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Chase’s head felt like it would literally explode. As he worked to peel his eyelids apart, his throbbing brain was working overtime through the pain to figure out why he felt like he’d been hit by a fucking truck.

He blinked several times to clear his blurred vision. A foggy haze he innately knew was from the deployment of his truck’s airbags filled the entire cab. Bright red blood was smeared across the one in front of him. The white, life-saving pillow now deflated and half-hanging in his lap.

A wreck.

He’d been in a fucking wreck.

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—his only concern—was finding Scottie.

Spinning around slowly, he felt more lost than ever before. She wasn’t there. No one 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 fucking took her!”

“Whoa hold up, brother.” Lucky’s tone grew serious. “Slow down a beat and take a breath. Who took who?”

“Scottie!” Chase practically shouted into the phone. “That son of a bitch reporter from the other night rammed my truck, and then he fucking took her!”

“Reporter?” There was a slight pause. “Oh, wait. Are you talking about Levi Taylor?”

“Yes, that’s who I’m fucking talking about!”

Was the man not listening?

“Okay, first, tell me where you are so I can head that way.”

Chase gave his friend the location before trying his best to explain. “We were on the way to my apartment. We…” He paused, unsure of how to describe it. “We got into a sort of serious conversation, so I pulled into the parking lot of this old gas station so I wouldn’t be distracted behind the wheel.”

A lot of fucking good that did.

In the background, Chase could hear Lucky telling Ellie what happened and that he had to go. The shock in the woman’s voice traveled through the phone, reminding him of how dire the situation really was.

He had no idea why Levi Taylor had done what he’d done. Or where the bastard had taken her.

Worse, Chase didn’t have the first clue behind the man’s motive, which meant he was six steps behind. And Scottie…

Scottie’s fate was completely unknown.

The fuck it is! You’re going to get your head out of your ass and find her!

He blinked, shaking away the fear and doubt that had been filling his head. Now wasn’t the time to be scared or freak the hell out. Now was the time for action.

“Get here as soon as you can,” Chase told his friend. “I’ll call in the rest of the team.”

Without waiting for a response, he ended the call to immediately initiate another. By the time he’d contacted Logan, Archer, and Van, the fear he felt for Scottie had transformed into something more.

Something dark. Lethal. A deadly force he didn’t attempt to deny.

The rules he always followed…the laws he’d never once considered breaking…none of those mattered anymore. For him, there wasn’t a question. For him, there was only one goal he intended to reach.

And as Chase waited in that parking lot for his team to show up for their newest mission, he knew. He’d cross every fucking line in existence if it meant finding the woman he loved before it was too late.

Scottie laid on her side in the back of the dark panel van. Her wrists and ankles had been bound with plastic ties, and the right side of her head hurt. But the pounding headache was nothing compared to the pain cutting its way through her heart.

Another tear fell across her temple, joining the others that had gone before it on the van’s cold, metal floor. Chase was hurt. She remembered that part clearly.

One minute, she was preparing to tell him she was pregnant. The next, Scottie saw that van—the one she was in now—heading straight for them.

She’d hollered out his name. Tried pulling him toward her to avoid taking the brunt of the hit. But then everything went dark.

Her respite, however, hadn’t lasted long. Within minutes of hitting her head and being knocked unconscious, Scottie had been awoken with a start as the man who’d hit them began forcefully pulling her from Chase’s truck.

All the while she’d been struggling to get free, Chase had remained unconscious and bleeding, slumped to the side behind the wheel of his truck.

He was hurt, and she’d been kidnapped by a man she didn’t know. To make matters even worse, she had absolutely no idea why.

Chase’s face filled her mind’s eye once again, the imagined image creating a new surge of unshed tears. She’d tried so hard to warn him. Had shouted his name at the top of her lungs while trying to keep from being taken against her will.

She’d kicked and twisted her body like a madwoman, screaming like a banshee while doing everything she could to fend off her attacker. She remembered fighting tooth and nail—literally—to get free from the man’s grip when a flash of pain had exploded at the back of her head.

The next thing Scottie knew, she was here. Tied up in the back of a creepy as hell van with a man whose plans couldn’t possibly entail anything good.

Please, God. Please, let Chase be okay. Please let our baby be okay.

Scottie allowed a few more tears to fall as the silent prayer played over and over again inside her brain. Since regaining consciousness, she hadn’t uttered a single sound to avoid alerting her captor to the fact that she was awake.

The last thing she wanted was to bring attention to herself while she lay there trying to come up with a plan of escape. Scottie knew if she let this man get her to wherever they were going, her chances of survival—of her baby’s survival—were slim to freaking none.

I’ll fight for you, little one. No matter what.

An instinctual need to protect the new life growing inside her was instant and stronger than any she’d ever known. It no longer mattered that the pregnancy wasn’t planned. It didn’t even matter whether Chase would be happy upon hearing the news.

Planned or not, she was going to be a mother. The test she’d taken—the one tucked away inside the purse that was somewhere in Chase’s truck—was all the proof she needed.

And with that acceptance came a strange sense of peace. A knowing that she was willing to do whatever it took—even kill—to protect the life she and Chase had created out of love. Because that’s what mothers did.

They protected.

With every spin of the van’s speeding wheels came a renewed determination to survive. Scottie looked to the doors across from where she lay. The windows in the vehicle’s double doors were low enough she could partially see the outside.

From the trees that were currently blurring past, she was fairly certain her abductor had taken her out of the city. She had no idea where, but her gut said they were going north.

Away from her home. Away from Chase, and…away from their future.

Please let him be okay.

The sudden wave of emotion her internal prayer brought forth had Scottie sniffling before she thought better of it. The sound was soft and slight, but in the otherwise silent van…

“I was wondering when you’d wake up.” The man behind the wheel spoke up.

She was positioned with her head on the floor directly behind his seat, preventing her from seeing his face as he talked.

“Good thing, too,” her abductor continued. “Can’t have you missing the best part.”

The best part?

“W-who are you?” Scottie hated the shakiness in her voice.

“You don’t know me.” His tone grew darker. “But I know you.”

Her heart raced, her veins turning cold with an icy fear. But she forced it aside and continued her efforts to find out more.

“H-how?” She cleared the fear from her voice and tried again. “How do you know me?”

“I guess I misspoke. I should’ve said I know of you. Feels like I know you, though. Scottlynn…Jeanene…Cahill.” Her name came out slow and mocking. “A thirty-year-old has-been chef. The former frontrunner everyone knew was going to win that cooking contest you were on.”

She frowned, still confused by the man’s reasons for wanting to abduct her in broad daylight. “Were you a…fan of the show?”

“Fuck no.” The man’s deep chuckle made her want to vomit. “My brother, though…that dumbass never missed an episode.”

Okay, now he’d really lost her.

“Your brother?” Scottie asked as she began another visual search of the van’s open interior.

“Oh, yeah. It was all Dustin ever talked about.” The man paused. “ You were all he ever talked about.”

Dustin?

Shockwaves rolled throughout her system, and the world around her began to spin. Feeling as though she was going to be sick, Scottie forced herself to ask the question she wasn’t sure she wanted answered.

“You’re Dustin McVey’s…brother?”

“Technically, we were foster brothers. But that didn’t matter. Not to him or me. Dustin and I shared a very special bond. We both realized early on that we were made from the same cloth.”

Yeah, a sick and twisted cloth.

Her thoughts whirled in a swirling cloud of chaos as she fought to make sense of what had happened. Dustin McVey, the man who’d stalked her and then broke into her hotel room a year earlier, had been foster brothers with this man. And for some reason, the jerk felt the need to randomly kidnap her for…what?

“Is it money you want?” she had to ask.

Almost everything in life came down to money.

But the man simply laughed, the sound as cold and evil as any she’d heard, while he continued driving her closer to Hell.

“Money would be great, but no. That’s not why you’re here.”

“Then why?” Scottie challenged back. “Why did you kidnap me? What…” She had to swallow before this next part. “What are you going to do to me?”

She was utterly terrified to hear his response, but she had to know. Scottie needed to know what this man’s plan was for her so she could better figure out a way to thwart it.

“Funny thing about that,” the asshole spoke up again. “This…taking you…was never part of my life’s plan.”

“Then why?”

“Because my brother is dead!” he revealed angrily. “And it’s all your fault!”

Dizziness struck as Scottie processed what the vengeful man had just told her. He blamed her for Dustin McVey’s death?

“I-I didn’t even know he was dead!” she argued loudly.

I can’t believe no one from the prosecutor’s office called to tell me.

“He’s been gone a few weeks, now. Killed by another whack job at that horrible place they put him in. A place you put him in.”

Everything finally began to make sense. It was a sickeningly warped version of sense, but all the pieces were there.

McVey died by the hand of another patient in a place where he was forced to live for the next twenty-plus years…because of her. Only it wasn’t her fault.

It was his.

“Dustin was only in that place because he terrorized me,” she told him bluntly. “Your brother broke into my hotel room, shot my bodyguard, and would have abducted me just like you did if he hadn’t taken a bullet, too.”

“He wouldn’t have been in that place if you would have just gone with him when he asked, instead of fighting the love and affection my brother was trying to show you!”

Love and affection?

This guy was as looney as McVey.

He’s also just as dangerous.

As he continued ranting on about how her stalker’s blood was on her hands, Scottie used the man’s distraction to try to find a way out of this mess.

First up, she needed to find something sharp enough to cut the ties binding her ankles and wrists, or at the very least, something heavy, like a flashlight or tire iron. Anything she could keep hidden away to use later…as a weapon.

But as she scanned the space around her with vigor, Scottie discovered the crazed man hadn’t left anything to chance. Unlike the movies, the van’s beveled floor was completely bare. She didn’t see a toolbox or screwdriver. Nothing hung loosely from the curved metal walls.

Scottie’s heart sank with a heavy, impending doom as her chances of escaping continued to dwindle with each mile they passed. There wasn’t a single freaking thing she could see to help her break the plastic ties and escape. And if she couldn’t fight back or at least try to run, her only other option was to give up.

No! I will not give up!

She’d made a promise to her and Chase’s unborn baby, and Scottie was damn well going to keep it. The problem was she didn’t know how.

“You want to know the best part of this whole thing?” The man behind the wheel tossed out the rhetorical question. “I almost didn’t take the job.”

“What job?”

“The shit-paying newspaper job I took to write about that benefit dinner the shelter you work for put on. I came damn close to skipping out, but when I saw you from across the room, I knew.”

A flash of a memory struck, and the final piece of the horrifying puzzle clicked into place. This was the man who’d been watching her as she and Chase talked near the buffet table the night of the benefit auction.

They’d been standing there, casually talking about getting together to catch up. Then Chase left with Lucky to fulfill the job for which they’d volunteered. And that’s when she’d seen him.

Scottie remembered glancing up and seeing the bright flash from a man’s camera. This man’s camera. He’d been standing across the room, watching her. And now…

“It was fate!” her abductor exclaimed. “I mean, what are the chances, right? But I saw you, and I immediately knew who you were. I saw you, and I knew exactly what Dustin would have wanted me to do.”

Did he really think fate had led this man to hurt Chase and kidnap her?

Sounds about right, given your close relationship with shitty, shitty luck.

But even as the negative thought drove through Scottie’s mind, she felt an instant denial. One that grew stronger, making her even more determined than before.

She didn’t care about luck. Not the good or the bad. She only cared about protecting her baby and making her way back to Chase…alive.

As Dustin McVey’s psychotic foster brother kept talking about how it was fate that he’d found her, Scottie tuned him out and focused on doing anything and everything she could to survive.

Miles later, she’d all but given up hope. But when she laid her head back down in near defeat, she saw it.

There!

A few inches down from where her bound feet lay, a piece of metal jutted up from the van’s floor. It was small and square in shape, and there was a small circle cut out in its center.

The metal piece was some sort of built-in base someone could use to secure a small hook, like a bungee cord.

Her eyes grew wide, but she didn’t dare let the renewed hope coursing through her show. She had a chance—a real chance—to at least cut her ankles free.

Going painfully slow, Scottie slid her body lower. Inching her way closer to her only chance at freedom, she used her abductor’s verbal rage to cover any sounds her movement made.

A few terrifying minutes later, she felt the sole of her slightly heeled boots strike paydirt. Scottie lifted her bound legs up just so, positioning the taut center of the plastic tie over the metal square’s upper edge.

She moved her legs back and forth, praying the sawing motion would work as planned. The angle in which she was laying made it hard to see her progress. But when Scottie felt the hard plastic strip begin to loosen its hold, the hope she’d allowed herself to feel began to soar.

“Almost there!” The man driving announced as if it was wonderful news.

For him, it probably was.

The van’s wheels began to slow, and Scottie could tell they were preparing to turn. A quick glance out the windows showed more of the same kind of trees as before. Tall, thick, and seemingly never ending.

If she could get her ankles free and manage to make it out of the van without being caught, she might actually have a chance to get away.

A plan formed in her mind as the final threads of the woven plastic broke free. Scottie’s feet shot forcefully apart, and it took herculean strength to keep them from slamming down against the van’s metal floor.

She froze in place for fear the crazed man who’d taken her would see. He was still talking, though. Mostly about himself and McVey and how nothing in their screwed-up pasts had ever been their fault.

Glancing up, Scottie discovered her new position made it possible for her to see the guy’s rearview reflection. Not his full face, but she could see the man’s eyes, which was enough.

As long as he kept looking forward…

Unprecedented fear raced through her entire system as the wheels beneath her slowed to a near-stop. She couldn’t lay around and wait for them to reach what would, no doubt, be her life’s final destination. So instead, Scottie slid her body even lower, bringing her feet as close to the door as she could get.

The van began to turn, nearly stopping fully in the process, and she knew this was her only chance. Her focus shot to the latch keeping the back doors secured, and she took precious seconds to visualize the plan.

Scottie gave one final glance upward, toward the rearview mirror. The man was watching the road ahead, oblivious to what she was about to do.

It was now or never, and though she’d never been more scared in her life, she knew…

I have to do this. For myself and my baby. For Chase and the future that’s finally within our reach.

With those thoughts becoming her new mantra, she eyed the long, metal latch again. A countdown silently formed in her head, and when she got to one…

I love you, Chase.

Scottie used her core muscles to lift her legs high in the air. Without hesitation, she brought her feet back down as hard as she could, the heels of her boots slamming against the top part of the latch.

It slid down upon impact, and the two back doors flew open. The man behind the wheel shouted something loud as he brought the van to a sudden and harsh stop.

But he was too late. Scottie had already rolled herself toward the van’s back bumper. She squeezed her eyes shut as she fell out of the vehicle, her body landing with a hard thud against the unforgiving pavement below.