Isn't It Bromantic (Bromance Book Club #4) by Lyssa Kay Adams

            She wasn’t going to do that to Vlad. The cycle ended here. She had to find a way to escape.

            Elena turned onto her side on the small seat to look around the car again for a weapon, anything.

            “What’re you doing back there?”

            She adopted a pained voice. “Trying to get comfortable. My head hurts.”

            “It won’t be much longer.”

            A chill stole over her body at the double meaning in his words.

            She shifted again.

            And that’s when she felt it.

            In her front pocket.

            The burner phone. He hadn’t found the burner phone. Maybe he hadn’t even thought to check. He would have been in a hurry to get her body into the car before anyone saw them.

            Heart racing, her eyes darted to the rearview mirror. He was still staring at the road ahead, but if he so much as glanced back, he would see what she was doing.

            Elena rolled onto her other side to hide her front from his view.

            Facing away from him, she angled her hands toward her pocket and worked her two pointer fingers inside. It took several slippery tries with her sweat-soaked skin to ease the phone out inch by inch. It fell onto the seat with a quiet thud, but it might as well have been as loud as a gunshot. She held her breath for his reaction, but . . . nothing. She picked up the phone between her bound hands and pondered another problem. How was she going to hide the light from the screen when she turned it on? Faking a moan, she curled into a tight ball to surround the phone as she hit the home screen button.

            It lit up, and she shoved it facedown on the seat.

            “I really am sorry about your head,” the man said. “I do not like to hit women.”

            Right. He just kidnapped them and trafficked them.

            Elena eased the phone onto its side, cupping it close to her body. Fumbling, she found the button to turn down the brightness. Then she flipped the tiny button on the side to silence it.

            Acting as fast as she could, she hit the icon for messages and thumbed in Vlad’s number by memory. Another lesson from her father. Never rely on technology to remember phone numbers.

            With fat, clumsy fingers, she typed a single word.

                             Sparrow.





* * *



            * * *

            Vlad clenched the phone in his hand. The word swam in his vision. Turned and twisted and floated as his brain tried to push it away. He sank against the island in his kitchen, and his crutches fell with a crash.

            “What’s wrong, man?” Colton looked down at the text message. “What is sparrow?”

            Vlad’s knees gave out. Colton wrapped his arms around Vlad’s chest just in time. “Jesus. What the fuck. Vlad, what is going on?”

            Vlad choked on his own voice. “Call the police.”

            “What?”

            “Call the fucking police!”

            “Why? What the fuck is going on?”

            Vlad grabbed the front of Colton’s shirt. “She’s been taken. Elena has been kidnapped.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX





Elena curled into a ball and made a noise like she was crying.

            “Please do not do that,” the man said. “I cannot stand to hear a woman cry.”

            The sonofabitch. Men like him got off on making women cry. She was going to enjoy making him pay. With her body shielding the light and sound, she hit the button for 911 and then quickly muted it so he wouldn’t hear the dispatcher answer. She just hoped the dispatcher could hear them.

            Elena moaned again for effect. “Why are you doing this to me?”

            “You know why,” the man said.

            “Just tell me where you’re taking me.”