If nothing else, at least I would have some warm memories to cling to while I had to endure whatever was ahead of me.
Maybe if I focused really hard, I could escape back into my memories, insulate myself from anything happening to me physically while I dive deeper and deeper into my mind.
I’d never really been into meditation. Growing up, that was sort of frowned upon as something practiced by other religions. We were supposed to pray.
And, hell, maybe I would pray.
It had been a long time.
I’d absolutely had a crisis of faith sometime in the years I was with Raúl. It was hard to believe in a benevolent god who would let you endure so much, who refused to answer your prayers.
But everyone prayed in the end, didn’t they? At least when the end was bloody and violent and you just wanted a way out.
The trunk took a sudden, hard turn, catching not only me, but my abductor off-guard, sending us flying into the side wall.
He’d endured most of the impact. The sensation of it must have surprised him because, suddenly, his hands released me.
I couldn’t claim that I was being brave at that moment. Hell, I couldn’t even claim to be thinking at all.
It was pure instinct as I wrenched away, as I became hyper-aware of a metallic clattering to the ground in the far, dark corner.
The truck had been empty.
Save for him.
And me.
And the gun.
The gun.
It had to be the gun.
Granted, I would never claim to have any experience with a gun. Yes, objectively, I’d been around them a lot. But only because the men I’d been around had them and used them.
I’d never even been allowed to hold one before.
Cary said that, eventually, he wanted to show me how to use one. He said it was an important part of self-defense, just as important as me taking lessons at the local boxing gym so I could learn how to fight off an attacker.
I suddenly wished the princesses had invited me to join them sooner than we’d originally agreed on.
But it was too late for that.
I didn’t know a single thing about self-defense.
But I did understand the basic mechanics of a gun.
Aim.
Pull trigger.
Anyone could do it.
You just had to be desperate enough.
At that moment, I wasn’t sure a single person on Earth had ever been as desperate as I was.
I flew toward that corner, feeling around on the ground for the metal, my fingertips getting caked in dust and some sort of oily grime that I was trying not to think about.
Behind me, I heard a curse and shuffling as my kidnapper recovered and realized he’d lost his weapon.
He was coming.
Just as that thought formed, though, my hands closed around the gun, still warm from his hand.
I fumbled with it for a second, needing to make sure I was holding it the right way.
It was heavier than I thought.
Though I wasn’t sure if it was actually, physically heavy, or if it felt heavy with the implications of what I was willing to do right then.
Aim.
Shoot.
Maim.
Kill.
But at the end of the day, if it was him or me, I was going to choose me. I was going to choose the future I had started to really fantasize about. I was going to choose the man I was seriously starting to fall for. I was going to choose hope and promise.
And he could rot in hell for all I cared.
I scrambled around, putting my back to the wall for stability, crouching low so I was harder to grab.
Then waiting as I heard him getting closer.
His footsteps moved in tandem with my heartbeat that I could feel in my chest, my temples, and my neck.
“Stupid bitch. You think you can hide from—“
I wasn’t trying to hide.
I was trying to wait until he was close enough that I didn’t miss.
And when he was, I didn’t even hesitate.
My finger curled, the trigger pulled, and the bullet sailed into his body, sending him flying backward.
I didn’t think.
I popped up.
I moved forward.
I stood over the shadow of him on the ground.
And I pulled the trigger again.
Just to make sure he wasn’t going to be able to get up and grab me again.
I was moving again before I fully understood my intention.
Before I realized what I was doing, I was crouching down at the door, grabbing the little pull thing, and dragging it upward.
I had the good sense at the last second to grab for the pull bar, just barely managing to wrap a couple of fingertips around it since I was still holding the gun. But it was enough of a grip that I didn’t immediately fly out the back of the moving truck as the door went up.
A town flashed before my eyes, just splashes of colors. Stores, apartment buildings.
Nothing was familiar.
It could have been a town anywhere.
I didn’t think we’d been driving for long, but long enough, it seemed, to be out of Navesink Bank.
I had to get out.
Which meant I was going to need to jump from a moving vehicle.
My stomach twisted hard at the idea of how hard the impact could be, how much damage could be done.
Ultimately, though, less than would be done to me if I didn’t jump, if the truck slowed, and the driver came back to grab me.
Decision made, I sucked in a deep breath and tossed the gun, figuring if I survived the fall, I could find and grab it, use it to defend myself until I could get help from Cary.
Then, before I could psych myself out of it, I threw my arms up over my head, protecting my face with my forearms, bent downward to tuck my fragile ribs in a bit more, and threw myself out.
I swear time slowed down as I hovered in the air for one horrifying moment before I crashed and rolled.
The impact stole my breath from me, an all-over sort of sensation that made it impossible to tell if anything was genuinely hurt, if something was broken.
And before I could even think past that pain, there was the burn of the pavement raking over my exposed skin.
It felt like I was being flayed, like my skin was being ripped off all at once.
It seemed like I rolled for forever before I suddenly stopped, flopping onto my back, staring up at the sky.
I needed to get up.
It didn’t matter if something was broken or if parts of me were hanging off. I needed to get up. I could assess the damage later.
When I was safe.
Survival mode re-engaged, I rolled onto my side and sat up, pushing back any of the pain that assaulted me at once, turning in the direction the truck had been driving away from, and moving forward.
To be honest, it was a pathetic hobble at first.
It got faster and faster with each couple of steps as my brain started to kick back in again, as I realized I needed to get as far as fast as I possibly could.
That didn’t mean I did it quietly, though.
Oh, no.
I whimpered as I forced my body into a jog, then was actively crying—tears streaming down my face—as I pushed myself to a run.
I came across the gun what felt like too quickly.
I grabbed it and tucked it in my arm, not wanting anyone who saw me to see it.
The last thing I needed was to be traced back to a murder, even if it had been in self-defense.
Think, I demanded, finding my brain oddly sluggish and uncooperative. Think. What do I need to do?
The voice in my head, when it spoke, wasn’t in my usual, familiar tone.
No.
It was Cary’s voice that spoke in my head.
You need to get off the street.
Right. Yes. Of course.
If the truck circled back, there were sure to see me as I ran dow
n the street, practically begging them to pick me up again.
Decision made, I rushed down the next street, finding myself flanked by tall buildings in various stages of disrepair. Some were just old and unkempt. Others were actively falling apart, and likely hadn’t been inhabited by anything other than rats and raccoons in decades.
They would be the easiest places to get into.
But they would also likely be the first place someone would come looking for me.
Another pathetic whimper escaped me as I cursed myself for leaving my damn phone charging on the kitchen counter back at the apartment.
If I had it, I could make one phone call, and everything would be better. Someone else would come and take over. I could just fall into a bed and cry.
But it was useless to think about that.
It wasn’t the reality I was living in.
I had to save myself this one last time.
No matter what it took.
Trying to suck in a deep breath, I got nearly to the next block when I decided to charge up the front steps of an apartment building where the last person to enter hadn’t pulled the door closed, so it could latch. It kept kicking back in the breeze, giving me a chance to run up and slip inside before it slammed shut.
But I went ahead and latched it, hoping the buzzer might be some form of protection to me.
I didn’t know where I was, but it didn’t seem like the best of areas. And it was highly unlikely that anyone would come to answer the door to someone slamming on it and asking for help.
Because, of course, if someone at your doorstep was in trouble, they were going to bring that trouble into your life.
I couldn’t even be mad about it.
I turned instead, going to the elevator that looked like it had been installed before my parents—hell, my grandparents—were born, and pressed the button for the basement.
It wasn’t perfect.
But it was a place to hide.
To let some time pass.
To maybe give me a chance to find a way to call Cary.
I held my breath the chugging trip downward, then poked my head out, paranoid about some angry-faced super might be hanging around, demanding I get the hell out of his building.
But there was nothing but the groans of the building and the scattering sound I was trying to tell myself wasn’t rats.
The basement was drafty and damp, but I took a certain kind of comfort in how packed it was with random crap. It seemed like a mix of old, outdated vacuums and various tools I didn’t even begin to claim to know the names of or uses for. There was scattered, stained, moth-eaten furniture likely from when tenants moved out and left them behind.
I wandered around the space until I saw a small utility room in the back corner.
It was the most hidden I could get.
I absentmindedly snatched a dusty cushion off a chair as I passed, trying not to think about what kind of filth or creepy crawlers might be on it.
The utility room held a series of mops and buckets, rusted and useless, and a metal shelf with a series of different parts of, I imagined, appliances.
Taking a deep breath, I moved behind the door, tossing down the cushion, then carefully lowering myself down onto it, using the wall to hold myself up.
I probably should have kept moving.
Because the second I stopped, the adrenaline that had kept me numb to all the various pains in my body vanished, and everything burst to life at once.
The throbbing pain on my shoulder, elbows, hips, and knees. From the impact of the fall. Then the burning feeling on my hands, arms, chin, and the side of my forehead where my arm must not have been covering.
Alone, in pain, a little too stunned by the events to think straight, a sort of hysterical cry bubbled up and burst out.
There was no stopping the tears or the way my whole body shook as I was finally able to start to process the fear and uncertainty, the reality of what I’d just been through.
I felt like I cried for hours, for days.
And by the time the tears dried, my face felt raw and my eyes were almost swollen shut.
It was right about then that I heard something. Something that had my stomach tensing, that had my heartbeat slamming in my chest.
The elevator moving downward.
Someone was coming.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Cary
I was in the middle of laughing at some asinine shit that Dezi had just said when the call came in.
I didn’t think much of it when I saw Seth’s name on the screen. He was hanging with Abigail. I figured maybe they had a question about the apartment, or when I might be back.
I was still chuckling when I slid to accept then raised the phone to my ear.
“What—“
“They took Abigail,” Seth snapped, cutting me off, making my heart drop to my fucking feet.
“What?” I barked. And it must have been louder than it sounded to me because every conversation around me silenced at once.
“They took Abigail. In a moving truck. Finn and Louana are down. Breathing, but down.”
“Finn and Louana are shot,” I called to the room, already rushing out the front doors, hearing Dezi at my heels, barking out the address to the apartment to the others who hadn’t been there yet. “Where? Where did they go?” I demanded.
“Took a left out of the street. I have nothing else to give you. I’m sorry. But it was a plain white moving truck with a red triangle on the side. That’s it.”
I hung up as I turned over my bike, peeling out of the lot as the others got on their own bikes to head toward the apartment.
My priority probably should have been Finn and Louana, club members. That was always where my loyalty had been in the past. It was where it likely should have been right then too.
But all I could think about was Abigail.
Who I’d promised was safe.
Who I’d told I would never let anything happen to her.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I flew through Navesink Bank, going in the general direction that Seth had told me about, even though, logically, I knew there was no way I was going to find them. They had too much of a head start. They could be in any direction. They could be moving or hiding out somewhere.
I had no fucking idea.
I’d never felt quite as helpless as I did as I circled around the town again. Not even when I’d had all my rights and freedoms stripped away.
This was worse.
Leagues worse.
Because I knew exactly what was in store for Abigail once Raúl got his hands on her again.
I needed to stop wasting time.
I needed to go back, regroup, think, get some other people involved.
Hailstorm, they had surveillance all over town. They could find the van, they could trace it.
I needed to talk to Chris or Lo.
Decision made, I circled back, heading toward the apartment, finding the street lined with bikes. But no cops. No ambulances.
What the hell?
Didn’t Seth say Finn and Louana were hit?
Even as I thought that, I could see bloodstains on the cement.
I rushed off my bike, flying up into my apartment to find Fallon bent over his little brother’s shoulder, digging in his flesh for a bullet that had seemed to luckily avoid hitting anything vital.
Thank fuck.
“Louana?” I choked out, surprised I could even think of another woman’s name when Abigail was out there, being held by the same people who’d kept her captive for years.
“Bathroom. She’s fine,” Seth said as I fell back against the wall, cradling my head in my hands.
“We thought it was the delivery people with the couch,” Finn explained, then broke off on a curse as Fallon finally got the bullet, yanking it out, then dropping it with a pinging noise in the sink.
“I’m not blaming you,” I said, shaking my head.
For fuck’s sake, there was three
of them. If it happened with three of them there to try to protect her, the chances of me having been able to protect her were slim to none.
“That mother fucker,” I hissed, helplessness filling my body, making me turn and lash out, slamming my fist into the wall, feeling it go right through the drywall.
“Whoa, Zaddy, might need those fists,” Dezi said, shaking his head at me. “Don’t go breaking your fucking fingers before you can wrap ‘em around that fucker’s throat.”
He was right.
I wasn’t a lashing out in anger sort of person.
Then again, I’d never been someone who had someone who meant so much to them before.
“I’ve got Chris on the cameras,” Fallon said, giving me a nod as he slapped—yes, literally slapped, because brothers were assholes to each other—the bandage on Finn’s shoulder. “We will find something.”
Yes, we would.
We always did.
But would it be too late by then?
Eventually, Fallon and Valen brought Finn and Louana back to the clubhouse to recover, leaving me, Dezi, Seth, and Voss standing around feeling completely fucking useless.
Until there was the sound of car doors on the ground below, making us all stiffen and draw our weapons.
“Couldn’t see who it was,” Seth said, shaking his head as he looked out the window. “Black SUV. That’s all I got.”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Two sets, maybe three. Not in any kind of rush, and definitely not trying to be quiet.
“Knock knock,” A’s voice sounded a second before he pushed open the door, coming in behind a bloodied man he was holding by the back of his collar.
“The fuck is this?” I asked, eyeing the other man who stayed back in the hall, face expressionless.
“Heard there was some trouble ‘round here. Kind of trouble that had lil’ mama getting snatched up, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said, stomach tensing.
A nodded his head a couple times as he pursed his lips in an expression that, for him, seemed like anger.
“Tell ‘em,” A demanded, yanking back the collar of the man in front of him. “Said fucking tell ‘em,” Andres barked in a cold, alarmingly calm tone just a second before he slammed his foot into the back of the man’s leg, making him go down on one knee.
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