Force of Nature by Suzanne Brockmann

looked at Ric with eyes that were dead. “Who you working for?”
    They were starting to roll. There was so much about this that was not good. With two skinheads and two bodyguards here in the back, Ric was sorely outnumbered—forget about the driver up front and the still-weeping girl. But all Ric could think was
thank God he’d sent Annie to the car. Thank God she’d done as he’d asked.
    Before he could come up with a fabricated answer to
who are you working for
—God knows telling them the truth, that he’d virtually led the shooter right to them, would get him very dead very fast—the skinnier kid with the 88 on his shirt knocked on the window.
    “That big chick,” he said, from his seat with his arm around Brenda in the back of the limo. “She’s with him.”
    No.
    But, yes, the limo braked to a stop. The door opened and Foley scrambled out. He was back in a flash, dragging Annie into the car.
    She didn’t try to fight him, didn’t protest at all, as the man’s hands swept over her, as he searched her as roughly as he’d searched Ric.
    She just looked over at Ric, concern in her eyes. “Are you all right?”
She
was worried about
him.
    No doubt he looked like shit. He could feel blood from a scrape on the side of his face trickling down past his ear into the collar of his shirt. His
torn
shirt. And his elbow was trashed. His head still hadn’t cleared, and his leg…He couldn’t remember getting kicked in the calf, but he must’ve been. It still hurt like hell.
    Gordie Junior aimed his weapon at Annie now, damn him. “Shut up, bitch,” he ordered her.
    Ric must’ve sat forward, because Foley’s extra-large partner pushed him back, jamming his own sidearm into Ric’s throat. He looked over at Annie, who was looking back at him. “Do what they say,” he told her.
    “No ID on the girl,” Foley reported. He turned his attention back to Ric. “Who’re you working for?”
    Again, Gordie Junior’s little friend interrupted from the back. “Yo, Frankie man, where the fuck you going? Club’s out on Longboat Key, and
…shit
, dude. Junior, come on. Don’t let him do this to us. Bren’s jonesing. Bad.”
    “Gotta take you home, Junior,” the limo driver—Frankie—said, an apology in his voice. “You know the drill. If someone’s gunning for you, we take you to your father’s. Straightaway. No exceptions.”
    “Dad’ll take care of her,” Gordie Junior reassured his friend.
    “I don’t suppose you could just let us out at the next red light,” Ric asked Foley, who made a sound that might’ve passed for laughter in some circles.
    Because
that
was where he’d heard the name Gordie Junior before. Gordie Junior was the eldest son of local crime lord Gordon Burns.
    Alleged
local crime lord Gordon Burns. The man’s organization was incredibly tight and ridiculously loyal. As a result, despite all the nasty things Burns had done—from running a prostitution ring to drug smuggling to murder for hire—he’d never gone to trial, let alone been convicted.
    Which didn’t mean he wasn’t guilty as hell. Or any less dangerous than the sharks in the tank at Mote Marine Aquarium.
    This was supposed to have been an easy case. A safe case. A case that Annie could work on without putting herself into danger.
    Ric couldn’t have been more wrong.
    “Who do you work for?” Foley asked for a third time.
    Ric looked at Annie and shook his head. He would have said or done anything to get her out of there, but their best shot lay in getting a chance to speak to the man in charge. “We’ll wait,” he told Foley—told Annie, too, by using that we instead of an I—“to speak directly to Mr. Burns.”
             
    Peggy Ryan was missing. It was official.
    And there was nothing Jules could do about it. Nothing he could do to help her.
    It was one of the nightmare scenarios every FBI team leader dreaded. An operative deep undercover vanishing at a time when continuing the investigation was