Dancer in the waves, p.38
Dancer In The Waves, page 38
“Yes, I’m doing it right now. No one is getting in or out without passing through the front door.”
Gabriel quickly tapped his wristwatch to check on Alice. She was just underneath them, probably in the bathroom. When he felt worry coming through the bond, he and Elijah raced down the stairs.
“She’s worried, but not afraid,” Gabriel told Elijah.
“Good, this may still be just a big coincidence,” Elijah said, but it didn’t sound like he believe it. “Gabriel?”
Elijah held him steady as a rush of pain and fear jumped him so quickly that Gabriel half collapsed against the wall of the stairs. He turned to Elijah with pure panic in his eyes, then leaped to the landing and nearly tore out the door to the club. Two seconds after, an alarm started ringing from his and Elijah’s phone.
Shit!
They had taken Alice.
Alice
“You girls know where the employee bathroom is, right?” Ravi nearly shouted over the loud music.
“Yeah!” Marina shouted back. “It’s like the third time this month this has happened. Who keeps wrecking the toilets?”
“Wish I knew. I would make that woman scrub the whole bathroom with her toothbrush.” Ravi was really pissed off. He took pride in keeping the VIP zone pristine, and Alice could tell the serial toilet-clogger was getting deep on his nerves.
Alice felt a little pull on the bond. Gabriel was worried, and she could bet he was getting ready for them to go home early. The man couldn’t stand for the simplest thing to be out of normal without thinking it was foul play, but Alice couldn’t blame him. She might as well go to the bathroom before going home. Three whiskeys were easy to ignore while on the dance floor, but they would make themselves heard on the ride home. Alice remembered too many nights when she had gone out with her friends to hit the bars and ended the night in a desperate search for a bathroom.
She made her way around the bar to the back of the club, and reached the bathroom. After doing her business, Alice washed and cooled her hands in the sink and placed them on the back of her skull. Had Ravi given her a different whiskey than what she usually had? The drinks felt stronger tonight.
She adjusted her dress and left the bathroom, but before she could return to her friends, she felt someone in distress. Then she jumped—someone felt a big stab of pain. She didn’t see anyone, so she slowly made her way to the storage room at the back of the building.
“Hello?” she called. Someone was in a lot of pain, but Alice was unsure if she should go get help. The drinks were clouding her judgment more than usual tonight.
“Over here,” A feminine voice called. “Please help me.”
Alice didn’t recognize the voice, but the woman was clearly hurt. Alice was making her way to her when suddenly all the lights went out. This was not normal at all. She could feel the pain and distress from the woman, but she could almost hear Gabriel’s voice in her ear, reminding her she was also responsible for her own protection. Picking up her phone, she turned on the flashlight, hovering one finger over the panic button that would warn her security team if something happened.
“Are you okay? Are you bleeding? I can get help.”
She stopped in her tracks. The girl was not an employee; she was one of the girls who’d been dancing near them. And at her feet was Ravi, bleeding on the floor. Alice stepped back, but the woman lunged at her and picked her up like she weighed nothing. A hand covered her mouth before Alice had a chance to scream. Then the woman made her way to the back exit with Alice. Alice pressed the panic button repeatedly before the woman ripped the phone from her hand.
“I’m sorry, please don’t worry. It’s going to be all right,” the woman whispered to her. Without the music and the lights, it was now clear this woman was an alpha. Alice kicked the air and tried to throw her weight around to force the woman to drop her, but she was not letting go.
A man in a black mask opened the back door and used a flashlight on the inside cameras. Alice had seen that mask before. Shit.
“Took you long enough,” the woman complained to the man.
“This wasn’t easy to crack. Felix needed more time,” the man huffed back in a monotone robotic voice, but Alice could feel his annoyance.
A small car was waiting for them outside, parked near Gabriel’s Bentley. The woman shoved Alice into the back of the car and got in after her, pinning her down on the seat, face to fabric. It smelled like mold and dust.
“Please, you’re hurting me,” Alice begged the woman, trying to get her to loosen her grip.
“I’m sorry. It will be better soon.” The woman sounded distressed, as if she didn’t want to do this, but she didn’t let up. This was not all right. Alphas were not supposed to hurt omegas.
The car drove too fast through the tight streets of Lisbon, the movement rolling Alice along the seat. The woman tried to hold her in place, but the frantic escape speed was making it hard.
Heart racing, Alice had no idea where they were going. Her captor wouldn’t let her raise her head to look around.
“Search her. We can’t let any trackers into the van,” a cold voice demanded over a radio. Hands searched her body with no qualms over where they roamed or what they groped.
“Hey! Stop!” she demanded, tears fogging her vision as she tried to push the hands away. They hesitated for a moment but continued in their search, unperturbed by the cries of an omega. They took off everything that was loose. Her necklace, her earrings, her ring, her phone, and even her shoes.
After endless turns and accelerations, the car came to a screeching halt. Alice couldn’t see where they were, but she heard more robotic voices.
They pulled her out of the car, and the side door of a white van next to them opened. Inside there were several people dressed in black and with black masks, anxiously waiting for her. One man, an alpha, casually sat on the floor of the van, his back resting on the wall and one arm on his knee. He looked like he couldn’t care less about what was happening, but his emotions betrayed something else. His triumph when he saw Alice assailed her like a sledgehammer, and his want and lust for her consumed him. She could feel his eyes burning into her soul behind his mask.
Several arms reached out and dragged Alice into the van, heedless of her screams and tears. She heard the other car racing away before they closed the door behind her. They laid her down on some blankets on the floor, one masked figure holding her legs and another holding her arms. The alpha didn’t touch her. She could feel his desire, his need to reach out and touch her, but he stayed seated, calmly waiting for something to happen.
A voice came from the front of the van. “They are still in pursuit.”
“Her phone is being tracked?” the alpha asked, still looking at her.
“Yes. The drones are fixed on the first car. The helicopters are following the drones.”
“Anyone on us?”
“No, nothing in the sky over us.”
The alpha knocked twice on the metal wall separating them from the driver. “Move out.”
Tires screeching, the van went into motion.
Gabriel
He couldn’t run fast enough. He pushed his muscles to the brink, racing through his club like a madman, hitting people, hitting walls when he couldn’t stop in time to make a turn, but still not fast enough. When he reached the storage room, she was already gone, the sound of screeching tires the last thing he heard before tearing outside to an empty alley.
The back door was open. How the fuck had they hacked the club’s system? It was supposed to be impossible to open for anyone but Gabriel. Matts had promised him that.
Seething in anger, he tossed the car keys to Elijah at the same time that he put all security systems for Alice in action. Now was not the time to dwell on faulty systems. In the car, Elijah handed him a small tablet with access to the security drones. He called up the camera feeds from the storage room and the alley, but the last images before they went out were of a masked man using a camera fryer to null the recording. They found all cameras but one. It didn’t have the best angle, as it was turned to the corner exit of the alleyway, but it did have a few seconds of footage that showed the escape car and its license plate.
“I got it,” he told Elijah, while he set the drones into motion to search the car.
“Helicopters are in the air,” Elijah said as he tossed his phone on the dashboard and started the car. “Where to, Gabriel?”
Gabriel slid the tablet into a holder that made it visible for both men. They watched the feed—it took the drones thirty seconds to find the car. It took less than two minutes for Elijah to get hot on their trail.
Gabriel kept checking his watch to make sure the video feed of the drones matched what Alice’s tracker was showing, and for the most part it did. It did deviate from the drones’ visual track of the car when they passed through some streets, or near really tall buildings. So far, the drones had been more accurate.
He held onto the car door handle as Elijah cut a hard turn to the right, drifting in the asphalt. He reached for the bond with Alice, trying to get a sense of her state. She was scared, but there was something numbing her fear. A very light touch of detachment that was unusual for her. Was she drugged? He’d thought it was the alcohol when they were in the club, but now it felt too strong for that.
“This is Heli One—we have a visual on the car. Going west, possibly towards the Cascais Aerodrome. Over.”
“Hawk One, roger that. All forces, keep traffic away from the escape car. I repeat, keep traffic away from the escape car,” Elijah barked into his phone. “I swear to God, if they crash…”
“Turn left on the next street, then a hard right.” Gabriel tried to orient Elijah as the man pushed the car to its limits.
The radio chatter was overflowing with contacts from the helicopters, patrol cars, and Alice’s security team. Gabriel gave orders to stop all flights from taking off and sent several forces directly to every airport and aerodrome in the country.
Eyes never leaving the drone feeds, Gabriel watched as the car stopped under a bridge for less than a minute, allowing them to get closer. When it drove off again, he quickly checked his watch and did a double take. It showed Alice as still under the bridge.
“Heli one to all units, subject is going west. Drones remain in pursuit.”
“Roger that, Heli One,” Elijah hollered. “Looks like they are coming around nearer to us. If we turn on the next street, we can get on top of them.”
“Wait, stop!” Gabriel ordered, eyes still on his watch. Elijah hit the brakes, bringing the car to a screeching halt.
“What? We will lose them.”
“She’s not moving.” Gabriel showed Elijah the watch just when Alice’s signal started going east, toward the river.
“You know that’s not reliable, Gabriel. The drones still have an eye on the car.”
“Yeah, but they couldn’t see the car for one minute.” Gabriel quickly tapped on the screen and aligned one of the drones with the coordinates on the watch. “And the signals never diverted so much before. The drones are following her phone, but they could have switched cars.”
“Shit.” Elijah quickly looked between the drone feed and the watch. “East or west, Gabriel? It’s your call.”
Gabriel took a deep breath and tried to get a sense of how Alice was. Whatever was numbing her before was now dissipating from her system, and panic was setting in.
“East,” he ordered, putting his trust in Michael’s tracker. It was a decision that might cost him everything, and he begged to the universe that he was making the right one.
Alice
Unlike the previous car, the van was moving at a law-abiding speed and keeping a low profile. They stopped every once in a while, but she couldn’t hear any sounds from outside. The people in the van didn’t bother to keep their voices low either. Her heart sank every time they stopped and drove, no one stalling the van or finding it suspicious. She was desperate to try something, anything, that would call attention to them.
As soon as they let go of her hands and feet, she had tried to rush to the door. Four hulking figures grabbed her and pushed her back into the blankets. Her hands and feet had been quickly bound after she had kicked one of the men in the stomach. She had been aiming lower, but it was hard to point a kick in a moving vehicle. The alpha sitting next to her had tutted behind his mask, and Alice felt a touch of amusement from him at her rebellion.
“No need to fight us, Alice,” he chastised her in a soothing tone. “Gabriel can’t reach you anymore. We will keep you safe from him.”
“And who is going to keep me safe from you?” she snapped back.
The alpha turned his head to the side, the same way Boss did when she asked him who was a good boy.
“I promise, you are safe with us.”
There was no dishonesty coming from him, but his feelings were so well guarded, it was hard to discern truth from lie.
“What do you want from me?”
“You’re an omega,” he replied, surprised at her apparent ignorance. “With you by my side, I will become stronger. I will turn all bookkeepers to my side. I will erase the Opus and we will be free of their incompetence.” It sounded like a well-rehearsed speech.
Alice looked around again for anything she could use to draw Gabriel’s attention. The hulking men busied themselves with the electronic gadgets littering the sides of the van. She could see screens, computers, science-fiction-esque gadgets, and twists upon twists of multicolored cables linking them all. Each person was busy with something different. One was watching camera feeds, another was looking at a screen with massive amounts of text, another was looking at a monitor that flashed red and green lights, and the last one had a headset on and played with the buttons and dials in front of him.
The alpha, however, merely stared at her from behind the mask. He still didn’t touch her, keeping his hands firmly on his knees. She tried to discern his emotions, but he had erected a wall over them. It was strong but not perfect, as some feelings still passed through. His face didn’t move; the mask remained staunchly in the same place, but she could feel his eyes raking her body. Her dress had rolled up with the fighting and was way too high up her legs. It was always the hardest emotion for alphas to hide from her, their lust. His desire was burning through the wall he had erected, chewing away bit by bit the control he had over his emotions. But he kept his hands to himself. Maybe he was afraid that if he touched her, the wall would come down.
Then the van made a hard curve to the left, and without anything to hang onto, Alice half rolled on the blankets. The alpha instinctively grabbed her and held her in place.
It broke the spell of his self-control.
He reached out with one gloved hand and caressed her face with the back of his fingers, his eyes behind his mask fixed on hers.
“At this speed it should take twenty minutes to reach the rendezvous point,” a voice said from the front of the van, but Alice couldn’t see who it was because of the metal wall separating them. “Traffic is being detained in most areas.”
“Maintain speed. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves,” the alpha commanded the driver. He was petting the side of her face in long, languid strokes.
The masked men talked with each other about what was going on, and every voice around her sounded like it was coming through an old speaker,
“They are still tracking the first car,” said the person with the headsets. “No chatter about us.”
“All forces are still being directed to the airports,” said another.
Although their voices had no inflection, Alice could still feel their emotions. They were cautiously optimistic, trying not to celebrate their victory too early. Their leader was still harder to read, but desire and greed were trickling through his touch. He was trying to rein in his feelings, to stop her from knowing what was in his head. His restraint felt oddly familiar. She had been with someone like this before—several times, in fact.
“I know you…” she said without thinking.
Immediately, all heads in the van turned to them and worry filled the small space. He waved his hand at his people, and they returned to their tasks. Satisfaction poured from the alpha, and she felt his smile behind the mask.
“I knew you would recognize me,” he told her while he pulled on each finger of his glove. “I’ve been so careful not to let you see me. So afraid you would see right through my facade each time we met.”
He took off his glove and touched her neck, skin to skin. His fingers caressed her below her ear and traced a line to her collarbone. Alice felt sparkles when Gabriel did this, and even when Matts touched her, but not with this alpha. With him, it felt uncomfortable and wrong. His touch was ice where Gabriel’s was fire. She squirmed away from him, trying to avoid his hand. A sting of disappointment hit her, but he quickly leashed it. Ignoring her discomfort, he let his hand slowly trace the curve of her dress’s neckline. Then he spread his hand over her heart and something unexpected happened. She felt a pull on a bond. Not Gabriel’s bond; that one was wide open in her attempt to give him anything that might help him find her. It was her other bond. The one with Bruno.
But Bruno was dead…
She remembered that the morning he had died, she’d felt an unusual pull, a feather-touch presence invading something that was theirs. She had noticed it moments before the bond was cut and the pain overtook everything else. But the touch felt as familiar as the pain from the severed bond. They had both been her companions for more than three years, after all. It had started just before Bruno died, and she felt it acutely now as this alpha plucked on the string. That feeling that Bruno was near her, the sense of wrongness that came from her severed bond every time Gabriel touched her—she felt it all now. The strange amalgamation of emotions nagged at her intuition, and she realized something.
“You killed him,” she whispered. “You’re the one who killed Bruno.”
This took him by surprise, but his emotions didn’t deny it. Tears of anger fell down her cheek as she realized it was true. She desperately tried to fight her bonds again.
