***

“Skye.” Saying her name was hard. So much harder than it should have been.

Trace tried to move his arms, but found that they were strapped down. His throat ached, burned, and it sure as hell seemed like someone had driven a fucking stake through his chest.

A stake…or a bullet.

“Take it easy, Weston.” A familiar voice advised him. “You just came out of surgery. They took the tube out of your throat three minutes ago. Just slow the hell down, okay?”

A tube? That would explain the burn in his throat.

Trace forced his eyes to open. Again, the small act was too damn hard. But he opened them, and he locked his gaze on Detective Griffin’s. “Skye.” He said her name again because she was the only thing that mattered.

But at her name, Alex looked away.

Where is she? She’d been with him in the alley. He remembered her holding onto him. She’d been in the ambulance, too. He’d hated the look of fear in her eyes.

“We’re looking for her,” Alex said. His voice cracked. Not good. “I’ve got an APB out now—every cop in the city is searching for her.”

Searching for her…

The machines around him began to beep frantically.

Alex hurried toward the side of the bed. “Take it easy. Jesus, man, calm down.”

He couldn’t be fucking serious. Trace tried to push up in the bed.

“You’re bleeding again! Stop!” Alex pushed the call button for the nurse, then he locked his hands around Trace’s shoulders. The detective shoved him back against the bed. “They just dug a bullet out of you. You can’t go racing out of here now!”

Yes, he could. Trace had to get to Skye.

The lines on Alex’s face became deeper. “We’re going to find her.”

How had they lost her? How?

Alex exhaled on a rough sigh. “She was in the hospital. I-I saw the security video just a little while ago. Some guy in a doctor’s coat came up to her. He injected her with something that knocked her out. Then the cocky bastard just put her in a wheel chair and pushed her right out the doors.”

No.

“No one even stopped him. Didn’t ask a single damn question. He took her out the emergency exit. There were two guards there, and he just took her.”

The machines were shrieking now.

Two nurses ran into the room. The male nurse demanded, “What are you doing to the patient?”

The other nurse—female, a redhead—hurried toward the bed. When she got close enough, Trace grabbed her wrist. “Get me…out…”

“No, no, sir.” Her brown eyes became saucer sized. “You can’t leave!”

The male nurse pulled out a needle and added something to Trace’s IV bag. “This will help calm you down.”

No. He didn’t need to be calm. I need Skye.

“Take it easy,” the redhead told him. “You have to rest and recover.”

Resting was the last thing he needed to do. He had to get out there and find Skye. “Doc…tor…”

“The doctor will come to see you soon,” the redhead reassured him as Trace’s fingers slid lifelessly away from her wrist. He could feel the cold touch of the drugs slipping through his veins. “Sleep…” The nurse told him.

I can’t sleep. Skye needs me.

“We’ll find her,” Alex told him, but the cop’s voice seemed far away now. “Every cop in the city has her photo. She’s not just going to vanish…”

***

But she did. Skye fucking vanished.

Two days passed, and the cops didn’t find her.

“He was clever,” Reese said as he guided Trace into the car. They were at the hospital’s exit. Finally. The doctors hadn’t wanted him to leave the hospital.

Fuck what they wanted.

He’d tried to leave the day before, and he’d torn open his wound. Blood had spurted and the nurses had sedated him. Again.

“The guy kept his face averted from the cameras,” Reese told him, “and he had a surgical cap and mask on the whole time.”

Trace slid into the car. The fresh stitches in his chest pulled, but he ignored the pain.

He could only focus on one thing then—Skye.

Reese slid into the front seat. The car eased into traffic.

“The cops think she’s already dead.” Trace had heard the whispers when Alex got his updates. As soon as they’d hit the forty-eight hour mark on Skye’s abduction, the cops had stopped looking for a live body.

“It’s…it’s been a long time, Trace,” Reese said softly. “A lot can happen during all those hours…”

Trace’s hands fisted. He didn’t want to imagine what had happened to Skye. “She’s okay.” He had to think that way. Had to think of her being alive. Because if he let the fear take over…I’ll lose my damn mind. “I’m going to find her.” He’d already reassigned every agent that he had.

Finding Skye was their priority. He’d been pulling the strings and starting the search for her even when the doctors had been sewing him back up.

Reese slanted a fast glance his way when the vehicle stopped at a red light. “We’ve got eyes on the choreographer and the doctor in NY. Both guys have been going to work, business as usual for them.”

It wasn’t business as fucking usual.

“If one of them had her…the guy would still be with her.”

If she’s alive. Trace heard the words that Reese didn’t say.

“Could just be that it’s not them. Her stalker could be anyone.” Reese kept talking as he drove them through the Chicago streets. “Some freak who saw her dance and fixated on her.”

Trace’s gaze slid to the window. “I want the plane ready to depart within the next two hours.”

The car braked at another red light. “Boss, you know that you’re not clear to travel. The doctors didn’t want to let you out—”

“We’re going to New York.” Because that was where the nightmare had started for Skye. “Have the plane ready.”

The killer had aimed for Trace’s heart with that bullet. The bullet had missed its target, barely.

But when the SOB had taken Skye…

You cut out my fucking heart.

He wanted his heart back.

He’d get it back.

***

The handcuffs cut into Skye’s wrists. She’d lost track of time again. She’d tried counting the minutes before, a little trick to try and stay sane, but it hadn’t helped.

There was no light. Only a complete darkness. It was cold. So cold there in her prison.

Her wrists had stopped bleeding. She’d thought that the blood might help her slip out of the cuffs.

It hadn’t.

Her lips were cracked. Broken. Her stomach ached, but at least it had stopped growling.

She hadn’t eaten. Hadn’t been given a drop to drink.

She’d been taken. Then…left.

Forgotten in the dark.

She’d tried yelling before. Screaming. She’d screamed until her voice had broken.

Her hands were looped around some kind of thick, metal pole. She’d kicked it and kicked it. Jerked and pulled.

Nothing.

He’s just going to leave me down here. Until I starve.

It would be a slow death.

Death in darkness.

She tried to look through the dark. To see beyond it. Skye didn’t want this to be her last memory.

She wanted to remember Trace.

Trace.

He’d find her, eventually. She didn’t doubt that. If he’d survived that gunshot. He had to survive. He had to.

Trace would heal. He’d get out of the hospital. Then he would look for her.

She hated to think about what he would find.

***

“Janie, make sure that Mrs. Summer gets her medication before—”

Dr. Mitch Loxley broke off, choking.

Because Trace had just wrapped his hand around the prick’s throat.

“Stop!” The nurse—Janie—sprang to her feet. “Let him go!” She grabbed for the phone. “Security—”

“Security can wait a bit, honey,” Reese said as he took the phone from her. “We’re just gonna have us a little chat with the doc.”

Mitch’s eyes bulged. “Let…me…go…”

Trace eased his hold. “Want to have the chat out here, or in your office?” His fingerprints were bright on the doc’s throat.

“O-office…”

“Good choice.” He let the doctor go.

Mitch spun away from him. Strode down the hall.

“Dr. Loxley?” Janie called out uncertainly.

“I’ve got this,” Mitch snapped back.

No, the bastard didn’t.

Mitch threw open his office door. Paced inside and rubbed his neck.

Trace marched after him. Reese followed. He shut the door, then put his considerable bulk in front of the exit.

“What the hell?” Mitch demanded as he spun to confront Trace. “What the freaking hell! How dare you come in here and assault me—”

“Her picture is gone,” Trace said.

Mitch’s mouth snapped closed.

“All the pictures on your desk are gone.” Actually, it looked to him like the doctor was packing up his office. “Planning a trip?”

“I’ve got a transfer,” Mitch gritted out. “I applied for it months ago after—”

“After Skye dumped you.”

Mitch flushed. “I heard about her disappearance. I-I’m sorry. I hope the cops can find her soon.”

Trace wanted to drive his fist into the doc’s face. Again and again until he heard the smash of bones. “Seeing as how it was some person who took Skye, and not a figment of her imagination, I think your theory was a little off, doc.” Rage seethed in Trace’s words.

“My mistake.” Each word seemed torn from Mitch. “I thought…I-I was wrong.”

“You were.” He closed in on the doctor. He didn’t like Mitch Loxley. Didn’t trust him. Actually, Trace wanted to rip the man apart. “I almost killed a man for Skye once.”

Mitch swallowed. His eyes widened. “You did what?”

“I wasn’t even aware how close I put the guy to death,” Trace said as the memory rose in his head. “He was trying to rape her. I saw…and I reacted. I hit him, again and again, until Skye pulled me off him.”

Sweat beaded Mitch’s forehead.

“That’s what I did to him,” Trace murmured as he stared directly into Mitch’s eyes. “So what do you think I’m going to do once I get my hands on the man who took her?”

Mitch backed up. “I didn’t take Skye! I’ve been here—”

“Actually, you came back to work the day after Ms. Sullivan was taken,” Reese said as he stood firm by the door. “We checked. We have lots of resources to do things like that.”

Mitch’s gaze darted toward Reese.

“She left you, and you couldn’t handle that…” Trace fought to keep his voice level. He wanted to pound into Mitch, but that wasn’t the plan. He had to walk a very delicate line here. Very delicate.

The doctor shook his head. “It’s not me! I wanted to help her—”

“You wanted to own her. You wanted her to be yours, but she couldn’t be…Skye didn’t love you, and no matter what you did, you couldn’t make her love you.”

A fist pounded into the door. “Doctor Loxley?”

“Looks like Janie called security after all,” Reese said flatly. “Some people just don’t know how to follow orders.”

“I didn’t want to own her.” Mitch shoved his hands into the pockets of his lab coat. “That was the dancer—Wolfe. He’s the one who was always controlling her. Telling her when to exercise. When to go home and sleep. What to freaking eat. He wanted to control everything about her life.”

Trace kept all emotion from his face. “I’m going to kill the man who took her.”

Mitch tensed. His eyelids jerked.

Such a small move.

“I am going to kill him,” Trace said deliberately, “because Skye wasn’t his to take.”

The guards had burst inside the room.

“She was never his,” Trace told the doctor. “Never.”

***

The guards shoved Trace and Reese outside of the hospital.

“Well, that didn’t go so smoothly,” Reese murmured as he gazed around at the hospital’s parking lot. “But at least none of the damn paparazzi are here to see you get your ass thrown into the street.”

“The meeting went exactly as I’d hoped.”

Skye wasn’t his to take.

When Trace had said those words, Mitch’s hands had fisted. His eyes had been tight and angry, and the man had clamped his lips together to stop himself from replying to Trace.

“The guy was angry, but that was probably because you basically accused him of being a kidnapper and a killer. And because, you know, you threatened to murder him.” Reese turned toward the car. “All right, boss, we need to back off.”

They weren’t backing any place. “I goaded him so that the fellow would make a mistake.”

Reese glanced over his shoulder. “Maybe it is the choreographer, Wolfe, maybe he’s…”

“I’ve got two agents on Robert Wolfe. They are watching him twenty-four, seven.” Just in case. “And now, you and I are going to take over the watch on Loxley.” Because his gut told him to stay close to the doctor.