Chapter 4: My worst nightmare.

BLOOD.

The stone below the bed was stained with blood.

Wendy gripped the bars as her stomach revolted. Bile coated her mouth, and the muscles in her abdomen and chest tensed in irregular rhythms. Dying might be less painful.

"Lady, hey lady, you got to calm down." Stumpy was in the cell right behind her. He only had one foot. The other leg was mostly gone.

"Take a deep breath." That order came from the old one. He sat on the floor, never moving out of his pile of rags.

The lights were back on, which wasn't much of an improvement. It illuminated the horrors her mind had created, making them real. Like the blood.

"Is he going to kill us?" she asked.

It was the first time she'd spoken directly to the men.

"Us? Probably," Stumpy said.

"Why?" Her knees gave out, and she sat down with her back against the bars drilled into the stone and faced her fellow prisoners. For the first time in months, she wanted something.

She wanted to live.

Depression had clouded her judgement and sucked the life out of her for so long, she forgot what it was like to feel. Emotion swirled within her. Sorrow at never being able to hold her baby and love him like he deserved. Her beautiful, miracle baby. Regret at not answering the phone when Grayson called the night before. He was so patient with her. She didn't deserve the kind of life he'd given her. Shame for leaning on her sister so much. Bliss practically managed Wendy's life, and for what? Wendy was so selfish and wretched she couldn't even say thank you. So many things.

"You don't want to know." Stumpy smiled at her. It was a sad expression. Under the dirt and flecks of blood he had a kind face, sort of boyish and round.

"Us he'll kill. You, he'll rape until you're pregnant, and keep you locked up until you give birth."

Wendy stared at the old man. Was he serious? She pressed her knees together. It had taken her four years to get pregnant with her husband, whom she loved and adored.

And now some sicko wanted her to give him a baby?

"Hush, don't tell her that," Stumpy snapped.

"She needs to know. If Linda was right, we're next. He'll clean house so she doesn't know anything. She needs to know."

"Oh God." The tears trickled down her cheeks.

Stumpy used the bars to hop-walk his way to the corner. He knelt and whispered something at the older one. There was a third behind them, but she hadn't heard more than moans coming from his cell since earlier. The two spoke in hushed voices.

Wendy wasn't going to survive this. She'd never been strong like her older sister. If Bliss were here, she'd be halfway to figuring out how to break the iron bars. The very least Wendy could do was stay put. Ensure that Bliss, Grayson, and Paul got to keep living. That was the bargain she'd made Daniel. If she kept up her part of it, he'd let them live.

"Hey, look at me." Stumpy crouched down, peering at her from across the cave. "What's your name?"

"Wendy," she replied.

"Robert is right." Stumpy put his forehead against the bars. "Daniel's probably going to kill us. Our only hope is to pass the story along, the one Linda told us. Do you think you can listen? Can you remember it?"

"Do I have to?" She shuddered. The last thing she wanted in her head was a gruesome story about her captor.

"There's not much time." Stumpy glanced behind him. "That one's dying. I've still got my leg and both my arms left, but he's going to take those soon."

"He cut your leg off?" Wendy gaped in new horror.

"He started with my toes."

"Oh, God," she chanted and covered her face.

"I have a family. They probably aren't looking for me, though. I was an addict, couch hopping. No one cares about me, but I'd like my family to know what happened."

"Why are you telling me this? If I die, too..."

Robert leaned toward her. Part of the blanket fell away and she realized...his arms were gone. "Girl, someday one of us will live, and that one has to know the story, so we all live beyond this nightmare."

She wanted to be the girl who lived, but she wasn't that strong.

***

BLISS LED THE WAY up the walk to Wendy's Las Vegas house. Or mansion. The place was big enough to fit her apartment in the entry alone.

"Have you considered this is a ransom job?" Travis asked.

"That was my first thought when I saw you, actually." She fit the key in the lock. "You should know, I have zero access to their money. I'm the poor one of the family." She meant it as a joke, but it fell flat. Her living might be modest, but she didn't want for anything. Okay, so she wanted a hunky guy, but she could get that on pay-per-view.

Travis did that thing again-she could feel him looking her over, but now, without the sunglasses, she knew just where his gaze lingered. There was something about it that made her pulse jump.

It had to be the coffee.

"If someone wanted money for her, you'd have heard from them by now."

"What exactly is it you do? Why does a PI work ransom cases?" She slid the key into the lock and twisted. The door swung inward, and she stepped over the threshold. The alarm beeped at her, and she left Travis to close the door while she entered the code.

"Was the alarm armed this morning?" Travis closed the door and spent a moment flipping the locks and studying the frame.

"Yes."

"Any security cameras?"

"No, but the security office should have some. Grayson was adamant they only build in a gated community with real security."

"What does Grayson do? Any enemies?" He slowly walked a circle, his gaze traveling all over the foyer, up the stairs to the second level.

"He designs buildings. Big ones."

"Where is he now?"

"He's hitting three or four big meetings all over the place. Chicago. New York. London and...Mexico City? His company is putting in bids, and he has to go present designs or whatever it is they do. Why? You think it's connected to him? I thought you said it was this other guy."

"I don't want to rule anything out." He turned to face her, those green, unreadable eyes on her now. Hot damn, he was good looking.

And yet...

He wasn't answering her questions. She didn't know what horrible things had happened to the missing women, or what this guy actually did.

"I just let you into their house, and I have no clue who you really are. Grayson seemed to know who Aegis is, but-you could be lying." Boy, was she dumb. He'd given her a card and what had she done? Gone for coffee.

"I told you, my name is Travis."

"Travis what?"

"Travis Ration. I work for Aegis Group."

"What the hell is that? What do you do?"

"It's a private security firm."

"And you're their PI?"

"Not...exactly."

"Then what are you?"

"You know the guy they send in to get a job done, no matter the cost?"

"Yeah?"

"That's me."

The way he said it...so cold, stark...it sent a shiver down her spine.

"Then why this case? It doesn't make sense to be here if you're a finisher."

"I'm doing a favor for a friend. They asked me to look into this for them, so here I am."

"What kind of friend asks you to look into murderers?"

"The kind with a badge."

"You aren't giving me real answers."

"Call the number. I'm going to look around the house. They've probably already processed the paperwork for this gig." He turned and strode through the double archway into the football-field sized living room.

She watched him go, her gaze drawn to his ass. If she were a normal girl, she was sure there would be other thoughts in her head, but she'd spent all last week helping supply dildos for a porn movie filming down the block from her warehouse. Those were always the worst. The producer was a nice woman who got way too excited about her job and overshared raw footage Bliss did not need to see.

Right. She had things to do. Like find her missing sister.

The business card was at the bottom of her purse already. She dug it out and punched in the numbers.

"Aegis Group. How may I direct your call?" The voice was professional, male. He sounded like he'd sell soap products or something domestic. Not at all sexy like the big brute stomping through her sister's house.

"Hi, yeah, I need to verify this guy I met actually works for you."

"I can do that. Do you have a case number?"

"Uh, what? No. He said paperwork was processing. I want to know what it is you do."

"Okay. Well, Aegis Group is a private security firm. Let me pull up our new cases."

"He said that much. What do you really do?"

For a moment he didn't answer.

"What do you need done?" he asked. A bit of the soap bubble clean faded away and she could hear an edge in his voice.

"My sister is missing and my brother-in-law just hired him over the phone. He wants to help me find her. I think. Or do you have her?"

"Who is your sister and who is he?"

"Wendy Horton, and he said his name is Travis Ration."

"Ah. Travis. I saw that request come through. It's marked urgent so it'll be processed before noon. Travis will find her."

"How do you know that? And how do you know this is really Travis?"

"Does he look like someone you wouldn't want to meet in an alley at night?"

"Yeah."

"That's Travis. Ask him about Port Said."

"What the hell is Port Said?"

"It's a city. In Egypt. Anything else I can do for you?"

"What the hell do you really do?"

"What we are paid to do. Travis can fill in the blanks. Good luck."

"What does that mean? Hello?" Bliss looked at the screen.

Call ended.

What the hell had she gotten herself involved in? Who was Travis? What kind of company was this? She couldn't waste her time with this nonsense, except he was all she had as a means to find Wendy. She glanced at the time. Grayson would expect her or Wendy to check in soon. What would she tell him?

She searched the first floor, but Travis was nowhere to be found. How could a big man like him be so hard to find?

Bliss used the servant's stairs to get to the second floor. She paused on the landing and listened.

Nothing.

What did she know about this guy? Why was she trusting him? And how did Grayson know all about this company?

She crept toward the master bedroom on the east side of the house. The double doors were open and so were the curtains. She peered into the room, and found herself staring at a hard wall of man chest.

"Who is that outside?" he pointed at the windows.

"Shit. You scared me." She laid her hand against her pounding heart and strode to the window. "Oh. Landscaper."

"He has a key?"

"Well, yeah."

"Who else has a key to the house?"

"Priscilla, their housekeeper. The landscaper. The launderer. Um, I think there's an assistant of Grayson's. Then my parents. Oh. The babysitter service has one on file, too."

"Shit." Travis scrubbed a hand over his face.

"Why?"

"That's a lot of people to trust with things like security codes and keys. Too many chances someone got access your family didn't want here."

"What about Port Said?"

Travis' head jerked up and his gaze narrowed. She resisted the urge to take a step back. Damn, he was hot, but in a scary way. The guy on the phone was right. Travis wasn't the kind of person she wanted to meet in a dark alley, that was for sure. Or maybe she did, but only if he used his mouth.

God, she needed some alone time with her vibrator, soon.

"Who told you about that?"

"The guy who answered the phone. I didn't get a name." She shrugged. Okay, maybe asking him that was a set up.

"Christ." He shook his head.

"So...going to tell me about it?"

He sighed and took a seat on a dainty, padded bench under the windows.

"We got this emergency job once. Middle of Arab Spring. These girls were vacationing in Italy, decided to hop a boat to Egypt and got themselves kidnapped. The people who abducted them weren't the ransom kind. We had to get creative with how we found them. Nearly lost two guys on that job."

"Why would anyone want me to know that?"

"Beats me. It's not the kind of thing nice girls need to know."

Nice girl? Ha!

Somehow Bliss didn't think he was telling her the whole story. But there had to be something there. A reason why he was the person to help her find her sister.

"I think I know how the suspect got in," he said.

"What?" She stared at him. There was proof? Something they could take to the cops? "Show me."

Travis led the way back downstairs and to the rear wall of windows that provided a lovely view of the pool. He went to a knee next to the French doors and pointed at what looked to be a scuff on the wood paneling.

"What am I looking at?" she asked.

"The security lines have been looped back on themselves. Open the door."

She unlocked the door and pulled it open.

Silence had never unnerved her more.

Bliss closed the door, and opened it again.

"The system is supposed to announce when a door is opened. I was here two days ago and when Priscilla came in from the pool it announced, back door." She stared at Travis.

"Did they do any security upgrades recently?"

"I...uh....I don't know. Maybe? Around the time Paul was born, they had a lot of people in and out, prepping the house for the baby." She pressed her hand to her head. This couldn't be happening. He couldn't be right.

"Bliss?" Travis gripped her shoulders and guided her to an armchair. He took a knee and stayed right by her side.

"Oh, God. I think I'm going to throw up. What happened? Where is she? Who did this?"

"I don't know. Do you...have someone you want to stay with?"

"You are not looking for my sister without me." There were a dozen very good reasons why she should let the man do his job, but this was her sister they were talking about.

"I understand your concern. I'm very good at what I do. I'm going to go to the security offices. It's clear whoever got in here knew what they were doing. How to do it. And were able to motivate Wendy to leave with them without a struggle."

"Okay." She stood. "Ready."

Travis blinked at her.

"I meant, I'll go handle that. You should take it easy. Stay here in case someone calls."

"Wendy is my sister. Whenever she's needed help or gotten herself in trouble, I've been there for her. You will have to lock me up to keep me out of this." Bliss didn't care how big or scary he was, she would always be there for Wendy. Especially now.