“Dude, you have got to learn your woman’s name. It’s Krista.”
“It is?”
Rolling his eyes, he headed back for the SUV. “Get in.”
I was about to ask why when I saw Derek storming our way. Fucking finally, he looked like he was ready to kill someone.
“Did that pee set everything straight for you?” I asked sarcastically.
He climbed in, slamming the door behind him. “Two men, heavy set. Definitely enforcers of some kind. My guess is the mob.”
“The mob? Why the hell would the mob be after Carmen?”
“Krista!” Sinner snapped. “Jesus, if you tell Parker you lost his sister and can’t even remember her name, he’s gonna gut you like a fish.”
“Not if the mob does it first,” Derek surmised. “Tracking shows them about twenty minutes ahead of us.”
“If we hadn’t stood around here yapping, we might already be caught up to them!”
Derek turned in his seat and pinned me with a stare. “Look, I get that you’re not in the field very often, and that must be hard for you to swallow right now. But our women weren’t just taken. They were drugged, which means that if we get caught up in a high-speed chase, all we’ll accomplish is getting one or both of them killed in an accident. They can’t escape on their own, so the safest bet is to follow them to wherever they stop, then kill the fuckers who took them.”
“But you waited so fucking long!” I exclaimed. “You went inside to pee!”
“I went inside to get footage,” Derek argued, “which is your territory, and something you would have done right away if you weren’t freaking out about Krista.”
“Who the hell is Krista?” I snapped.
“Your woman!” they both shouted at me.
I ducked my head, rubbing my hand over my forehead and the growing headache that was eliminating all possibilities of thinking clearly. The general pounding was no longer the worst part about all this. Now, there was a growing pressure that seemed to be squeezing the very insides of my skull until it felt like my brains would ooze out through my ears.
Derek tossed a bottle over the seat to me, then turned and handed me water. “Drink. You look like shit, and you’re clearly not thinking straight.”
“What exactly did you do when you were out here?” Sinner asked.
I swallowed down the pills and went over it again and again in my mind, but the answers were still blank.
“I don’t remember seeing her until I woke up in her bed.”
“Nice,” Sinner grinned.
“No, I mean, I have no memory of running into her anywhere. I boarded a flight for California, and…that’s where things get fuzzy. I don’t remember getting off the plane. I don’t remember anything at all. Just waking up in her bed in Montana. And somewhere along the way, we apparently met half the people in town. They all know about us, but we know nothing.”
“So, she doesn’t remember anything either,” Sinner stated.
“Exactly. For days. What the hell would do that?”
“Electro-shock?” Derek asked.
“I remember every second of what happened in that room,” Sinner snorted. “Trust me, it’s not electro-shock.”
“And no burns,” I added.
“The simplest answer is drugs, but I don’t know of any date rape drugs that erase your memory for days,” Derek said.
“And you both remember the same things?” Sinner asked.
“If by the same things, you mean waking up at her house together. She doesn’t remember meeting me either.”