Yes. Yes, I did.
“Cora…”
She sighed. “Janie and Kayla added me to their group messages, and it’s getting to the point where I’m unsure what in the hell they want from me. They’re trying to fix me up on a blind date with this veteran speed dating stuff. It’s not that I don’t think that veterans shouldn’t have dates. It’s just that I don’t want to be the one dating them. I’m happy right where I am. But Janie seems to think that I need to have sex in order to be able to live a happy and fulfilling life.” She sighed. “To make matters worse, she wants to set me up on a blind date tonight, before the speed dating thing, at a bar where June sometimes works. She just wants to make sure that I won’t freak out during speed dating. Something about her coaching me. I’m gonna have to do it, too, because she’ll just give the man my address, and I’ll be forced to open the door without realizing that she told him where I lived. That, or she’ll get me to go somewhere and blind date guy will be there waiting for me…she’s done that before.”
Sad thing was, I kind of agreed with Janie.
Not about the fact that Cora should be dating someone, but about the fact that sex was one of the best things in life.
It just had to be with the right person—for her, anyway.
Call it sexist. I don’t care.
But, a woman like Cora deserved to have someone who treated her right. Someone she took the time to get to know first before taking that particular step.
Me? I was past all that.
I wasn’t looking for love—I’d tried that, and it didn’t work out.
I wasn’t looking for any more kids—I loved my kid, and now that she was grown, I wasn’t looking to start over.
I wasn’t even looking for a relationship beyond the occasional fuck. I’d spent way too much of my life trying to make something bad good. I didn’t have the desire, nor need, to make that happen again.
Though I had a feeling, if I could do it for anyone, I could do it for Cora.
But, again, I wasn’t in the position to ever be what she needed. She was young. She wasn’t even in the same decade as me. She’d want babies, love, and a relationship.
All I wanted was a steady fuck and someone to share a beer with every once in a while.
But the idea of her getting set up on a blind date? Yeah, that rubbed me wrong.
I was also a fucking hypocrite.
If I wouldn’t allow myself to have her, then surely, I could find her someone that I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, was good.
“How about you let me handle Janie.” I hesitated. “And I know a guy that will play along.”
The sound of pure relief in her voice when she replied with, “Thanks,” had me smiling.
“Anytime. I’ll see you tonight.”
***
It was when I was literally walking into the bar later that night with Tyler Cree, the chief of police and a good friend of mine, that I realized that maybe she thought that guy playing along would be me.
If I’d had any doubts, seeing her face when I introduced Tyler was enough to make me feel like the biggest asshole in the world.
Her face, which had warmed at the sight of me, quickly fell when I introduced Tyler.
Tyler offered his hand to Cora, then gave Janie, Kayla, and June all nods. He’d met them before.
The woman, Reagan, who’d been there the night my ex-wife had her shit show in the fanciest restaurant in town just a couple of months ago, was sitting next to Janie.
She was chattering with Janie’s husband, Rafe, and discussing her thesis paper that she was doing for her graduate program.
Every once in a while, she’d turn to Cora to ask her for qualification on something, but then she’d turn back and keep discussing whatever it was she was discussing. Something about plants or something.
“Tyler, this is Cora.” Janie smiled. “Cora, this is Tyler Cree, the new chief of police that took over for the old chief of police when—”
“Nice to meet you, Cora,” Tyler interrupted, not wanting to get into why he’d taken over for the old chief of police.
Honestly, I wouldn’t want to get into that either.
It was a large clusterfuck that had to do with drugs, conspiracy, and things best not discussed in the light of day over dinner.
Cora, not realizing Tyler’s tension, only nodded her head and offered up a smile.
She didn’t say a word.
Which made me feel worse.
It was confirmed that she’d been expecting me—and not Tyler—to help her get through the night.
I hadn’t realized just how big of a deal it was that I was helping her out until I’d done the wrong thing and invited Tyler.
The rest of the dinner went like this: Janie would ask Tyler a question. Tyler would answer it. Cora would retreat a little more into herself. Repeat the process until at the end of the night, Cora was sitting about a foot and a half away from the table and looking anywhere but at the people at the table.
At one point, Reagan and Tyler started talking, and I gestured for him to switch seats with me.
He did, and they carried on a conversation with the others while I tried to engage Cora.
But she was so far gone in her own head that I had a feeling I’d broken the fragile friendship that we’d just started to form.
At one point, Cora got up to use the bathroom, and I had the feeling that if I didn’t follow her, she’d head out the back door and never come back.
I was right.
Therefore, when I was standing there, in the shadows, and saw her turn right instead of left that would’ve taken her back out to the bar and our table, I followed her.
She’d just pushed outside the back door and rounded the corner to the parking lot when I called out to her.
She froze at the sound of my voice.
“Cora…listen.”
She didn’t move. Didn’t say a word. Just stood there, stilled, and waited for me to say what I was going to say.
“I didn’t mean to make this awkward.”
She didn’t say anything.
“All I was trying to do was help. Had I known that it was that big of a deal, I would’ve just shown up myself…but Tyler is a good guy. I thought for sure you’d like him.”
With that, I reached forward to touch her on her shoulder, but she jerked away like my touch burned.
“It’s okay, Coke,” she said. “I know when I’m not wanted. You’re not the first person to disappoint me, and you won’t be the last.”
With that, she walked away and didn’t look back.
I made sure she got to her car safely, and then walked to my bike.
I didn’t bother to go back inside and say goodbye.
For some reason, Cora’s words kept replaying in my head, and each time the cycle finished, I felt like I’d done something really, really wrong—yet I couldn’t quite understand what.
It was then that I realized that this might be what she’d said was part of her depressive disorder. Maybe this was a side effect.
By not taking the fact that she had opened herself up to me into consideration, I got the feeling that I broke something in her that never should have been broken.
Chapter 11
Always fuck me goodnight.
-Text from Coke to Cora
Cora
Apologies were the devil. I should’ve never gone over to his house to tell him how sorry I was for acting the way I did.
I should’ve stayed at home and felt sorry for myself, like I’d done for the week up until that point.
Except, I didn’t.
Instead, I’d gone over to Coke’s place, through the trees as was my usual, and had walked up to his house without a single thought or care.
I’d done it twice before, and nothing had happened.
I’d become complacent.
My dad had taught me better, and instead of utilizing my skills, I’d neg
lected to read the signs.
Now, as I sat where I sat, I realized that I should’ve gone about this in a completely different way. Maybe then I would be able to say I hadn’t gone down like a little bitch.
I stared at my captors, my eyes hard as granite, and plotted their demise.
They hadn’t truly done anything to harm me. In fact, other than scaring me and calling me names—filthy ones, yes—they hadn’t done anything that I couldn’t recover from.
My problem at this moment in time wasn’t necessarily that I was scared. It was because I was pissed.
Why was I pissed, you ask?
I was pissed because they thought I was a seventeen-year-old girl. Frankie. Coke’s daughter. And now I was being held for ransom.
What I was more pissed about was how they were treating me thinking I was a seventeen-year-old girl.
I imagine, had they stopped at the kidnapping, releasing me unharmed, I would’ve let them live.
However, they hadn’t stopped at just that.
They’d taken it a step too far, and even I was—admittedly—scared. Or I would have been had I not been trained by my father for this exact scenario.
That, and I was chipped like a dog.
Well, not exactly a dog. More like a car in case it was stolen.
See, my father and his buddies were in a business that was dangerous. And despite their precautions at preventing scenarios such as the one I currently found myself in, they also knew that in their line of work, this exact scenario was a possibility. Meaning they’d microchipped us with a transmitter. I’d been one of the only children of the compound that hadn’t complained about it.
After a mission gone wrong when I was fourteen, the suggestion had been offered to us by our parents. Every single child that was old enough to know what having the microchip meant—knowing where we were at any given time of the day if the tracker was turned on by our parents—had refused. Everyone except for me.
I was literally the only one that never left, so what did I care if they knew where I was at every second of every day?
I didn’t.
So, I knew I’d be rescued.
We hadn’t driven far from where I’d been taken.
A half hour at most.
Kilgore, where my father was, was an hour and a half from Hostel. At most, the farthest he was away from me was two hours.
The only problem was someone had to realize I was missing first. And I had hope that Coke would notice the mess I’d left in his shop in my haste to get away, and then, hopefully, he’d go looking for me—or at least a question to see if I’d heard anything going on at his place.
“When the boss gives the okay, then maybe you can sweet talk her. But until then, the little bitch goes unharmed. She’s worth a lot of money—and if we harm her, the boss won’t be pleased,” the guy in charge explained to the other man that was with him.
I didn’t miss his leer in my direction, though.
I tried to sit on the bed in the hotel room, looking meek. Seventeen-year-old girls were supposed to look innocent.
I was pulling it off, wasn’t I?
I wasn’t grimacing or giving off an ‘I’ll kill you’ vibe, was I?
I sure hoped not.
“You got her shaking now, man. I fuckin’ love this,” goon number two practically cheered.
I’m not shaking because I’m scared, dumbass! I wanted to shout. I’m shaking because I’m enraged!
Yet I held my tongue. I didn’t want to be tied down. That wouldn’t be conducive to my plans.
I’d wait for the two bozos to go back to the other room, then I’d find a weapon.
They left not two minutes later, and I hopped off the bed the moment the door clicked shut behind them.
I immediately searched for the phone they’d yanked free of the wall, but they proved not to be complete dumbasses by taking the cord with them.
The next thing I did was try the bathroom.
It was locked, and I frowned.
I wasn’t allowed to pee?
I didn’t bother trying the outside door. If they were even halfway smart, they’d have a man out there to prevent me from leaving. And it wouldn’t do for them to know I wasn’t the sweet seventeen-year-old they’d meant to capture.
A seventeen-year-old—at least one who wasn’t raised on the Free compound—probably would have tried to escape.
I knew better, and I had known better since I was ten.
My father hadn’t sugar-coated the bad shit that was in this world. He’d been brutally honest and had shown me everything without the rose-colored glasses that most children wore.
If a parent could do anything for their children, it was preparing them for life.
Most parents were transparent about what to do when it came to bullies, struggles with fitting in, or financial problems.
But, my dad had gone a step past that and ensured that I was well and truly prepared for anything—this exact situation being one of those things.
He had hoped that by preparing me, I’d have the skills needed to take care of myself until he could get there.
Logically, I knew he’d come.
Of course, adrenaline was coursing through me thanks to the rage I was feeling—and okay, I’ll admit it, some fear, too. So, I wasn’t completely logical at the moment. Which was unfortunate seeing as the logical side of my brain was currently at war with the illogical thoughts that were drifting through my mind. You know, thoughts of me dying here before my dad could get to me.
So, I did what I had to and prepared for both possibilities.
I made sure that I had a weapon —a screwdriver I found in the drawer beside the bed— and I rested and bid my time in case things didn’t work out the way I was hoping and in my favor.
But after sitting there for an hour, I decided that I couldn’t do it—just sit here and wait.
My most pressing issue was the goddamn roach that I’d seen skitter across the floor just inches away from my feet.
Where there was one, there were more.
And the more I looked, the more disgusted I became with the establishment.
I was sure that if I picked up the corner of the sheet, I’d see freakin’ bed bugs.
I shivered with disgust.
I was hungry, tired and thirsty.
I wanted a Dr. Pepper, a burrito from Chipotle, and a goddamn nap, in exactly that order.
Picking up my makeshift weapon, I stood up.
Scooting closer to the door that led to the outside, I positioned myself perfectly.
Then screamed. Loud.
The outside door started to push forward just like I knew it would, and I waited until the guy’s head started to peek around the corner before kicking with all the force I could muster and slamming the man’s head in between the doorway and the door.
If there was one thing I could say about this shitty motel, it was that they had one hell of a heavy, solid door. It was a very welcome surprise.
The man fell down with a loud thump, and I pulled the door open completely.
I didn’t go outside yet.
I waited for the other two to come storming in here.
When they did, I handled them, too.
Chapter 12
Oh Mickey, you’re so fine. You’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Mickey. Hey Mickey.
-I bet you sang that as you read it
Coke
A few hours earlier
I don’t know how I knew that something was wrong.
Maybe it was the way that the night felt heavy around me. Maybe it was the way that I’d intentionally been revving the engine of the truck just to see if she’d show—she didn’t.
Whatever the reason for my worry, I was walking back and forth across the dirty floor of my garage and kept looking in the direction of her place.
My foot kicked another goddamn tool that I’d found on the ground, and I grimaced.
Goddamn fucking cat.
My daughter’s cat was an asshole. Seriously, if there was one thing that I wished I could get rid of, it was that feline.
Unfortunately, my daughter would have a conniption if anything happened to her six-toed cat.
Bending over, I picked up the impact wrench and set it on the toolbox with the rest of the tools that I’d found on the floor and cursed. If that one was broken, I’d seriously skin the cat.
He’d fucked with my stuff one too many times. The little bastard was seriously too smart for his own good and knew that I hated his guts. So, he did stuff to piss me off—like piss in the rain boots I left on the back porch, and shit on my welcome mat so that I stepped on it in the morning when I walked outside.
The tools were a new thing, though. Something I wasn’t very happy about seeing as I was already quite pissed off.
She hadn’t talked to me in a week.
Sure, that could’ve been because she was busy, but I had a feeling it was because I’d shown myself to be just like all the others.
She hadn’t even talked in the group text with Frankie. Frankie had been so concerned that she’d called me, and I’d had to explain that I’d fucked up. In which my daughter had told me to ‘fix it’ because she missed talking to someone who actually understood her.
Which led me to now.
I kept revving that stupid truck, looking at the doorway, thinking that she’d come storming in…but she never did.
When the ominous feeling that something was seriously wrong became so strong that my heart was beginning to beat faster, I decided that I’d go check it out.
What could it hurt?
If everything was okay, I’d leave. No harm, no foul.
With my decision made, I started through the woods to her place, taking the slightly cleared path that the deer used to get from one property to the next.
The first indication that something was wrong was the lack of light.
The second was the shoe that I found in the middle of the driveway.
The next was the way her front door was swaying in the wind.
“Cora?” I called loudly. “Are you home?”
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