A wreck.
He’d been in a fuckingwreck.
Looking through his busted windshield, Chase quickly realized where he was. Located a few blocks from his home, the gas station had sat empty and abandoned for as long as he’d lived in the city.
Which begged the question…why the hell was he here?
A flash of pain seared across the left side of his head, above his ear. He lifted a hand to the source, his fingertips encountering a warm, sticky liquid he immediately recognized as blood.
Well, shit.
Thinking he should get out to check on whoever was in the other car, Chase reached down to unlatch his seatbelt. But something caught his eye from the passenger floorboard, and suddenly all those slow-motion thoughts came rushing back in a barrage of fast-forwarded memories.
He’d been at Logan and Natalie’s place. There’d been presents and laughing. The whole team had been there, and… A frown pulled at the cut still bleeding at the side of his head as Chase worked to remember the rest.
There’d been a conversation. A fairly tense one, if memory served. His attention returned to his passenger floorboard, and he realized the item that had caught his attention was…
A purse. It was laying on its side, several items having spilled out of the opened zipper and onto the all-weather mat. And just like that, he remembered everything.
Scottie had been in the truck with him. She’d seen the danger coming and had warned him by shouting his name.
Chase had turned his head, following her terrified line of sight just in time to see a white, full-size panel van slam into his side of the truck.
Everything went black after that. But now that he was fully awake…
A man’s face filled his vision. Tanned skin. Dark hair. Short, dark beard.
It was the face of the man who’d been driving the van that had hit them. A man Chase recognized a fraction of a second before the intentional collision.
No!
“Scottie!” Chase shouted her name as loudly as he physically could. His voice was rough and strained from the pain, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Scottie, where are you?”
He tried opening his door, desperate to get out of the truck and find her. But the damn thing was stuck, so he tried again. And again. And fucking again.
Ignoring the thunder rocketing through his skull, Chase swept as much of the outside area as he could see. The van was gone, and Scottie was nowhere to be seen.
“Scottlynn!”He winced, the panicked shout heightening the already incessant throbbing in his head.
Unwilling to just sit and hope for the best he opted to crawl out the other side, instead.
Chase twisted and turned, maneuvering his body as he clumsily made his way over the truck’s wide, leather-bound console. He landed shoulders first in the passenger seat. Used his booted feet to push off the other seat. And as he fell awkwardly out of the half-opened door, Chase was struck with the cruelest sense of déjà vu.
Only it wasn’t déjà vu, but rather a recent memory. One formed the night Chase had the chance to protect the woman he loved, but instead…
I let a psychopath walk free.
Dread consumed his entire body as he pushed himself up to his feet. Angrily swiping away the blood running into his eye, Chase didn’t pay attention to the damage that had been done to his truck.
His only thought—hisonlyconcern—was finding Scottie.
Spinning around slowly, he felt more lost than ever before. She wasn’t there.Noone was there. It was just him and the knowledge that the love of his life was gone.
Nausea filled Chase’s gut as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. A few rings later, he was pacing with fury back and forth near his mangled truck when Lucky finally picked up the call.
“Hey, Boyer. Miss me alrea?—”
“He took her, Jason.” Tears rushed to the surface as he used his teammate’s given name. “He fuckingtookher!”