Motherf—
“Okay, let’s start from the beginning. Tell me everything that happened.”
With a jerky nod, Evie’s best friend shared all she knew…
“I came home a day early to surprise her, and we were talking about…everything. I was in the living room, and she’d just gone into the kitchen to get stuff for mimosas.” Her watery blue gaze softened as it became fixed with his. “We were going to sip on them while she told me all about you.”
Ah, Christ.
“I got up to get something out of one of my bags,” Lo continued. “That’s when the man grabbed me from behind. I tried fighting him off, but he injected something in my neck that knocked me completely out. The next thing I knew, I was waking up on my living room floor, surrounded by EMS and police, and Evie was…gone.”
“I love her,” Beckett blurted it right out there for the world to hear.
He hated telling Lo how he felt before getting the chance to tell Evie first. But he needed her friend to know. Lo had to understand.
“You…what?”
“I’m in love with Evie,” he repeated the clarification. “I’d planned to tell her when I saw her today, but now….” His voice cracked, forcing him to clear the emotion from his throat. “I’m only telling you this, so you’ll know.”
“Know what?”
Beckett met Lo’s beseeching gaze, praying she could see the truth in his eyes when he promised her, “I’ll go to the ends of the fucking earth if that’s what it takes, but Iwillfind her. And I will goddamn bring her home.”
A slow smile lifted the corners of the woman’s weary lips as she carefully lowered herself back down onto the cot. “You really are the badass she said you were.”
No, he wasn’t. He was just a man willing to do whatever it took to save the woman he loved.
“I’m sorry, sir, but we need to get her to the hospital to get checked out.” A second paramedic appeared at Beckett’s left.
He took a step back to make room for the man to work, but before the medic could close the doors completely, they heard Lo’s elevated voice call out?—
“Wait!” Evie’s friend shot up from the cot, her moves desperate to the point of near panic. “She told me all about you and your team. The kinds of things you guys do. Please, Beckett. You have to find her. Youhaveto!”
The doors slammed shut before Beckett could even respond.
“Sorry, man.” The other medic rounded the bumper on his way to the driver’s side door. “But we’ve gotta roll.” Climbing behind the wheel, the man drove off, leaving Beckett standing alone in the middle of the street.
He turned and looked at the condo, struck by an onslaught of memories he and Evie had already made. The terror building up from deep inside grew larger and larger with every stuttered breath of his lungs.
Evie was gone. She’d been taken against her will again, and she was fuckinggone.
Ah, Christ.
Beckett bent at the waist, gripping his knees with the palms of his hands to keep from falling. Jesus, he felt sick to his very soul. What the hell was he going to do?
You’re going to get your shit together and call up the team. That’s what the fuck you’re going to do, because that’s what Evie needs.
The voice in his head was right. Evie needed him to be at his very best now, more than ever before. And standing in the middle of the street, fighting the urge to vomit, wasn’t it.
Beckett pushed himself back up and drew in a long, deep, cleansing breath. Exhaling slowly, he repeated the move twice more. After that, he gave the condo one last glimpse before turning away and walking back the same way he’d come.
He could lose his shit later, if the need arose. But until such time, he needed to be one hundred percent focused on the mission at hand. It was, after all, the most important mission of his life.
Beckett pulled his phone from his back pocket and made a call. Digger answered on the second ring.
“Yeah?”
“Get the team to the office, ASAP. I’m already on my way.”