Ethan pushed himself off the sofa and uncrossed his arms. He glanced at me, and I sighed. “In retrospect, we should have done it differently. But we didn’t. And now we’re here.”
Ethan grimaced. “Dean, what’s he going to do to her?”
Dean stopped pacing. “I don’t know. And thinking about it won’t change it. All we can do is get to her as fast as we can and hope it’s fast enough.”
“And if it isn’t?” Ethan asked.
Dean had no answer for that.
“It will be,” I said. “We’ve never failed on a job before. Why would this one be any different?”
“Because it’s Ashley!” Ethan yelled. His voice seemed to shake the whole house.
Dean grabbed the front of Ethan’s shirt in his fist and pulled him close. “You need to pull it together, Ethan. And quick. We need to keep our heads if we stand a chance of helping her. She needs us now more than ever. Sanderson will have Nick’s location, and we’ll track her down and do what we do best. You hear me? Consider this the same as every other operation we’ve run.”
Ethan wrenched himself out of Dean’s grasp. “You’re fucking delusional if you think this is the same as every other op.”
Dean moved in to give Ethan a shove, but I stepped between them. “This is not how we’re going to get Ash back. The two of you need to get your shit together.” Dean’s eyes narrowed on me before he turned away. Ethan straightened his shirt out and leaned back against the sofa. I looked back and forth between them. “Are we all on the same page here?”
They both nodded. Then Dean’s phone rang, and we all froze.
This was the moment that would determine whether or not we had a chance of getting to Ashley. If the tracking hadn’t worked, we’d have to rely too heavily on the cops, and they’d take significantly longer than we would.
And there was no knowing how much time Ashley had.
25
Ashley
It smelled the way it did when I used to go camping with my mom and dad on the mainland by the lake. Like pine and firewood and smoke.
And something else. Something familiar. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
I forced my eyes open. They were heavy and ached to be closed again. My whole body was tired and lethargic, and it was an effort just to turn my head and look around to try to figure out where on earth I was.
Nothing looked familiar.
I was in a small, quaint living room that had walls made of trees; like a log cabin. I tried to turn around but found that I couldn’t. I sucked in a breath as I realized that my hands were bound to a chair I was sitting on. My ankles were attached to the front legs with three zip ties per leg. I tugged at them until the muscles in my legs screamed for me to stop, and the wooden chair creaked in protest.
Where was I?
I tried to remain calm as the memory of opening Lulu’s front door to find Nick standing there slammed into me. I was out of breath and trembling just thinking of the way he’d chased me through the house. He must have caught me. Obviously. He was the reason I was tied to this damn chair. I couldn’t for the life of me remember all that happened in Lulu’s house. I recalled him throwing and smashing my phone and coming after me, but after that, my memory was blank. There was simply nothing.
I bit down on my bottom lip to stop myself from crying. Crying would do me no good. Not right now. I had to keep it together because as soon as I gave in to the fear, it would be crippling, and I’d never get a hold of myself.
That could not happen. I refused to let it.
I tried to distract myself by looking around. I was tied to a chair in the middle of the room. Beneath my feet, which were bare, was an old bear skin rug. The fur was soft between my toes, but it was not a comfort. In front of me was a wood-burning brick fireplace. There was no wood in it and off to the side was an iron set of pokers and a box of what I assumed was kindling. Some loose newspapers rested on the hearth.
I realized as I looked at the tools that I was cold. Very cold.
I was still wearing my sweater and my tiny shorts, and my legs were covered in goose bumps. I clenched my jaw together to stop my teeth from chattering.
Why was it so damn cold? Nights in St. Simmons could cool off pretty quick but not like this. Had Nick taken me off the island? How far had we gone? Were we out in the middle of the wilderness? Was there any chance of anyone ever finding me?
A lump of panic crept up my throat, and it escaped in one short sob. Then I swallowed it back down and shook my head fiercely. “No. No. Don’t cry, Ashley. Don’t cry.” I tightened my grip on the armrests I was strapped to.
After getting a hold of the near panic attack, I looked around some more. There were old couches on either side of me facing inward. Behind one sofa was a window with the curtains drawn. I wished they were open. Maybe if I caught a glimpse of something outside, I’d know where I was. I’d be able to make sense of it. The disorientation was maddening.
I assured myself that I must still be on the island. There was no way Nick was able to get my unconscious body on the ferry without anyone seeing. Unless he’d put me in the trunk.
My breathing quickened again. No. There was no way he’d done that. No way. Surely if I’d been in the trunk of a car for a nondescript amount of time, I would know. I’d have bumps or bruises or something.
Surely.
There was no sense in freaking out about that right now. It was out of my control. I had to think of things that kept me calm. Like the fact that Jesse had been on his way to pick me up.
I wondered how long it had been since Nick knocked on my door. There was no way of knowing. All I was sure of was that it was night. No light crept around the edges of the curtains. So, I could assume I’d been gone for at least three hours. Jesse would know something was wrong, and he’d have called Dean and Ethan.
They all knew about Nick. They knew the sort of shit he was pulling.
I should have told them that he stalked me when I left work the other day. At the time, I’d thought I could handle it on my own, and there wasn’t any point worrying the brothers. But now as I sat there tied to a chair in the middle of a living room I’d never seen before, I began to resent myself for being secretive. I should have told them everything.
I should have asked to not be left alone.
I heard a door open somewhere behind me and stiffened. I considered pretending to still be unconscious but decided against it. There was no point in prolonging the inevitable. So, I sat bone still and listened to the sound of Nick’s boots on the wood floor until he came around my chair and stood in front of me.
He looked insane.
His hair was a mess, and he was sweaty. Under one arm, he had a bunch of freshly cut firewood. He looked me over, his eyes calculating and unlike I remembered them ever being. Menacing. Cruel. “Look who finally decided to wake up. Hello, sleeping beauty.”
My tongue felt like dead weight in my mouth. I was incapable of speech as he put his back to me and crouched down to put the wood in the fireplace. He opened the box of kindling, and I watched, transfixed, as he started the fire.
When he straightened and wiped his hands on his pants, the flame had grown and was casting an orange glow around the room that would have been pleasant under other circumstances. But this was anything but.
He moved toward me, and I flinched and pressed myself as far back into the chair as I could. He reached out and caressed my cheek before brushing my hair off my face. “If you’d just heard me out, I wouldn’t have had to do this, pumpkin,” Nick said.
He used to call me pumpkin when we were together. I didn’t like it then, and I sure as hell didn’t like it now. My tongue was still useless and thick in my mouth. His hand was still on my cheek, and he was smiling at me as he dropped to a crouch.
“I wish things had gone differently. I really do. But you left me no other options. I knew that friend of yours was lying to me. I could see it in her eyes. Stupid bitch. Trying to keep us apart li
ke that.”
He was mad. Completely mad.
“But we’re together now, pumpkin, and nothing will keep us apart again. I promise. I’m going to make you happy. I’m going to do whatever it takes to make you happy.”
“You had that chance,” I finally blurted out.
He didn’t react. He simply continued to look at me like I was a bird in a cage. I felt like a bird in the cage. He let his hand fall from my cheek and rested it on his knee. “I know you must be confused. You didn’t expect this. But I can’t give up on us. I won’t. Now that we’re back together, things will be better than ever. I promise.”
I searched his eyes for any remnants of the man I had thought I was going to marry.
The man who used to hold my hand no matter where we were, who used to sing in the shower with me and pig out on sushi while sitting on the living room floor. I saw nothing of that man in his blue eyes. It was like a switch had gone off in his brain and he had become a completely different person. A dangerous person.
“Nick,” I said softly.
“Yes, pumpkin?”
“Can you please untie me? My wrists hurt. And I’m thirsty.”
His eyebrows drew together in a frown, and he looked at my wrists. He’d used three zip ties on each hand. A little overkill, I thought. I wasn’t some muscle-bound man he had strapped to the chair. There was no way I was breaking out of them. He reached out and tried to push one of his fingers between my wrist and the zip tie. “I’m sorry. It is a bit tight. But I can’t untie them. Not yet. I don’t know if I can trust you.”
“You can trust me,” I said hurriedly.
His eyes darted back and forth between mine, and his mouth became a straight line. I couldn’t read what he was thinking. He pulled his finger out of the zip tie and sighed. “No. Not yet. But I can get you some water.”
He pushed himself to his feet and walked back behind my chair. I didn’t like not being able to see him. I listened to him tear something open, and then he returned with a fresh bottle of water. He twisted the cap and extended it out to me like he was doing me a favor.
It pissed me off.
But I drank anyway. I was so thirsty. So dreadfully thirsty. He held it to my lips as I drank greedily, and it leaked down my chin and throat and soaked the collar of my sweater. When I stopped, he pulled it away and ran the back of his hand over my mouth to take away the excess water. That pissed me off even more.
How dare he think he was being kind and doing me a favor?
“Are you hungry?” he asked as he screwed the cap back on the water bottle.
“No.” Yes. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten since lunch and even that had only been a small serving. My stomach was rumbling and aching, but I didn’t dare let him think I needed anything else from him. For now, the water would suffice.
And hopefully, the Thomas brothers would get to me before I succumbed to my hunger.
Nick stood and put the water on the mantle. Then he turned back to me and leaned up against the bricks as he tucked his hands in his pockets. “You look good, by the way.”
Nice. The first compliment he’d paid me in over a year was now, while I was tied to a chair in a cabin in the middle of who the fuck knows where. I kept my mouth shut.
“I understand that you might be upset with me,” he started, and I cut him off.
“Upset with you?” I asked incredulously.
He nodded.
“Upset is a serious understatement, Nick. You kidnapped me. You fucking kidnapped me and brought me out here against my will while I was unconscious, and you tied me to a fucking chair. And you’re keeping me here. Also against my will. I am far past upset.”
He licked his lips. “If you’ll just give it a bit of time, you’ll see that I’m doing this for us. Us, pumpkin. You’ll see.”
He was insane. Completely fucking mental. My leaving must have cracked something in his tiny brain that sent him off the deep end. How had there not been signs earlier that I was living with, and planning to marry, a crazy person? How had he hidden it so well for so long?
“No, Nick. I won’t see. This is wrong. You and I both know it. Please let me go.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You have to. You’re breaking the law. The police will know you’re the one who took me. They’ll come looking.”
“Let them look,” Nick said. “They won’t find us. I found this spot especially for you and me. Somewhere we could be alone. Completely alone. Where the world couldn’t touch us and ruin us.”
“You ruined us. Not the world.”
Nick didn’t like that, and I knew he shouldn’t have said it. “You don’t know what you’re talking about Ashley. You never know what you’re fucking talking about.”
“Then why do you still want to be with me?”
Nick smiled. It wasn’t the sort of smile that warmed your heart. It was the sort of smile that made your skin crawl. And the smile broadened and broadened, until he was showing me all his teeth. “Because, pumpkin, you’re my destiny, and there’s nothing that’s going to keep us apart. You’re mine.”
26
Dean
Sanderson had me on hold, and I thought I might blow a fuse standing there in Lulu’s destroyed kitchen. Ethan was doing a quick sweep of the inside of the house to ensure we hadn’t missed any clues as to where Nick may have taken Ashley. Jesse was canvassing the outside of the house and the driveway. I could hear Ethan on the phone with Lulu, and every time he spoke in the conversation, he was saying things like “we’re going to get her back” and “you have to trust us.”
We hadn’t given her much to trust us on. We’d let Ashley slip right through our fingers. We knew there was a threat out there, and we knew he wasn’t the kind of guy who just wanted to get the last word in for his side of the argument. He wasn’t just a kicked puppy dog coming out of a relationship. He was mean, angry, and capable of just about anything.
And that scared the hell out of me.
I’d only felt this way once before when we were younger. Ashley had gone out with a guy she’d met online just a year after she was out of high school. I hadn’t liked the idea and gave her shit for it. Stubborn as hell and fearless, Ashley had stuck her tongue out at me and gotten in his cherry red convertible mustang anyway. And he took her to dinner.
Then she messaged me half an hour later asking me to come get her. He’d taken her to his house, not the restaurant, and she was frightened. He was older than she thought and wasn’t letting her leave.
I’d gotten in my car and sped over to the address she sent me. I’d arrived at a rundown townhouse with a mold-covered roof and a sunken front stoop. I marched straight up to the front door and hammered on it with my fist.
A man’s voice had yelled at me to go away. I refused. And then he answered it with a baseball bat slung over his shoulder like he had a chance of kicking my ass and getting rid of me. He’d had a very rude awakening that evening, and once I was through with him, I went to Ashley, who was curled up in a ball of fear in the corner of his cigarette smoke darkened sofa. I took her by the hand, guided her to her feet, and then took her out of the house.
She’d started crying as soon as she was in my car.
“I’m sorry,” Ashley said, desperately trying to wipe away her tears. There was no sense in it. More tears just kept coming, and they glistened on her cheeks as we passed beneath streetlights.
“Don’t be sorry. You couldn’t have known he’d be a scumbag.”
“But you knew. And you told me not to go. I should have listened to you. Why didn’t I listen to you?”
I pulled the car over and put it in park. I unclipped my seatbelt, so I could turn to face her more directly. She was still wiping at her eyes. “Ashley. You’re a nineteen-year-old girl. Why the hell would you listen to me?”
She blinked at me. Then a small laugh came out of her.
“It’s all right. I’m always going to be here for you if you need me, Ash. Always.”
Ashley leaned over the console between us and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. She’d clung to me fiercely, and I knew it was out of relief. I could still smell the cigarette smoke on her. I patted her back as she nuzzled her cheek into my shoulder.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you home, and you can shower. Your mom is out for dinner with my dad, so you won’t have to explain anything.”
“Okay,” she whispered. But she didn’t let go of me.
We stayed parked at the curb under the street light for fifteen minutes until she finally did. And I held her the whole time.
After, when she had recovered some, I drove her back to the house and walked her inside. Nobody was home. I technically wasn’t even supposed to be home. I’d only come back to St. Simmons for a weekend between missions and happened to be around when Ashley needed me most.
We went into the kitchen, and I grabbed her a glass of water and asked her to drink it. She sank down into a chair at the kitchen table and took tiny mouthfuls as I put a piece of toast down for her. I slathered it in peanut butter, as I knew she liked, and brought it back to her on a plate with a napkin. I set it down in front of her. “Eat. You’ll feel better.”
She scrunched her nose up at it, and then her eyes moved up to meet mine. “I’m not hungry.”
“You are. You just don’t know it yet. You eat. I’m going to call the police station and report that guy.”
“Wait. What?”
I paused with my hand on the receiver of the house phone. “I’m calling the cops.”
“No. You don’t need to. I just—”
“Ashley.”
She shook her head and stared down at the toast. “I don’t want to talk to anyone about it. I don’t want to have to—”
Her Independence Day Page 15