Fuck.
This was … shit, this was killing him. Just how was he supposed to handle this? How? He couldn’t. He just …
“Hey!”
He heard the belligerent voice, but Shay just kept moving.
“Hey … Michelline.”
Her shoulders were rigid, but she kept walking as though the kid hadn’t said a word. Elliot saw him now. Mouthy, arrogant, too skinny … hungry, in more ways than one. Hard around the edges. Elliot had seen the type in his years. As the kid moved to cut Shay off, Elliot intercepted, subtly, placing his body between the two.
The boy, just barely old enough to shave, sized him up and smirked, and then grinned at Shay. “Ain’t you Michelline?”
“No.” Shay’s voice was cool, steady.
Elliot doubted the kid would have heard the fear laced just under the surface. He heard it, but just barely. A fear that wanted to destroy her. But a fear she faced. A fear she wouldn’t let own her. Damn it.
The boy’s smile widened. “You know, she told me you’d say that. Maybe you know the name Shay better.”
“Maybe you should just keep your nose out of my business,” Shay said mildly.
“Hey, she made it my business when she paid me fifty bucks to give you a message.” The boy stroked a thumb down his jaw and then shot Elliot a dark look. “Do y’ mind? I need to talk to my girl, Shay.”
“She’s not your girl,” Elliot said quietly. Angling his body, he turned so that Shay could put her hand in his. She’s mine.
She was his, damn it. Damn it all to hell and back. If she had to face that dragon, then he’d be there with her.
Gently, he squeezed her hand. When she squeezed back, he closed his eyes for a brief second. When he opened them, the kid was still staring at Shay, a put-out expression on his too-young face. “Yeah, yeah, fine. I was told you might have company, but damned if I wanna mess with it …”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE BRAVE SPEECH SHE’D OFFERED Elliot not that long ago, she might have begged him to get her away from here.
She hadn’t recognized it right away. A lot of it had changed.
Even the building wasn’t the same.
It was the liquor store that sat on the diagonal that made her remember.
It alone was the same … unaffected by the passage of time or anything else. It was a brutal one-two punch, stealing her breath and momentarily stunning her.
Stupid cunt …
You won’t forget …
No. She hadn’t forgotten this time.
She remembered this place, remembered how she’d been trapped, helpless, tied down and brutalized. How she’d screamed and begged as he cut her, as he beat her, as he raped her.
No. She hadn’t forgotten. It had just taken her all of this time to get a grasp on why he had done it—even the weakest grasp.
“This was where he took me,” Shay whispered, staring in dazed horror at the long, low building. It looked like a warehouse. She didn’t remember much of the building where she’d been held—it had been dark and dank, and her screams had echoed around her. The one thing she remembered was that liquor store … the logo on the door.
She’d run stumbling across the street, clutching the tatters of her flannel shirt, and when she’d burst through that door, the looks on some of the men’s faces had made her wonder if she’d found safety or not.
A few of them … yeah. She wouldn’t have been any safer with them, she knew that.
Then one of the men had stepped forward. He’d been the roughest-looking one of the bunch—a gruff-looking, mean-ass bastard who’d taken one look at her and immediately removed his leather jacket. As he’d draped it over her shoulders, he’d bellowed for the clerk at the cash register to call the fucking cops, now.
“Do you hear me, you fucking moron? I told you to call the fucking cops! ’Scuse me, sweetheart, sorry about that …”
Through the rush of blood pounding in her ears, she could barely hear him. But she recognized the kindness in his eyes. A big, blunt-fingered hand awkwardly patted her shoulder, hesitantly, just once, as though he knew she wouldn’t want to be touched. “You just stay right by me, girl,” he said quietly, glancing around. The store didn’t seem as crowded just then. “Ain’t nobody gonna touch you. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you here.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat, but she swallowed it down. Safe … she was finally safe.
Tears blinded her but she blinked them away. She went to rub her eyes, but stopped when she saw her hands. Red. Covered in red. Her blood—she was covered in it—
“I was covered in blood,” she whispered.
A hand came up and squeezed her shoulder.
“Shay, we need to call Hilliard.” Elliot’s hand stroked down to her back to rub in soothing circles low on her spine. “If that crazy …”
When his voice trailed off, she slanted a look up at him and offered, “Bitch?”
“Well, yeah.”
Shay laughed, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “You’ve always been honest to a fault, Elliot. Don’t go sugarcoating things now. She’s a crazy bitch. Call her what she is.”
Those intense eyes of gold stared straight at her and then he nodded slowly. “Okay. If that crazy bitch is in there, it’s the last place you need to be.”
Swallowing, she shifted her attention back to the warehouse. Back to the place of so many nightmares and horrors … the home of her dragon. “She thinks she’s saving me, thinks she’s helping me.”
“She tried to help you when you were a kid and she killed a baby,” he growled, closing a hand around her elbow when she tried to take a step forward.
“Exactly.” She continued to stare at the warehouse. Was it stupid? Yeah. It probably was. But she had to do this—had to see this sister of hers … this monster who had caused so much hell. “And she most likely killed a friend of mine; the first real friend I had since my stepfather attacked me. If it weren’t for Darcy, I don’t know what I would have turned into. Maybe I would have become as crazy as Leslie is. Maybe I would have killed myself. Maybe I would have just withered away and died. I don’t know. I do know that she saved me … and I know, in my gut, that Leslie killed her. I have to face her.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know what happened to Darcy.” She swallowed and shook her head. “My friend deserves that, her family deserves that. And I suspect I’m the only person she’ll give those answers to.”
“Would Darcy want you doing something that could get you hurt?” He glared at her, his eyes all but burning, his mouth a taut, hard line. “Something that will hurt you?”
“She doesn’t want to hurt me, damn it!” Shay glared at him.
“There are different kinds of pain.” He reached up and touched her cheek. “You’re bleeding right now. I see it.”
Shay closed her eyes, covering his hand with her own. “I have to do this … and before you throw Darcy into this again … she’d do it for me. I knew her. You never did. And if it weren’t for her, I’m telling you right now, you may never have had the chance to know me. She saved me.”
“You saved yourself, Shay. You’re stronger than you think.”
“If I saved myself, it’s because she gave me the chance—she brought me out of myself long enough to find the strength to do it.” Shaking her head, she looked back to the warehouse and took a deep, steadying breath. “And it killed her. She would never have been brought into this, never would have met my sister if it weren’t for me. I owe it to her to find out what happened. Call Hilliard. I’m not a complete moron and I know she’s dangerous. But I’m going in there, and unless you physically try to stop me, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Without waiting another second, she took one small step toward the warehouse. Then another. And another …
It’s not going to get any easier with those baby steps, sweetheart.
Shit, had it been only a few days
since that nice old guy had said that to her back at the Anchorage airport?
Yeah. A few days. A lifetime ago. When she hadn’t known she had a murderer for a sister.
Squaring her shoulders, she took another, longer, step. Then another. By the time she’d taken the fifth step, she was almost running.
Elliot fell into a jog to catch up with her, dialing the number from the card Hilliard had given him. Just in case, Hilliard had said.
Either the guy was psychic or he was just one of those people who believed in covering the bases.
When the man came on the line, Elliot didn’t waste two seconds with pleasantries. He fired off the address and said, “Shay’s sister may or may not be here and Shay isn’t waiting. I tried to talk some sense into her, but she’s not in the mood to listen.”
“Then sit on her, for fuck’s sake,” Hilliard snapped.
“Just get here,” he bit off, ending the call. He shot a look heavenward. “Please … don’t let her get hurt.”
He drew even with her as she pushed through the door. The place should have been locked up tight. The “for sale” sign on the exterior wall wasn’t exactly new, and it was covered in graffiti. Elliot didn’t know if the unsecured door was courtesy of Leslie or the area. Part of him hoped it was the area—if Leslie was good at breaking and entering …
Hell, she’s a fucking killer. Why should she blink an eye at breaking and entering?
Shay stopped dead center in the hallway. “I’m right here,” he whispered, his heart shattering. The fear pumping through her was enough to break him. Fuck. He wanted to kill the bitch responsible for doing this to her. “Damn it, Shay, let’s just get out of here.”
“I can’t.… Darcy.” She sucked in a desperate breath. “I have to know what happened to Darcy.”
Shit.
Elliot guessed the woman must have been one hell of a friend to invoke that kind of dedicated loyalty. He closed his hand around Shay’s. Her fingers twined with his, squeezing with the strength of the desperate. “Don’t go anywhere,” she whispered.
“Not for anything.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
“YOU WOULD BRING HIM ALONG,” LESLIE MUTTERED, staring at the computer monitor. She’d had to rig the camera on the fly, but it did a damn good job. Michelline looked upset. “Poor kid. She probably just doesn’t get it.”
Turning around, she stared at the man she had tied to the floor. She smiled at him. “Once she sees you, she’ll understand.”
Over the gag, his eyes were dull. Almost dead.
That bothered her.
She wanted to see him afraid.
He’d scared her … once. Or at least, she thought he had. She thought she remembered being afraid. But then he’d done it too many times. He’d done things like killing her kitty … Chuckles. That’s what they’d named the fluffy little white kitten Mama had bought for her. He’d killed Chuckles. He’d hurt Leslie just a few times too many, and somewhere along the way, she guessed she just stopped being afraid of him. Stopped being afraid. The only thing that had bothered her had been when he’d hit her, or when he’d yelled at her princess.
“She’s on her way,” Leslie said, stooping down by one of the cinder blocks she’d used to restrain his hands. It was a rather inelegant setup, but she didn’t need elegance for this dismal sack of shit. She just needed him dead.
So Michelline could see it was okay to stop being afraid as well.
Once her dragon was dead, Michelline would understand how important she was to Leslie and they could go back to the way they had been before.
Everything would be as it should have been, all this time.
Jethro Abernathy just stared at her.
“You do know who I am, right?”
That blank, dead stare continued.
Sighing, she slapped the side of his face with the flat of her knife. “Come on, you stupid old fuck. Don’t make me do something just to get a rise out of you,” she warned.
And still, all he did was stare. And wait.
Hell, did you go crazy in jail or what? Leslie stroked the tip of the blade down the center of his naked, scrawny chest, watching for any sign of a reaction. His skin prickled and she watched as his pupils swelled … ah, yes. “There we go,” she murmured. “That’s a reaction.”
She continued to move lower. “I hear you don’t feel anything below your waist,” she said. With a smile, she sliced.
As blood flowed, he twisted against the ropes that held him restrained and his strangled scream was like music.
“I guess it doesn’t matter if you feel it or not. A man never wants to lose that bit.”
That eerie, eerie sound was one that would stay with her, Shay knew.
She halted just outside the door and looked at Elliot. “You called Hilliard, right?”
He nodded and showed her his phone. It displayed a text.
ETA less than five minutes.
Shay pushed through the door. The first thing she saw was the wheelchair. The second thing was the blood … always the blood.
There was a man on the floor with a bloody, gaping hole in the center of his body—it didn’t make sense at the time, and it wouldn’t connect until later. He wasn’t familiar to her at first, but then his head swung her way and she saw his eyes. As he stared at her, those pale, almost colorless eyes left her frozen.
Jethro—
She’d been prepared to see him. She thought. But the sight of those eyes, the dragon from her nightmares …
Stumbling, she fell against Elliot, and the solid, secure strength of him steadied her. Desperately, she reached over, needing something to hold. His hand was there, callused, warm, and strong.
“Your dragon isn’t much of a dragon these days.”
That voice was eerily familiar. Like her own … and like another’s.
My pretty little princess … you’ll be a good girl while I’m gone, right? That almost memory snapped into focus, and Shay had a flash of her mother, standing in the door, a hand resting on the swell of her belly. I love you, baby doll.
It was obscene, she thought, that she should have that final memory of her mother, brought on by the realization that she and her sister sounded so much like her.
Obscene. And wrong. She wanted to scream at the unfairness of it, but even as the tears tried to fight free, the anger burned inside her. She could rage at the unfairness all she wanted, but this bitch was the obscene one. The wrong one.
You saved yourself … you’re stronger than you think.
By God, Shay thought, it’s about time I showed it.
“I don’t know,” she said, and the steadiness of her voice surprised her. “I’m looking at a dragon right now that looks pretty fucking awful.”
In all honesty, Leslie didn’t look like much of a dragon. As Elliot had said, she was Shay’s height, but she was rounder, curvier. There was a resemblance, she thought, in the shape of the face, although Shay’s features were sharper, more defined. They both had black hair. The similarities were definitely there, although Shay didn’t know if she would have blinked twice if she’d seen this woman on the street.
Well, actually, she probably would have gone out of her way to avoid her. There was something in Leslie’s eyes …
Crazy bitch.
Just like Elliot had said. Her eyes were off. And that was another thing Shay could remember from those vague, surreal days of her murky childhood. “You know when I’d go and hide away in the closet?” she asked softly, ignoring the man who lay bleeding on the floor, ignoring Elliot.
“Yes.” Leslie smiled. “You hid away from the dragon. But he can’t hurt you now. You’re starting to remember more, aren’t you?”
Shay nodded. “What happened to Darcy?”
Leslie shrugged. “She was in the way.” She reached for a cloth on the floor, carefully wiping away the blood that stained the knife she’d been holding at her side.
“I spent two years talking to you, thinking you
were her. How did you manage that?”
“Oh, that part was easy …” Leslie cleared her throat and then she smiled. It was unsettling, the change that came over her face. But it was nothing compared to what happened when she spoke. “Hey, girl … it’s me! Darcy, you know … that silly little bimbo who jumps at your every little word …”
Shay squeezed Elliot’s hand, shaking as she listened to her friend’s voice coming out of a stranger’s mouth. It was surreal—so fucking surreal. “Impressive,” she said, her voice faint.
“Nah, that’s an easy trick. I learned how to do that in high school. I didn’t have any big problems with her, you know. She was just … in the way.” Leslie rose, still holding the knife and eyeing Elliot with a queer little smile. “People can’t come between us, Michelline. You’re my baby sister and it’s my job to take care of you.”
Something wrenched in her chest. If she even dared …
“Darcy was my friend,” she said quietly.
“I know you think she was. But she just liked you because of what you did. What you let her do. She didn’t love you like I do.” Leslie brushed it off and glanced over at a computer. Shay followed her line of sight and felt her heart bump when she realized she was looking at the front door of the warehouse.
A camera. Leslie had rigged up a fucking camera.
The cops—they’d be here any second. She shot Elliot a look and saw that he’d seen it as well.
Taking a step forward, desperate to get her sister’s attention away from that monitor, she said, “Can you tell me where she is?”
“Why?” Leslie just stared at her, a puzzled look on her face. Genuinely puzzled.
She didn’t get it. If it didn’t touch her, it didn’t matter.
“Because she was my friend,” Shay said again. Shaking her head, she added, “Even if you think I wasn’t her friend, that she didn’t care about me, I cared about her. And her family deserves to know where she is. She had sisters … sisters are important, right?”
Leslie frowned. “This doesn’t matter to me.”
The man on the floor had been oddly quiet, but when Leslie looked down, he groaned, shrinking away as though that might protect him. “This matters … don’t you care that I’m taking care of the dragon?” Leslie knelt by him and dragged the blade up his chest. “He can’t hurt you anymore, princess.”
Stolen: A Novel of Romantic Suspense Page 31