“I’m not gonna hurt you,” he promised, tightening his hold of her arm to stop her from crumbling to the sidewalk, shoving his gun back in the holster on his backside before taking her other arm in his fierce grip as well, forcing her to stand tall. He searched her face, noting the black bruise surrounding her left eye and the welt the size of a golf ball on her temple. “Stop fighting me. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“Let me go!” she begged, looking up at him with bulging, tear-filled blue eyes. Her lips trembled, slowly curling down at the corners. “They’ll kill me—please. Please let me go.” Her voice grew low and weak, and she cringed, balling her hands into fists when she appeared to realize he wasn’t going to release her. “They’ll kill me…”
With more than a decade on the job, Linc knew an underage girl on sight. He knew even better an underage girl scared to her wits of her pimp. Even better than that, he knew the angelic face of the underage girl who’d graced hundreds of homemade posters that had made the rounds all over Shadow Rock Island.
He realized, incredibly, that the wide-eyed girl before him was Zena Jones.
Zena Jones, the seventeen-year-old who’d disappeared from the island without a trace. The girl he’d once sworn to Veda was gone forever. Her hair was a different color, and she’d lost weight, but it was definitely her. Any other night, the sight of Zena would’ve sent a blind hope churning through his heart that she’d never understand.
But that night wasn’t just any night.
That night, Linc had gone blind, his own eyes wild with a desperation that left no room to be thrilled about finding a missing kid.
He shook her softly. “A black woman. About your height. Big hair. Did you see her?” It was his turn to beg, tightening his hold on her arms. “Please.”
She clenched her teeth, nostrils flaring.
Silence.
Then, her watery eyes narrowed over his shoulder.
Linc eyes expanded, and then he followed her terrified gaze back to the Ford Fusion.
To the trunk.
Releasing a sharp gasp, he began back toward the Ford, taking her with him, keeping one of her arms in his grasp. She wept softly, the click of her heels filling his ears as she tottered behind him. From his peripheral, Linc saw the driver’s side door of the police cruiser that had sideswiped the Ford fly open for the first time. A heavyset officer stumbled out, holding his skull and clutching the door for leverage with a frown on his face.
“You straight?” Linc called.
The officer nodded from his car. “Steering wheel got me pretty good. Knocked me out cold for a minute, but I’m all right.”
“Driver’s on foot,” Linc said. “Call it in.”
As the officer nodded and disappeared back inside his cruiser to call in the missing suspect, Linc threw open the driver’s side door of the Ford, Zena’s arm still locked in his grasp. Every breath came up short, jumping from his lips in a flurry as he bent down inside the car and lifted the lever for the trunk, located next to the driver’s seat.
A dull thud rang into the air as the trunk popped open. Linc stood and tugged softly on Zena’s arm. She yelped when the pull caused her to stumble forward, trip over her feet and plop into the driver’s seat, belly bunching between her small breasts and thighs, leather miniskirt riding up, exposing her slim legs and a hint of her leopard print thong. Linc pointed at her, and her eyes crossed to take in the tip of his callused index finger.
“Don’t move, you understand?” He didn’t wait for an answer, taking the submission in her big eyes as surrender enough, and held his breath as he broke his gaze away from her and circled around the back of the car. Approaching police sirens sounded in the distance, louder every moment as he hesitated at the trunk, a part of him too frightened by what might await him inside to move. Then, a shot of adrenaline raced through him, causing his hand to fly out and throw open the door of the trunk.
Long lashes fluttered shut, full lips slightly parted, and thick natural curls falling across her forehead in tight spirals, she looked downright serene. If he didn’t know better, he’d guess she was simply in the middle of a short nap.
With a string of blood racing down her forehead.
Linc’s heart leaped into his throat.
“No, Veda—no, no, no,” he whispered, leaning into the trunk where Veda was curled up inside like an infant in the womb. He snaked one hand under her body and cupped her ebony cheek with the other, shaking her softly. No response. “God damn it, Veda.” He pressed the tips of his fingers into her neck, desperately feeling for a pulse.
He released the strangled breath he’d been holding when he found one, albeit faint. But the moment he exhaled, he was sucking in another breath, preparing his body for the gut-wrenching scream that came right on its heels.
“Call an ambulance,” he bellowed, his voice clipped but still loud enough to reach across the street to the police cruiser, rising louder still as Linc called out again. “Call a goddamn ambulance!”
4
The vision of the gash on Veda’s head, along with the sight of her, curled up in the back of that trunk, stayed with Linc long after he’d fished her out. Long after the paramedics had arrived, managing to stabilize her but not wake her up. Long after they’d driven her to the hospital where she’d yet to open her eyes. Long after Zena had arrived at the hospital for a few scans as well, eventually finding herself on a gurney in the emergency room.
Linc reminded himself, as he stood over Zena in the community urgent care room, surrounded by other non-infectious patients who’d been checked in for the night, that he had a job to do. Veda hadn’t woken up, and that was tearing him up in ways he couldn’t describe. Zena, however, was awake, and Linc had so many questions he didn’t even know where to begin.
Zena, sitting up in the hospital bed, tucked snuggly under the sheets and blankets by the nurses earlier that night, played her fingers together, staring off into space. During her exams, the nurses milling around the room had traded in her leather outfit for a more age-appropriate hospital gown. Her red hair remained the high ponytail that made her look like a schoolgirl. The quiet chatter of employees and fellow patients filled the room full of beds, as well as the dry heave-inducing scent of sanitizer.
Linc tilted his head, trying to catch Zena’s eyes even as she actively avoided his. “You’re lucky whoever was driving was forced to stop and change that flat tire, or you might’ve slipped right through our fingers tonight.”
Even as Zena kept her eyes forward, appearing as vacant as an empty canvas, a silent tear jetted down her cheek.
Her mousy voice was almost too low to hear as she gave a breathy chuckle, repeating him, “Lucky.”
“Who was driving?” Linc asked.
She rolled her eyes and tried to cross her arms over her chest. The handcuff around her wrist, however, the one she’d earned herself after trying to flee earlier in the night, didn’t allow her to finish the job, clanking against the metal railing of the bed.
Licking his lips, Linc locked his hands in front of his body, tilting his head even further in an attempt to catch her faraway gaze. “Wanna tell me why you were in the back of a cab carrying an incapacitated woman in the trunk?”
Her eyes fell, voice low and soft, long lashes drenched with tears. “No.”
“You wanna tell me where you were going?”
“No.”
“Wanna tell me who beat you up?”
“No.”
Linc took a beat. “I can protect you.”
She raised her moistened eyes to his for the first time that night. They glimmered as she searched his steely gaze. “Nobody can protect me.”
His jaw rolled. “I can. But only if you let me. You gotta talk to me, a’ight?”
Her lips parted in an attempt to do just that, but some part of her, the part that sent her eyes shooting to the window—then the door—stopped her. As if she was worried a demon would materialize out of nowhere. Her lips curled, then trembled.
<
br /> “He’ll kill me,” she whispered.
“He who?”
She shook her head.
“What’s your name?” Linc asked.
She gave him a sultry look, eyes hooded. “What do you want it to be?”
He didn’t even dignify it. “How old are you?”
She hesitated, then whispered. “Eighteen.”
“You sure about that? Nurses say you don’t have ID.”
She swallowed, her eyes going to a distant place once more, face stern. “I don’t like carrying it when I go out. Muggers.”
“I’m sure your pimp keeps it in a safe place, right?”
She rolled her eyes again.
“It’s a good thing I don’t actually need to see your ID,” Linc said. “And I know you’re not eighteen until next month… Zena.”
She met his eyes with a small gasp.
Linc nodded, eyebrows raised. “I recognized you on sight, you know. You spooked a lot of people when you disappeared. Lot of people looking for you. Worried about you.”
New tears bubbled up in her eyes. “Nobody cares about me.”
His brows pulled, eyes alight, nostrils flaring as he sucked in a sharp breath. “Is that what he told you?”
Her eyes fell.
“He lied to you, Zena.”
“He didn’t. He wouldn’t.” Her voice weakened. “My daddy’s good to me.”
“He’s good to you, huh? The same daddy you just said would kill you just for talking to me?” He cringed. He nearly screamed. “The same daddy who won’t let you carry your ID?”
The eye rolling continued.
“He drugged you,” Linc said, watching her jam her eyes closed. “He’s the reason you’re going to be cuffed to this bed for the rest of the night, detoxing. He beat you up. He knocked you up. He sold you. He should be in prison.” He motioned to her with arrow-sharp fingers, blood pumping hotter every second he ran down the laundry list of offenses the nurse’s had debriefed him on minutes earlier. The deplorable things Zena had endured since she’d gone missing would be unfathomable for anyone, let alone a seventeen-year-old girl. The kidnapping. The physical and mental abuse. The infected blackbird tattoo on her shoulder blade. A tattoo the nurses suspected was the mark of a trafficker branding his property. A tattoo they’d suspected had been done within the week and with a dirty needle. When the fury nearly ate Linc alive, he reminded himself of the last time he’d gotten frustrated with an innocent woman that’d been too afraid to talk. He begged for patience, lowering his voice. “But he’s good to you, right?”
Zena’s eyes ran down his body and then climbed slowly back up, coming to a lazy stop at his eyes. “You married?”
He tilted his head, giving her a look. “My wife is missing, just like you were. But, unlike you, she’s still down on her luck.”
“You talk about her like she’s still alive.” Her eyes sobered. “That’s cute.”
Linc winced.
She studied his lips. “How long’s she been gone?”
Linc wasn’t fooled by the role she was attempting to play. Her tear-soaked eyelashes told the real truth.
But, regardless, “Five years,” spilled from his lips before he could stop it.
This time the compassion in her eyes seemed genuine. She reached for him with her free hand, brushing the tips of her fingers against his bicep.
Linc recoiled, stepping out of her reach, a frown darkening his face.
A small smile threatened her lips, making her look even younger. “Has it been that long since a woman touched you, Detective?”
Linc held her eyes for a long moment, then chuckled, looking away from her while massaging his shadowed jaw with one hand. “You’re no woman, sweetheart.”
“I could touch you all over if you’d like that.”
His eyes flew back to her, jaw rolling. “You really wanna solicit a police officer?”
She shifted. “If your wife disappeared like I did… maybe I know her.”
Linc considered her from the corner of his eyes. Well aware that the tables had been turned, that he’d lost control, and that this petite underage girl was now playing him like a fiddle. He struggled to maintain a mental balance.
But his hand dove into the pocket of his jeans before he could reclaim his grasp on sanity. It came out with his cell phone, fingers tapping at the touch screen.
Then he turned the screen toward her.
Zena didn’t even look down at the screen of Linc’s phone, where he’d just pulled up a picture of his wife, keeping her sultry gaze on his.
“Closer,” she whispered.
Linc sighed, gave the room a cursory glance, and then stepped closer, showing her the screen with his eyebrows raised high.
Zena bit her bottom lip, held his eyes for a moment longer, and then let her gaze fall to the screen. As she drank in the picture of Linc’s wife, the faux seductress look in her eyes vanished. Her mouth fell open, and her blue eyes expanded, cheeks reddening. The seventeen-year-old in her came out full force for the first time that night.
Linc held his breath at what he saw in her eyes. “You…” He faltered. “You seen her?”
Her eyes grew wider every second she stared at the photo. A lump moved down her throat, making the skin of her slim neck move, and she took the bars of the bed under each hand, squeezing tightly. Her breathing picked up.
Linc’s voice fell to a nearly indiscernible whisper. “Is she still alive?”
She lifted her eyes to his, recovering in a flash, even though her voice remained slightly uneven. “Even if I had seen her… It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.” He spoke through clenched teeth. The phone began to tremble in his hold. He took a moment when the urge to scream nearly ate him alive. “Have. You. Seen. Her?”
Her voice lowered. “My memory might get a lot stronger—” She snatched at her cuffed wrist. “—if you let me go.”
Keen to her games—games that were doing a serious number on his composure—Linc dropped the phone back into his pocket before turning on his heel, going to leave before he lost control any further.
“Detective,” Zena called out to his retreating back, waiting for him to pause and shoot her a look over his shoulder, already several feet away from the bed. She shook her head at him as if he were the naive, underage girl between the two of them and not the other way around. “If she’s really been gone for five years, it’s too late…”
He drew in a ragged breath, his gaze ebbing into a glare.
Zena held his eyes. “If she’s been gone that long, she’s already been broken beyond repair. So much that, even if you did find her…” She chuckled softly, but the smile on her face rang false, eyelashes still sopping wet. “You wouldn’t even recognize her anymore.”
Unable to hear another word, Linc turned away, distantly aware of Zena’s voice, begging him to uncuff her as he left the room and turned a corner into the hospital hallway.
He stopped in mid-step when he barreled into a doctor hurrying by.
“Whoa, my bad,” he said, taking hold of the doctor’s arms. Instead of releasing her, however, Linc tightened his hold, recognizing her as one of the doctors that had met Veda’s gurney when the paramedics had wheeled her in hours earlier. “How is she?” he asked, dreading the answer the moment the question spilled from his lips. After the bizarre exchange with Zena, and with his wife’s face now fresh in his mind, he wasn’t sure he could take any bad news about Veda.
The doctor, a young woman with a blonde bob, blue eyes, and bird-like features—who looked like she could use about 72 hours of straight sleep—took a moment. She hugged her medical chart to her chest, giving Linc a heavy sigh. “She has massive internal bleeding…”
Linc released her and turned, giving her his profile, as if preparing himself to walk away completely. He wanted nothing more. Nothing more than to walk away from that hospital, that town, that place, and never look back. To walk away from the pain, the worry, and the fear…
once and for all.
But the stronger part of him kept him right there—feet planted even as he avoided the doctor’s gaze, stroking his jaw as his chest rose and fell wildly.
Her voice filled his ears, but he barely heard it. His heart pounded so hard her words were reduced to a muffle. An unsteady wave of white noise that went in and out.
But he got the gist.
“Injured her liver… blood clot… burst… fetal distress…”
The last string of words snapped Linc out of his trance, and his eyes flew back to her. “Fetal distress? The baby…?” He couldn’t finish.
She didn’t need him to, sighing heavily once more. “The next 24 hours are critical, Detective. If Veda wakes up within that timeframe, maybe. But…” She shrugged her shoulders high and then shook her head before letting them collapse.
Linc’s eyes fell, not needing to hear any more. He nodded sharply as he tried to wrap his mind around everything she’d just said and, more importantly, everything she hadn’t.
The last thing he remembered was the weight of her hand on his shoulder, giving it a pat on her way by. Disbelief hit him first. Then, within seconds, rage. Blind rage.
Even as everything seemed to be falling apart around him, one thing became crystal clear.
If Veda didn’t wake up—if she lost her baby—Linc wouldn’t sleep until he found out who was responsible.
And he’d make sure they paid with their life.
5
Hours later, in the middle of the night, Veda’s eyes fluttered open, causing a flash of pain to shoot across the back of them. She forced them shut and waited for the pain to pass. When it didn’t, she braved the ache, opening them once more, letting her gaze drink in the sight before her.
The sight of Gage, to her left, clutching the steel bars of the bed while leaning into her. As always, the white button-down and gray slacks he wore were tailored to perfection. Their eyes locked, and his dark brown orbs widened, filled with emotion. His chest and shoulders collapsed in a deep sigh. He covered his heart with one hand, shaking his head softly. A slow smile tried to spread on his face, but something stopped it from going all the way.
Pulse (Revenge Book 5) Page 3