Page 29 of Secrets Beneath the Waves

“Anything could be going on inside that house,” Zeyla said. “She might be dead already.”

“Why don’t you call Maizie and see if she can find out what the police have so far on the car?”

“You think they are just going to give that information out?”

Ramon said, “I don’t think she’ll call them.”

“It would be quicker to find out what was going on if we just kicked the door down and busted in there, guns blazing.”

“That’s also the fastest way to get them to kill her before we can get her back.”

He didn’t like not knowing the young woman’s name who had been kidnapped. But then, if they hadn’t been following Drew and his friend at the time, they wouldn’t even know she had been taken. Or that this newest victim of these people represented another crime connected to this wider conspiracy.

Zeyla bounced one knee up and down. “What are we waiting for?”

“Either Drew gets on his phone and does something that lets us know what’s going to happen next, or they leave, and we follow them somewhere else.” Ramon pointed at the house. “You really think this is their base of operations? It reads so much more like a safe house or some kind of holding spot.”

“We can’t let them take her anywhere else.” Her knee didn’t stop moving. “We have to get her back.”

Ramon reached over to squeeze her hand.

Zeyla drew hers away. “Don’t touch me right now. I don’t need to talk about it.”

Because she understood exactly what that young woman was going through right now. Every terrifying second of it was probably etched on her memory.

“I know what it feels like.”

Zeyla glanced at him. “You can’t possibly.”

“You aren’t the only one who’s ever been held against their will. Yeah, not many people in the world have had organs stolen from them or been through exactly what you went through. But being trapped? Unable to escape? It happens to be something I can sympathize with.”

She cleared her throat. “What happened?”

Ramon shifted in his seat. “I could tell you half a dozen stories of things that happened when I was a kid, with my stepdad. Or how my sister was murdered. But this one happened when I was part of the cartel. We were meeting with a rival group, trying to hash out a territory dispute between our bosses.They blew the building right after we arrived, and when we ran out, they knocked us out and took us to their compound. It took three weeks for my boss to arrange to get us out of there. Pretty sure he paid some serious money, or product, for our lives.”

“Heartwarming.”

“I’m just saying, I understand what it’s like to be held captive”—in a dank basement, chained to a wall—“and not know if at any second you might be killed or tortured in some way.”

“Fine, you ‘get’ me. And I’m not special. Thanks.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m trying to explain—badly, apparently—that it’s the reason why I will always do what I can to rescue someone. Because I don’t want to think that someone else had to go through that, and feel those feelings, without me doing everything I could to get them out. That I should’ve done more.”

“Some of us don’t have the luxury of choosing their mission because we already have one.” She glanced at him, then looked back at the house. “My whole life is about taking downDominatus.” She swallowed. “It’s the only thing I can think of, finding ways to cause damage to them and to figure out every single player so that I can shut down the whole operation.”

A light in the window illuminated one of the front rooms, and he watched a shadow pass behind the blinds covering the window.

“Maybe in a world where there isn’t this great evil trying to control everything, I would be able to become a private investigator and take cases rescuing people in situations like I experienced. Sounds like a nice dream.”

Ramon said, “It isn’t a dream. It’s what we do at Banbury Investigations.” He didn’t know how else to explain it. “Fighting againstDominatusmeans that we are rescuing those victims. It’s part of taking them down, that we try and save whoever we can in the process, all those innocents caught in the crossfire.”

“Yeah, by kicking the door in and shooting those two guys who thought they could take that girl and get away with it.”

The bravado was back. The armor she used to surround herself, protecting her broken heart from all the pain in the world. He did the same thing, in a way, by focusing on the present and trying as best as he could to put the past behind him. But like her armor, it was only a façade.

Her cell phone chimed.

Zeyla unlocked the screen. “Drew is doing something. He’s on a web browser I’ve never heard of, uploading files.”