Page 75

Chapter Twenty-Seven
Lincoln
“What do you mean she’s been taking? Who the hell grabbed her?” I paced the length of Jaxson’s home, a lovely house, but at the moment, it felt small and confining.
The police were on the scene, taking Ariella and Hazel’s statements.
Jaxson called me the moment he found out what happened when Ariella called him in tears.
She’d been sobbing about an intruder and another man named Enzo, and the rest had been hard to decipher until she had calmed down.
“I don’t know his name, but he works for her husband,” Hazel said a little too calmly.
My poker face was not doing me justice. “She’s married?”
Why hadn’t Harper told me that she was married to another man?
“It’s clear the guy’s a real winner,” I muttered under my breath.
“Now’s not the time,” Jaxson said. He shot me a look of cool off or walk out. I wasn’t leaving the scene. I needed to know every detail, whatever it took to find her, alive.
Ariella took a long, slow breath. “She didn’t seem to know the man’s name, but they kept talking about Enzo, her husband. It was clear she recognized the man who took her. Harper explained to me that she’d gotten married under false pretenses. She was in Vegas, inebriated, and by the sounds of it, maybe they’d even drugged her. She was scared of him, Lincoln.”
My hands balled into fists at my side. “Bastards,” I muttered. I’d kill anyone who ever harmed a hair on Harper’s head.
Maybe she wasn’t mine, but I wanted to protect her.
No, I needed to protect her. She needed someone to look out for her. She’d probably never had that in her entire life.
“There’s something else you should know,” Ariella said. She fiddled with her hands. “Enzo was at the restaurant this afternoon. That’s why Harper panicked, but he wasn’t alone.”
“Who was with him?” Jaxson asked before I could say a word. “The man who came to the house and took her?”
“No, Jayden Scott,” Ariella said.
The room spun. My jaw clenched, and I stopped pacing. “I’ll kill him.”
Jaxson turned toward me, his arms folded across his chest. “Go take a walk.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but he pointed toward the door. I knew he was right, trying to protect me. I couldn’t make threats like that in front of the sheriff. What if the bastard winded up dead?
Good!
I stormed out of the house and slammed the door behind me. The ground crunched under my feet as I stomped over the gravel toward my truck. The night air was cool but not frigid.
Why had one of Enzo’s goons shown up and taken her?
Why did Jayden have lunch with Enzo? I climbed into my truck and started the engine.
The front door of the house opened, and Jaxson stepped out and stood on the porch.
“Where are you going?” he shouted.
I didn’t answer him. He knew me well enough to know where I was headed.
I needed to speak to Jayden.
I tore down the mountain at lightning speed and headed for Jayden’s newest place of employment. If I was lucky, he was working a shift. If I wasn’t, then I didn’t know where I’d find him.