Page 4 of Forever Found

“No,” I groaned as I rested my spinning head in my hand. “It’s not good, Eli. There’s no way Max would have told me everything if he planned to let us go. If Ash pays that ransom, Max is going to kill us. We’re only any use to him while he can use us to get to Ash,” I explained.

“They’ll find us then. Asher will scour the country to find us. He won’t give up, and nor will your men.”

“Adam’s dead.” I only just got the words out before a sob burst from me.

“What? No! That can’t be right, Addy.”

“They sh-shot him, Eli. He was bleeding out. There’s no way he survived. I…” I tried to take a breath, but the sobs wouldn’t stop coming and my entire body was trembling as I thought back to Adam’s gray, still face and the huge pool of blood that had surrounded him the last time I saw him. “He was dead. He’s gone.”

“We don’t know that,” Eli argued as he pulled me into his arm and carefully cradled my aching head against his chest. “We don’t know that he’s gone. Adam is strong. He could have held on. You have to cling to the hope that he’s still alive.”

I knew he was right, and I desperately wanted to cling to the hope he spoke of, but I couldn’t get that last image of Adam from my mind. He’d been too still. I couldn’t remember his chest rising and falling. I was so sure he hadn’t even been breathing.

“Tell me what happened, Addy. I remember Leo at the door, but that’s it,” Eli spoke up after just allowing me to cry for several minutes.

I took a deep breath and sat up, wiping at my face, then wincing at the pain in my shredded wrists cause by me trying to escape the rope back at the house.

“Your wrists,” Eli said as he caught my hand and pulled it closer to take a look. “These need cleaning and dressing.”

“I don’t think our kidnappers are too concerned about our welfare, Eli,” I rasped, my voice hoarse.

“Tell me what happened.”

“Leo knocked on the door, He was working with them. You were knocked out. By the time I realized something was wrong, they were already coming for me. I tried to hide and I managed to call Kane, but then Bull found me.”

“Bull. The guy from your memories?”

“Yeah. He tied my hands, but I fought him and got away. I came to look for you, and yelled for Adam. You were gone already, but Adam came running from upstairs. He was getting us out of the house to look for you, when he was shot. I fought to get free of the ropes to stop the bleeding, but I was pulled away. They drugged me and I passed out.” I stopped to take another breath as that last image of Adam haunted me again. All of the life he was always so filled with had been gone.

“Addy?”

“I was on the plane when I woke up. You too. You were unconscious. Max told me everything, then Bull knocked me out. I have no idea where we are now,” I went on.

“Judging from the view out of that window, we’re back in Nevada somewhere. The house is huge and the whole property isfenced in with cameras on every corner. I saw security patrolling too. Escaping is not going to be easy.”

“Max said Asher wouldn’t be able to find us here,” I told him.

“Then he’s underestimated our brother. Ash will find us. I have no doubt of that,” Eli insisted. “Maybe there’s a way we could help him too.”

“What do you mean?”

“If this is a ransom, Ash is going to insist on proof of life. That means we get to speak to him on a call, or a photo, or video, something to prove we’re alive. We have to use that to give Ash a clue.”

“Eli, that’s brilliant,” I gasped. “We have to tell him it’s Max. If he knows that, surely he could find this location? I mean it has to tie to Max in some way, right?”

“How do we tell him it’s Max though, without being hugely obvious. Max cannot know what we’re doing,” Eli pointed out.

“Do you know morse code?”

“No. I was never in the military. I wasn’t even a boy scout,” he told me with a roll of his eyes.

“Okay. What if we get to talk to him, what could we say?” I asked instead.

“Do you think pig Latin would work?” he asked with a groan after several moments of us both thinking and coming up with nothing.

“God, we suck at this,” I cried.

“What if we put his initials on our skin, somewhere they won’t see?”