject of his thesis?” Tyler growled. It shouldn’t matter at this point…but he needed to know.

“On it,” Callum said. Typing sounded for two minutes that felt like two hours. Then his teammate cursed again.

Trepidation spidered throughout his gut. “Tell me.”

“According to notes from the advisory committee, Rowan was kicked out of his PhD program for an ‘unethical methodology’ proposal.”

He certainly hadn’t told Emerson. As far as she knew, he was still working on his PhD. “What was the proposal?” Though with everything he knew about the victims, he could hazard a guess.

“His research topic was ‘neuropsychology of emotional attachment and its impact on moral judgment.’ It looks like he wanted to create real-world ethical dilemmas and observe behavior, but the details of what he was proposing were bad enough for them to ask him to leave the entire program.”

“So he got kicked out but continued his research himself.” Emerson said he lived and breathed his work, so it wasn’t a surprise. If he felt it was important enough to study, getting kicked out of the program wouldn’t have stopped him.

“From the scant details included with the notes, the innocent family members would be the test subjects. He’d ask them questions and record their brain activity as they answered. Then he’d give them a choice between saving themselves or attempting to save their loved ones in a burning house.”

The ultimate moral dilemma.

“The sick fuck,” Jason growled.

He pressed his foot harder to the accelerator.

Rowan would no doubt be at the burning house. He knew Emerson would choose her stepbrother—and there was no way he’d risk letting her survive. Not when she’d have likely worked out exactly who was responsible.

Emerson tore at the scratchy rope with her teeth. Almost…there.

She’d been at it for at least ten minutes. She was making progress, but it was slow. And with each minute that ticked by, her heart thudded harder.

Escape quickly, and you might just be able to save Levi.

What did that mean? What had he done to her stepbrother?

She groaned as she bit at the rope again. Her teeth and jaw ached, and her wrists were red and raw from trying to tug them free, but she didn’t stop.

Another strand finally snapped, loosening the bind. She tugged her hand out. Yes! She reached over and undid the other side. Again, it took more time than she could afford, and her wrist was bleeding slightly by the time she slid it free. A minute later, her ankles were free.

Then she quickly grabbed the note.

The final part of my data collection, Emerson. Levi is bound on the second floor of a burning house. The home is two miles west. Alternatively, there’s a highway two miles east. You can save him—or yourself. Choose.

Her lips parted, a mixture of shock and sickness and fury washing through her like a tidal wave. But there was also something else…

Agony. For Levi. That he’d been abducted from the hospital, bound, and left in a burning house. Was it already too late to save him?

Didn’t matter. And there wasn’t a choice. Not really. There was no way she could live with herself if she didn’t try to save her stepbrother.

She stepped forward and immediately her legs caved. God, whatever he’d drugged her with was still in her system and making her muscles weak.

She pushed to her feet and locked her knees. Anger pulsed in her temples. She was going to save Levi. Then she was going to make sure Rowan paid for his crimes.

Emerson forced one foot in front of the other, and when she reached the large barn door, she put her entire body weight into pushing it open.

The scent of pine and dirt permeated the air as Emerson stepped outside and turned west. The faster she moved, the more her head ached. She fell a dozen times, sometimes due to looking at the compass and not watching where she was going, sometimes because of the exhaustion in her limbs. Twigs and rocks tore at her hands and knees with each fall.

She ignored it all, and every time she pushed to her feet, she ran that much faster.

It felt like it was hours before the two-story home came into view.

Oh God. The flames were huge! From what she could tell, they raged throughout the bottom floor, hot and angry.

She hesitated. If she went in there, would she even make it out?

Images of Levi flashed into her mind.

She had to try.

With a quick inhale, she moved, running up the porch steps and shouldering open the door, which was already ajar.

Flames engulfed the living room and kitchen. They hadn’t reached the stairs yet. She had a path.

Fear spiked in her chest at the thought of running up there. Of becoming trapped. But again, she ignored the worst-case scenario, and instead, pulled her shirt over her mouth and ran. She took the stairs two at a time to an empty landing. There were closed doors on either side of the space.

“Levi?” The second his name left her mouth, a cough racked her chest. The smoke was thick on the upper floor. It burned into her lungs with every breath.

No answer.

She opened the first door. An empty bathroom. She tried the second. An empty bedroom.

Where was he? She checked every room off the landing. When she reached the last one, she almost expected it to be empty as well. Had Rowan lied to her?

The door opened into an office.

And in the center of the office was Levi, tied to a chair.

She cried out at the sight of his ashen complexion and the stab wound in his chest. She ran over, kneeling in front of him and cupping his cheek. “Levi? Can you hear me?”

He didn’t respond. Jesus, was his chest even moving?

She touched the vein in his neck. A pulse bumped her fingers, and she nearly fainted with relief. He was alive. But if he was unconscious, how the hell was she supposed to get him out? There was no way she could physically move him. She needed help.

She rushed back to the landing, coughing the entire time, but flames roaring up the steps blocked her. No…

They were stuck. Trapped on the second floor of a burning house.

Panic tried to swallow her whole, but she took a moment to stop. Think.

Windows.

She ran back to the office and tugged at the nearest one. When it didn’t budge, she pulled harder. Nothing. She had a sinking feeling Rowan had made sure they wouldn’t open.

That son of a bitch.

Her next breath was all smoke. She coughed and spluttered before running into another room and closing the office door behind her to keep as much smoke out as possible. None of them were going to open, but she had to try. She yanked at a window in the nearest bedroom. Same thing.

With an angry growl, she tried windows in every room on the second floor, coughing harder and harder.

Rowan had trapped them.

In the hallway, she coughed so violently she almost fell. The smoke was too thick to breathe.

Panic swamped her again, but she ruthlessly shoved it down. There had to be a way out. Today was not the day she was going to die.

Focus.

Water.

In the bathroom, one towel hung from the rack. She grabbed it, took it to the shower, and ran the water until the material was soaked through and dripping.

She covered her face with the towel as she ran back to the office, forcing herself not to look at the flames climbing up to the landing.

The second she was in the office with Levi, she threw the door closed, rolled up the wet towel, and shoved it into the crack at the bottom of the door.

Her lungs spasmed as she struggled to breathe. A wave of dizziness hit, but she shook it off. She had to keep going. If nothing else, she had to just keep herself and Levi alive and pray someone nearby saw the flames.

The only way out was through the window. She scanned the room for something to break it with and found a bookend on a shelf. Yes! It was heavy. That was good. She took a few steps toward the window.

Her vision blurred and dizziness hit again. She had to grab the desk to keep herself upright. Right on cue, another cough crackled through her chest.

She waited a few precious heartbeats, getting her shuddering breaths under control, then took two steps, threw her arm forward, and smashed the bookend into the window.

The glass shattered—and a fresh breeze blew over her face. Thank God! She wasn’t safe, but it was something.

Her relief was short-lived, as black dots edged her vision. Her breathing was too shallow.

Ignoring the way the window went fuzzy before her eyes and air rattled in her chest, she cleared the small shards around the frame with the bookend.

She stuck her head out to investigate the area—and found a man partially obscured by a huge pine tree about fifty yards from the house. He stood out like a sore thumb in the otherwise deserted area.

Rowan.

She screamed and ducked as a gunshot sounded. Another round of coughing hit. Her lungs seized. She couldn’t get enough air! The darkness in her peripheral vision became a dark fog that blanketed everything.

Emerson tried to fight it off, tried to rise to her feet, but the darkness won—and it consumed her.