“He really wanted another baby,” I said instead.
I might as well have shouted the truth with the way Conor’s mouth formed a tight line and his eyes darkened with anger.
“Around the time Vero disappeared, I, uh, I started wanting him.” Mortification slid through my veins. I hurried to get out the rest, knowing it would only get harder to say. “In a way that wasn’t normal for me. Over the last year, it only grew. Even when I was afraid of him, my body still craved him. The day—” I almost choked on the truth as I swallowed it. “The day Lexi and I packed up and left, I found a cabinet in his den. It was stocked full of female Viagra, and there was a chart of how to go from a half pill a day to three a day.”
Conor’s eyes had widened with shock, but his hands were formed into fists.
“I had withdrawals from it the first week we were in the motel. I didn’t even know that was a thing with something like that.”
It took a minute before Conor’s absentminded nodding stopped. “What did you mean by even when I was afraid of him?”
And just like that, I was back in a closet.
Just as I had been in my nightmares before I’d been able to wake myself this morning.
“You told me something the first day that Zachary had said to Einstein. About me running, and the slow chase . . .”
I finally focused on the kitchen and Conor again. He looked ready to burn down the world if it meant finding and stopping Zachary.
“He calls it a game. Our game. Only it was never a game for me.”
Conor
I was vibrating with barely restrained rage by the time Sutton finished telling me what Zachary had done.
The drugs.
The fucked-up game he played, not that I should have been surprised. We found out with Einstein that he liked to play games. Thank God his version of games with Sutton didn’t have death as an outcome, but still . . . these versions . . .
Fuck.
Not only did I have to listen to the shit he’d done to her but I also had to picture her accepting it, even wanting it at the end because of the goddamn drugs. The way she described it—even as tame as her descriptions had been—had been more than I could handle.
Each hour in her presence seemed to put me at greater risk of doing something stupid. Something I couldn’t afford.
And, yet, there I was.
Wanting to punch a man because he’d touched her.
Wanting to slowly kill him because he’d hurt her.
Wanting her.
I scrubbed my hands over my face and stood, needing to get away from her before I made the biggest mistake of my life.
I slid my phone from my pocket and took a step toward my room. “I have a call to make.”
She sat forward, panic flashing in her eyes. “Don’t—”
“I’m not,” I quickly assured her. “I won’t. I need to talk to them about the situation, but not what you told me.”
My eyes automatically shifted toward the empty living room and the girls’ closed bedroom door.
“What’s Lexi doing?”
Sutton loosed an exhausted sigh and turned, though she couldn’t see anything other than the wall at her back. “Coloring in the bedroom.”
The suite was suddenly too silent.
My heart too loud.
Unless Lexi was asleep, their bedroom door was always open if she was in there alone.
I didn’t strain to listen for signs of a silent girl drawing.
I didn’t remain where I was.
Because everything in me told me this was wrong.
“Lexi?” I called out as I hurried across the suite. As soon as I reached the door, I grabbed the handle and knocked as I opened. “Lexi.”
The room was dark, as was the bathroom.
The coloring book and crayons were on the floor.
When I turned, Sutton was halfway across the living room with her arms still curled around her body, her brows pulled together tight in confusion.
“Lexi, now is the time to respond to me,” I yelled, turning in a circle.
“Alexis Raine.” Sutton’s tone was stern, but there was no escaping the fear woven in.
I had my phone at my ear and was storming across the suite to where Sutton was running and yelling for her daughter.
“Get here, get Jess in the room with Sutton.” My voice dropped, and I held Sutton’s shattered stare. “Lexi’s gone.”
“What do you mean she’s gone—what do you—Lexi!”
I ended the call and caught Sutton just before she could take off again. “Do not leave this suite. Do not open the door. Not for anyone other than me, Kieran, or Jess. Understood?”
Fat tears rolled down her cheeks. Her trembling hands drove into her hair. “Where’s my daugh—oh God, oh God.”
“Sutton, tell me you understand!”
Her face crumpled as she nodded.
I raced out of the room and down the hall to the stairs, calling Einstein as I went.
“Favorite gentle giant, what can—”
“Stop,” I shouted as I jumped half the flight and hit the landing. “Lexi. Lexi’s gone. Check the cameras.”
She hissed a curse, and then there was nothing as I tore down the stairs, looking for any sign of her.
If she had been taken, they wouldn’t have used the elevator.
If she had been taken, I would never forgive myself.
“I hate to be the one to ask,” Einstein said distractedly, “but how the fuck did a girl disappear?”
“Cameras, Einstein.”
“Fair question.”
I burst out the door and looked around at the massive resort that was crawling with people going in and out of the different shops and restaurants lining the main floor.
And that was just inside.
I started jogging, searching faces as I did. “Sutton was telling me details about Zachary. We were on the far side of the suite, Lexi was coloring in the room near the door.”
Jesus Christ, there was so much water in here, and I had no fucking clue if the girl could swim.
Indoor pools, waterfalls, and it all seemed as big of a threat as the possibility of someone taking her.
“Good news, she left the room by herself. No one got in there without you seeing them.” Einstein hesitated and then made a muffled noise. “She ran out of the room.”
I stopped in the middle of a cluster of restaurants and turned, searching faces and the water surrounding me, trying to think like a girl I didn’t know.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I ground out. “Everything was fine with her.”
As far as I fucking knew.
I dragged my free hand through my hair and let out a growl. “Can you see where she went after?”
“Already on that. Waiting on elevators.”
I glanced at the stores and then ran in their direction, praying like hell she had stayed inside and gone to one of these.
I was already pushing past people to get into the first store when Einstein said, “She got off on the ground floor, waiting to see where she goes. Hold on, Kieran’s calling.”
A second and third store, and I was struggling to breathe. I had one job, and I’d failed in the worst way.
My head was so clouded that I was seconds from going to the front desk, finding a PA system, and demanding security help look for her.
Considering I was supposed to be keeping her hidden, I knew I couldn’t. Rationally, I knew that.
But I was so goddamn close to caving.
“She went right,” Einstein suddenly said.
I hurried out of the store I was in and ran to a place where I could see the elevators, nearly knocking over a man as I did. “Shit. Shit, sorry.”
I kept the elevators in my sight as I started going to my left, Lexi’s right, which led toward all the restaurants.
“No. No, that’s all restaurants. She wouldn’t have gone that way.”
“Okay, but she did.”
“We just fuckin
g ate, Einstein.”
“There’s only so fast I can follow her when I have to constantly switch cameras.” That distracted tone she got when she was working on something was heavy with irritation. “Not saying she stopped at any of them, but she went that way.”
My head was shaking as she spoke. My legs were already taking me the other way. I looked ahead and had to struggle to stay standing when it felt like my knees were knocked out.
On the opposite side of the atrium, Lexi was slipping out of a shop.
“I found her.” It was a relieved breath wrapped in guilt and pain.
And then I was running, straining against every instinct to yell the girl’s name.
I didn’t remember the people I ran into or pushed past. I didn’t remember the obstacles littering the path to get to her. I just ran straight to her.
It was the longest run of my life.
I dropped to the ground and caught her around her shoulders just before she entered another store.
Her tiny body jolted, but she relaxed as soon as she saw me.
Her face was red, and her eyes were puffy.
I wanted to yell at her for leaving.
I wanted to demand to know why she had.
I wanted to beg her to finally talk to me and tell me what was wrong.
Before I could get a word out, she threw herself against my chest and sobbed.
My chest ached in a way I couldn’t explain. I wanted to tear my heart out because it ached for her. I wanted to protect her from whatever had hurt her. I wanted to make sure she never cried again.
I was also pretty goddamn sure that hug was better than any word Lexi could’ve ever said to me.
My phone, which was still clenched in my hand, rang. I lifted it and then answered the call when I saw Kieran’s name on the screen.
“I found her.”
“All right, I’ll head back to the room. The two of you need to get back. Now.”
I didn’t respond. Just ended the call and leaned back to look at Lexi. “We need to get back in the room, but we’ll talk about this in there, all right?”
Her head was moving in huge, stubborn shakes as I spoke. “I don’t want to. No one cares about me anyway.”
There was that feeling again.
Tore my heart out. Crushed it and set it on fire.
She believed what she was saying, and to have her first words to me be so utterly devastating?
Damn.
I leaned my head close to hers and lowered my voice. “What are you talking about? For such a smart girl, that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Her lips quivered and her eyes, which were so much like her mom’s, filled with tears. “I heard Momma talking to you.” She sniffed quickly. “Heard her say Daddy was mad about me. That she didn’t want me.”
My mind raced as I tried to figure out what she was talking about, and then it hit me.
Zachary wanting a boy.
“No. No, Lexi, no. That isn’t—” Fuck.
I dragged a hand over my face and fought with myself.
I could feel the need to get us out of the open like my next breaths depended on it, but there was also this damn voice telling me that Lexi needed me right there listening to her.
“Your mom wanted you,” I said slowly, making sure she heard and understood me. “I don’t know her well, but what I know for sure is that you are the most important part of her life. If she didn’t want you, she wouldn’t have looked like her entire world had been ripped away when you disappeared just now.”
Lexi’s body jerked with a new round of sobs. “But I heard her, I did.”
“We were talking about something that’s a little hard to explain. Something that has nothing to do with your mom not wanting you.” I dropped my head lower until I caught her stare. “I swear to you.”
“You promise, promise?”
“Promise, promise.” I gave her a pointed look. “Now, you did something really dangerous, so we need to get back to the room and get you to your mom.”
She slammed against my chest again and wrapped her arms around my neck. “I’m sorry, Mr. Conor.”
“I know, Lex.” I stood with her still in my arms and started toward the elevators.
As soon as we were in the room, I released her and watched her run into a crying Sutton’s arms.
Kieran and Jess were there, both standing away so that I barely noticed them, both wearing looks that had me biting back a curse.
I left the girls in the living room and passed my friends on the way to my room. I didn’t hear them enter or shut my door, but sure enough, when I turned, the door was closed and they were both standing against it.
“Tell me how she got away.” Kieran’s demand was soft, lethal, but it held a hint of worry. As though he were afraid that I was about to confirm something.
When I relayed what I had told Einstein, Kieran only lifted a skeptical brow.
“Okay, obviously that was the wrong answer. Why don’t you tell me what you think was happening?”
He glanced at Jess. “With what we talked about last night—”
My bitter laugh was enough to stop him. “So, what, you think I was too busy fucking a client to notice that her daughter slipped away?”
“Conor, we just need to know,” Jess said with a sigh.
“The fact that you keep trying to give me the opportunity to tell you something else is pissing me off.” I tried to relax my hands, which had curled into tight fists, but the adrenaline from almost losing Lexi and their unwillingness to trust my words was pumping through me too hard. “I told you what happened, if you don’t believe it, then we have bigger problems.”
They were silent for a while before Kieran said, “I told you I wouldn’t stand in the way. But if it’s—”
“Get out.”
“If it’s putting people at risk,” he said, his raised tone harsher than I’d ever heard it.
“I said get the fuck out,” I seethed. When they didn’t move, I stepped closer and lowered my voice so I wouldn’t be heard outside the room. “I told you to take me off this case, if you forgot. To jog your memory, you said no. What happened today has nothing to do with what we discussed last night.” I snuck a glance at Jess. “This is all pretty comical considering I remember a time when a girl got in the way of your jo—”
Kieran was directly in front of me with a knife pressed to my throat before I realized he’d moved.
I swallowed, the action pressing the blade harder to my skin. “Job.”
My eyes shifted to Jess, who was staring at us with a mixture of sadness and horror.
I only felt the first.
I knew the fucked-up ins and outs of Kieran. Knew he’d been trained to be an assassin from the day he could walk. Knew he had more control over knives and blades than most people did over their body. Knew he had a demon in him that craved the kill.
Just as I knew he was the only person I’d trust to have my back.
To have him pull a knife on me? It hurt.
I gripped his arm and pushed it away, knowing he’d let me because he was already fighting the instinct to kill. “Apparently, I hit a nerve.”
His chest jerked with ragged breaths when he stumbled back, looking more ashamed than I would have thought him capable of. “Different. It was different for us.”
My mouth opened to deny it, but a laugh came out instead as I sank down onto the bed and rested my elbows on my knees. “You’re right. It was. You were actually fucking Jess.”
I didn’t remind them of the other differences because that would only hurt Jess. And I’d pushed Kieran enough for one day.
“If what you say was happening was truly what happened, then okay. I’m sorry for doubting you,” Jess said as she walked over and sat on the floor in front of me. “What did she tell you?”
A hesitant sound formed in my chest. After the bullshit of the last few minutes, this wasn’t about to go over well. “I was actually getting up to call you when I realiz
ed Lexi was gone. I told Sutton I wouldn’t tell you the information she’d given me.”
“Conor,” Kieran said on a groan.
“What I can tell you is all you need to know right now.” I gave him a pleading look. “Trust me on this.”
His only response was that hard, threatening stare.
“Zachary played games with her, but they weren’t fatal like with Einstein. What he did to her? Still enough to make anyone want to get far, far from their husband. Jess, I think it’s something you should talk to her about. If she tells you, you’ll understand why.”
“Pretty sure I already do,” she murmured, but she still gave me a confirming nod.
My attention shifted to the door, as though I could see the woman somewhere on the other side of it. “Like I said, it’s enough for any woman to want to get far away from her husband and press charges, but it isn’t enough for a relocation.”
Jess looked to Kieran, but he didn’t take his eyes from me.
“What are you thinking?” he finally asked.
“However word got around about us helping Veronica, Sutton didn’t know any of the specifics behind it. I think . . . shit, I don’t know,” I ground out.
Everything was just speculation because she still had yet to come right out and say exactly why she and Lexi had contacted us. I was starting to wonder if she ever would.
“She wanted to get away from Zachary. She needed to,” I continued. “I think she knew we could make Veronica disappear, so she wanted us to make her and Lexi disappear, and maybe put them together. She went for an extreme, not realizing what she was asking for, or that there are people out there who genuinely need this.”
“Only to find out who Zachary truly is, that she’s in the middle of a cartel, and relocating her really is necessary,” Jess mumbled.
“Right.”
“But she hasn’t trusted us from the beginning,” Kieran said. “She’s still withholding information—like what crime she supposedly saw, why she was scared, and why they were surrounded by people.”
“I know.”
“We need to know these things.”
“I can’t force her to tell me. None of us can.” I loosed a slow breath and said, “She knows we didn’t have information from Veronica . . . that we helped them without any reasoning.”
Limit (Rebel Book 3) Page 13