Page 115 of Lethal Threat

I growl and pull the chair out next to her.

She presses the play button. The knot in my gut turns to a mass of broken glass. Two shadowy figures, dressed in black, enter the front of Sierra’s building at 4:16 am.

Both are big men, broad shouldered, lean hips, strong thighs. They walk casually, but like lethal animals on the hunt. I know men like this.

Trained killers.

I rasp out, “Jesus. Who are those bastards?”

“We’re working on that.”

My fists clench until my knuckles ache. “I’m going to throw up if I have to watch them drag Sierra out of that building.”

With her eyes fixed on the screen, Simona reaches out and pats my arm. “Take a breath. They don’t. Watch carefully.”

She taps her finger on the right side of the screen. “Watch here. See that shadow. I think that’s your girl climbing down the lattice-work on the side of the entrance.”

Heaven help me. I need a defibrillator. My heart’s spasming so wildly in my chest.

Sierra had to climb down from the roof to get away from the two men who broke into her apartment during the night.

Rage and terror war inside of me. For several minutes, there’s nothing else on the cam.

Then, I see the shadow.

My throat aches. “Holy hell. It could be her.”

At 4:34, car alarms sound in the background. At 4:36, the two men emerge, talking and looking like they are just going out to catch a beer together.

“Is that it?”

“Nope. Hold tight, cowboy.”

I can’t hold tight. I’ve just watched two men walk out of the apartment of the woman I love and they might have done something horrible to her.

The clock on the video reads 5:03 when Sierra’s unmistakable figure appears on the camera running from the parking lot toward her apartment.

I growl. “Goddamn, what’s she doing?”

Her petite body’s covered in a t-shirt and calf-length tights and her feet are bare. Without stopping, she runs through the front door and up the stairs and disappears from the camera’s view.

I’m officially snorting like an angry bull. “Oh god. What the hell? Shedid notgo back in there.”

Simona raises her brows. “She did. I know. I was terrified for her while I watched this, but they didn’t come back. Keep watching.”

One hundred and twenty seconds later, Sierra bursts out the front door of the building. Her backpack is over her shoulder. She glances at the camera. Her face is pale. The fear in her body is palpable.

Simona cuts the video off. “That’s it.” She grabs onto my forearm with surprising strength. “She got away.”

I exhale a huge breath. “Jesus. Watching that was pure torture. She got away, but where the hell is she?”

The former spy grins. “There’s more. We have a tag from the truck those guys were in.”

I’m too stunned to speak for a second. “There’s a parking lot feed?”

Simona nods as she cues up another video that shows the men walking toward a truck. “And that’s not all. Apparently, the bigger guy, he’s friends with the cop who responded to the call about the car alarms.” With a muttered curse, she starts the video. “That gives me a bad vibe.”

The second video is short.