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They shook their heads and laughed again. Every finger in that room stayed pointed at me.

Whatever it meant, it only applied to me.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Slash

He wanted to kill someone.

Twenty-one hours and no trace of Lexi. She’d simply vanished in thin air, leaving behind her laptop bag with the laptop inside and untouched. How had this happened on his watch?

His mood had progressively gone from bad to foul. He tried to compartmentalize his thinking to avoid dwelling on whether she might be injured. He refused to let his mind go further than that. Gwen had broken down in tears, Natelli had been beside herself with guilt, and Vicente, Gabriel and Salvador had grimly helped him scour the entire area.

Slash had personally interrogated all the guards, including Gabriel, as well as everyone on the team, while they were still at the village, but no one had seen or heard anything. As much as he wanted to haul one of them in as a suspect, he was good enough at interrogation to know they were telling the truth. No one knew what had happened to Lexi.

So, where the hell did that leave him?

She’d disappeared without a trace. There were no signs of a struggle, no blood, and no clues other than the laptop bag lying near a hut. He’d combed the entire area, exhausting every possibility. The last person who’d seen her was a little girl. After Vicente had gently interviewed her, the girl said Lexi had been in the hut with her. She’d shown Lexi her doll and then they’d left to go back to the others. The girl had skipped a little ahead, and when she turned around Lexi was gone. She hadn’t heard a scream or any noise whatsoever. The only thing that had been proof that Lexi had been there was the laptop bag lying on the ground.

There were no scratches, no marks on the bag and nothing entered into the computer other than the vaccine data. Slash had scoured every inch of the area. No blood or signs of a scuffle, no screaming or shouting which would have certainly been present if a wild animal had attacked her. No drag marks either. The only explanation was that someone had knocked her unconscious without allowing her to make a sound, and then carried her—a five-foot-eleven woman—through the rainforest noiselessly even as the area was being heavily patrolled.

Who the hell could do that?

His only break was that the satellite phone was missing along with her. He’d searched the entire area and hadn’t found it. He’d given it to her shortly before her disappearance because it had been low on battery. He prayed it was still around her neck and she would, at some point, turn it back on. But it had been twenty-one hours and nothing. No signal, no Lexi.

Where are you,cara?

He had to push aside emotion and think. Lexi was resourceful, smart and logical. If there was a way to get a message to him, she’d find it. He had to trust her to take care of herself, just as she trusted him to find her. That was the way it worked with them. Perfectly synced, perfectly matched.

He couldn’t lose her.

In the meantime, the answers were in front of him, he just had to figure them out. He stood outside the lab, pacing back and forth, thinking. He had to move fromhowshe’d been kidnapped towhy. If she’d been taken by someone who wanted to disrupt the vaccine program, they had effectively done that. All trips to the villages had stopped. Resources were now being directed toward recovering Lexi. The CEO of Vaccitex, Lilith Burbridge, was on her way from New York, and they expected her to arrive at the camp within the hour. She had promised to make every resource available to them.

While he appreciated the gesture, that wouldn’t help if he didn’t know the motivations behind the kidnapping. He wasn’t buying that drug runners had kidnapped her. That level of sophistication in kidnapping wasn’t their style, and why leave the laptop behind? It made no sense. Besides, twenty-one hours later, there should have been threats issued or a ransom request.

He had nothing.

So, when you had nothing, where did you start? He considered his meager options. Maybe it was time to pay another visit to the captured drug dealers. According to Gabriel, they were still in the jail awaiting the Brazilian federal police to retrieve them. It wasn’t the greatest plan he’d ever had, but it was something.

Gabriel drove him to the jail. When they arrived, the guards remembered him from the last visit, and were friendly and receptive.

Good.

Slash asked their permission to interview the prisoners while showing them a wad of cash. The guards accepted without hesitation and conveniently disappeared.

He and Gabriel decided to split up the interviews. Since all of them were from Venezuela, they both could speak to them in Spanish. The prisoners were being held in separate cells and, at first, refused to answer any initial questions, both combative and cocky. Slash didn’t care, because his early questions had a simple purpose. He carefully observed their demeanor and behavior, looking for the weak link among them.

It didn’t take him long to zero in on the guy who’d been shot in the shoulder by his buddy as Lexi had jumped on him from the tree. He’d apparently seen a doctor because he had a decent dressing, but it was obvious he was still in a lot of pain. Slash exchanged a glance with Gabriel, who walked over to the next cell, talking loudly to another prisoner.

Slash stood in front of the wounded guy’s cell, making a big deal of opening his wallet and pulling out a small plastic bag with several white pills. He dangled them from his fingertips. “Painkillers. Nonprescription, but maximum strength. They’re yours, if you answer a few questions.”

“Are you kidding me?” The guy laughs hoarsely. “If I say anything, and I mean,anything, they’ll kill me.”

“Not if they don’t know you said anything.”

“They find out everything.”

Slash looked around. “You see anyone else here? Just you and me. I guarantee your name never comes up. That’s the price of the pills.”