Return to Me (3 page)

Legs dangling, she kicked back at the brute, trying for a shin or an even more vulnerable spot. The arms squeezed tighter. A new panic ensued. Was he going to crush the breath from her? Her arms pinned at her side, her legs swung uselessly. She wiggled and squirmed harder, determined this bastard wouldn’t win.

Warm breath teased her ear as a familiar masculine voice growled, “Easy now. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Tsunami-force fury rushed through her.
How dare he!

With renewed effort, Samara began to fight in earnest. Before she’d been merely terrified. Now she was furious. The arms tightened around her and Samara knew he would either squeeze the breath out of her until she passed out or she exhausted herself. Neither one would give her what she wanted, which was an opportunity to punch the jerk holding her. With that delicious thought in mind, she went limp in his arms.

“Good girl. Now, let’s go talk.”

Samara didn’t move. As long as he held her like this, all he had to do was tighten his arms and she’d be helpless again. She stayed limp and forced her breathing to slow, soften.

“Samara … you okay?” He shook her slightly and Samara barely restrained from grinning, anticipating the moment when the tables would be turned.

“Shit,” he muttered, “you’re so tiny. … I didn’t think …”

With lightning quickness, he hefted her over his shoulder like a sack of grain and started running. Indignation made her want to yell. She forced herself to wait. As she bounced against his shoulder, several thoughts flashed through her mind. First, how could a man run full force with an adult on his shoulder and not even breathe hard? Where the hell was he taking her? Why the hell was he doing this? And then a sudden urgent thought as her stomach roiled. What was he going to do when her two margaritas, chips, salsa, and fajita ended up on his ass when she started throwing up?

Within a minute, Noah had reached her apartment door and the bastard actually opened it as if he had a key. The door opened and shut quickly, with Samara still hanging upside down like a bat. Gritting her teeth, she prepared to move. This had gone on long enough.

She allowed him to pull her off his shoulder. Before he could set her feet on the floor, she sprang into action and struck. Her right fist slammed into his eye. A left fist headed toward his stomach. He didn’t stop the punch to his face, but a hard, firm hand grabbed her wrist, preventing her from dealing the gut punch.

Still holding her arm, he pushed her away. “Now that, sweetheart, was impressive.” He sounded amused … maybe even a little bit pleased. The nerve!

Samara pulled away from him sharply, backed up, and then, like a small bull, lowered her head and targeted his stomach.

Hands grabbed her shoulders before she took half a step. And he laughed. “That’s really cute, but not too smart. You could break your neck, coming at me like that. Why don’t you settle down and let’s have a—
oof!
”

Her hands came up and broke his hold on her shoulders, then she half slapped, half punched his face. It was a puny effort by anyone’s standards. Her brothers would be disgusted with her.

A long exasperated sigh, and then that tinge of amusement again. “Mara, you’re going to get hurt if you don’t stop.”

Turning away from him, she grabbed the nearest weapon, a photograph of her entire family. She swung at him.

He easily grabbed her wrist and held it, grinning. “What are you trying to do, frame me?”

She was getting damned tired of his amusement and his one-liners. “You want to tell me what the hell you’re up to?”

“Glad you’re talking, instead of all that physical violence … but you might want to lower your voice.”

She raised her voice higher. “Don’t you dare tell me to lower my voice in my own home. You abduct me, manhandle me, break into my apartment and you have the nerve to—”

Expelling a huge sigh, he grabbed her, threw her over his shoulder again, and carried her into the kitchen. Dumping her in a chair at the kitchen table, he quickly and efficiently tied her hands behind her and then to the back of the chair. Shrieking with rage, she rose and tried to ram him. He laughed softly as he pushed her down. Going to his knees, he wrapped a length of rubber tubing around her ankles and then the legs of the chair.

“Noah McCall, untie me, you rat bastard!”

Piling on even more insult, Noah turned away and pulled dish towels from a drawer. She opened her mouth to scream. One towel was pressed on her mouth as he tied another around her head.

Tied up, mute, and more furious than she could ever imagine being, Samara had heard of a killing rage and now knew exactly what it felt like. When he let her go, she would not be responsible for her actions. The man was dead meat.

Though furious, it never occurred to her to be frightened. Once she knew who he was, the only emotion she’d felt was fury. She was one of the few people in the world who knew Noah McCall and was alive to tell about it … not that she ever would. He might be a jerk and a brute, but he also was the founder of Last Chance Rescue, an organization whose sole purpose was to rescue and save victims, many of them children. She could still hate the man even while she admired what he did. Without a doubt, he wouldn’t hurt her. Piss her off? Most definitely.

Noah couldn’t help but be impressed with Samara’s spirit and ingenuity. He could’ve sworn she was unconscious when he’d brought her inside. Had even felt a twinge of guilt for that. And she surprised him. Danged if she hadn’t even gotten a good lick at him. Few people had ever been able to do that. His little tiger kitten had claws, making him like her even more. At that thought, he drew quickly back. There were only a handful of people he actually liked in this world. Samara Lyons didn’t need to be one of them. He was here for her help, not friendship.

Noah pulled out another chair, turned it around, and straddled it. The grin kicked up his mouth again. It was hard to look at Samara and not smile. No, she wasn’t at her best, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, hostility gleaming from those remarkable eyes of hers. Her long, almost blue-black hair gleamed under the stark brightness of the kitchen’s light fixture. Petite, delicate, and 100 percent pure femininity. The first time he’d seen her, that was what he had thought. She was like a small, fragile doll. Until she opened her mouth.
That mouth.
How many times had he woken up in the past year, with a raging hard-on, dreaming of that mouth?

A muffled sound of rage brought him back to the present. He needed to get back to the reason he was here. Tying her up hadn’t been in his plan, but he rarely went anywhere without his ties.

“Listen Mara, I know you’re pissed … and you’re still angry about last year, but I need your help.”

Those incredible eyes widened in disbelief. Yeah, he could understand that. She still held a grudge against him and instead of trying to talk sensibly to her, he’d abducted her, manhandled her, tied her up, and gagged her.
Not so big on the charm these days, McCall.

“If I take the gag from your mouth, will you promise not to scream?”

Gratitude gleamed in her eyes as she nodded emphatically. There went that little tug where his heart should have been. Ignoring it, he stood, untied the knot, and pulled the cloth from her face.

Panting slightly, she stayed true to her word and didn’t scream. In fact, said nothing at all. That kind of worried him. Samara not talking meant she was planning something. He best get to explaining his presence.

“Listen, Mara, I know I haven’t gone about this the right way … not really sure what the right way is anymore, but that’s another story. Bottom line … I need your help.”

“Why do you keep calling me Mara?”

“Huh?”

“You keep calling me Mara. … Why?”

He lifted a shoulder. “It’s just a nickname.”

She studied him as though he were a newly discovered species of vermin. Disdain clouded her eyes. “Do I have to hear you out, tied up like this?”

No way was he falling for that. “Yeah, you do. I don’t have time to tie you up again. I need to talk and I need you to listen. … Okay?”

Glaring, she closed her mouth.

“You know what I do. … Right?”

She nodded.

“LCR’s been asked to find a missing girl. Her name’s Ashley Mason. She’s thirteen years old and disappeared three weeks ago from Lexington, Kentucky.”

Despite herself, Samara leaned forward, caught not only by Noah’s words, but also his eyes. Everything else about him seemed cold, controlled, even slightly amused … except his eyes. They blazed with purpose and determination. Again, Noah McCall might be an A-number-one low-lying jerk, but he actually cared what happened to these kids.

“All leads have pretty much dried up. … That’s why her mother contacted us.”

A memory hit her. “Wait, I heard about this on the news. Her mother is running for some kind of political office. Didn’t they decide her daughter’s disappearance was tied to that?”

Noah nodded. “That’s one theory, but not the one we believe. From what we’ve been able to get from her friends, Ashley was chatting with a guy she met online. They’d been chatting for a couple of weeks and had arranged to meet each other. She hasn’t been seen since.”

“An online predator?”

“Probably … no, not probably, definitely.” Noah stood and pulled an envelope from his back pocket. He opened it, took out a photograph, and slid it across the table. “That’s Ashley. She disappeared October 5.”

Samara looked down at the blond-haired, blue-eyed girl. Though innocence shined in her eyes, the makeup and hairstyle made her look at least three years older than her real age.

Another photograph flew into her vision. “Courtney Nixon, age thirteen, Asheville, North Carolina. She disappeared two days before Ashley.” Another photograph appeared. “Joy Harding, age fourteen, Knoxville, Tennessee. Disappeared five days after Ashley.”

As Noah slid photo after photo before her, tears pooled in her eyes. All these innocent children. Why? Who?

After the twelfth photograph, Samara turned away from them and looked up at Noah. If his eyes had been hard and determined before, they were even more so now. This was a man intent on saving Ashley and as many other girls as he could.

“How do you know the disappearances are related?” Finally out of pictures, Noah slumped into his chair.

“Every one of them was to meet with a boy they met on the Internet. All of the boys are high school jocks from another school in the city, different from the one the girls attend. The boys were checked out, and so far, none of them seem to know anything about the girls. They’ve not been ruled out by the police.”

“But they have by you?”

“Same MO. Hundreds of miles apart. Within a one-month time frame. Girls about the same age.” He nodded. “Yeah, they’re connected.”

“But how could the same person—” She stopped when he shook his head.

“Not the same person … the same organization.” Now that was even scarier. She jerked at her restraints, needing her arms and legs free. Samara was a woman who couldn’t sit still long, especially when she needed to think something through. Being tethered like this was driving her crazy.

“Okay, you have my attention. Untie me and let’s talk.”

That slow, sexy smile she remembered too well spread across his face. He stood and within seconds had her completely free.

With a relieved sigh, Samara popped to her feet, needing movement. She halted abruptly when his hand grabbed her wrist.

“I bruised you.” Regret and something else gleamed in his black eyes.

A thumb lightly caressed her forearm where a small bruise was beginning to form. Samara gritted her teeth to hold back a shiver of desire. No way in hell was she going to get drawn back into an attraction for this man again.

She pulled her arm away and walked to the refrigerator. “You want some water?” When he didn’t answer she turned around to ask him again. The words froze on her lips. Noah stood beside the table, and for the first time ever, Samara actually saw an emotion other than amusement or arrogance on his face. Had he actually been disturbed he’d bruised her?

“Noah, I’m fine. Okay?” For some strange reason she was reassuring him. Shaking her head at her own stupid behavior, she turned back to the fridge, grabbed a couple of small water bottles, and slammed the door shut.

Returning to the table, she handed him a bottle and plopped into the chair across from him. “Okay, there’s a reason you told me about all of this. I think I’m beginning to see why, but tell me anyway.”

Noah took a long gulp of water and then blew out a sigh. “It’s the same organization. I know it is. But we have almost nothing on where they are. Since all the abductions happened in a short time frame, I think they’re gathering the girls together into one large shipment.”

“Shipment? For what?”

“Last year, LCR helped shut down a well-run human trafficking ring. There were five houses, in different areas of the world, where people were held and sold for various reasons. We closed down four of them.”

“And the fifth?”

Noah lifted a shoulder as if it were no matter. “We had a mole. One of our best operatives was killed. We apprehended the head of the operation. Unfortunately, his second in command got away, went underground. My sources are telling me he’s reemerged and is back in business. I believe this is his new business venture.”

“So you’re saying he finds young teen girls on the Internet. Posing as a star athlete from their area, he arranges for a meeting place, the girls show up, and they’re nabbed.”

“Yeah.”

Samara nodded. It made sense. As a social worker, she’d done plenty of family and teen counseling. The bastards who’d put this together knew just how to prey on young girls going into or struggling with puberty. Their dream of popularity, acceptance, to be the prettiest, with the most popular boyfriend, made them easy prey. No, not all young girls felt that way, but she’d seen more than her share to know that these people had a huge cache to pull from.

“So, how are you going to stop them and how can I help?”