Clusterf*@k (Life Sucks Book 4)

by Elise Faber

  “Fine.” She could tell he was smiling, but then his voice went serious. “Cloudless, babe, I’ve got to go.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll be there beside you when you wake up in the morning.”

  “All right, baby. Love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Then he hung up.

  Then she finished her bath.

  Then she went to bed with a huge smile on her face.

  Sunlight pouring through the windows woke her up.

  She was still smiling, still so freaking in love with Chance that she found herself with a lovestruck grin on her face from dusk to dawn.

  Half-asleep, she rolled, intending to burrow into his side, knowing that if they drifted apart while sleeping, they always cuddled back up when one of them awoke.

  But her roll only brought her to cold sheets, a cool pillow.

  “What?” she murmured, instantly awake.

  She pushed up, studied the empty half of the bed, knowing instantly that Chance hadn’t been back the night before.

  Her stomach knotted, and she grabbed her cell, hoping for a text or a call telling her that he was running late.

  But there was nothing from him.

  More knotting.

  She pushed up, searched the bedroom for a note, then the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room, the bulletin board by the garage, the granola bar basket.

  No notes.

  “Fuck,” she whispered, and there wasn’t even a niggle that he’d left her or hadn’t come home because he didn’t want to or was cutting and running. They were so far beyond that; it didn’t even register.

  Maybe it should have. They were new and had dived into the deep end.

  But it didn’t.

  Because she and Chance were different, important, more. True.

  Because the only thing she felt was dread.

  Something was wrong.

  And it became even more wrong when she tried to call his cell and it went immediately to voicemail.

  No. No. This wasn’t right.

  She called the only person she could think of.

  Detective Hopkins.

  Then told him about the case—or at least the little she knew, which as he started asking questions, she realized was absolutely nothing. She didn’t know where he was meeting his contact, only that it was about two hours away. Didn’t know the contact’s name. Didn’t know what police department he was working with.

  She knew nothing.

  But Detective Hopkins took her seriously.

  He told her to stay by her phone, said he would make some calls, and that he would trace Chance’s cell.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I hear something,” he promised. “It’s probably nothing, honey. But it doesn’t hurt to make sure, especially since he’s a reliable guy.”

  He was.

  That was why her insides were twisted into a fucking knot.

  “Hang in there,” Detective Hopkins said. Then he hung up.

  And Misty was left hanging.

  All morning.

  All afternoon.

  All fucking evening.

  24

  Boots

  Chance

  He stifled a groan and slitted his eyes open.

  Dark.

  Super helpful that.

  But with his head pounding and the dim light, he was struggling. One slow breath in. One slow breath out.

  Open again.

  Okay, not pitch black.

  There were windows on the far side of the space—large enough to tell him that instead of being outside the cluster of warehouses where he’d been waiting for his contact, he was now inside one of them. It was dark outside, and the throbbing on his head told him he’d been out for a while.

  He took a careful inventory of his body.

  Ankles were tied to chair legs. Wrists secured behind the back of it. Rope twined around his abdomen and chest.

  Not gagged.

  Not blindfolded.

  Shifting slowly—not that he had much space to do a whole lot of that—he tested the bindings. They were tight enough that he’d lost feeling in his hands and feet, but the slight wiggle room near his hips told him that his wallet, cell, and keys were gone.

  Along with his gun.

  So, not great.

  But focusing on how not great things were looking wasn’t going to do shit, so he focused on something else—that being, moving his fingers. And then his toes.

  It didn’t feel great, that prickling, tingling sensation, but he kept with those slow movements until all feeling had returned. Which was good and bad. Because with sensation returning, pain was also coming back, and if someone hadn’t been restrained before—and for what was seeming to be for quite a while, considering the amount of pain currently in his limbs—he could clue them into it not feeling great.

  Sometimes numb was better.

  But numb wasn’t going to get him out of this.

  Chance took his mind off the pain by focusing on the space around him, his night vision coming in clearer, the shadows revealing themselves slowly. A rack of shelves on the far wall, just beneath the windows. Not empty, perhaps a weapon to be found, if he could make it there. But that wouldn’t be easy, or quiet, if he had to shuffle his way over. So not ideal.

  He kept looking.

  Door on the opposite side of him. Closer than the windows. But still seeming pretty far, considering he was tied to a chair.

  Behind him, another rack, close enough that it might be useful, especially if he could get the bindings around the damaged corner with a sharp metal piece sticking out and start hacking at the plastic.

  In front of him, a long hallway with voices coming down it.

  Closing his eyes, he went limp, and listened really fucking close.

  The footsteps came closer.

  “…and you need to move the product quickly. If he got this close, that means he knows too much.”

  Chance had gotten close, that was true. When he’d finally managed to connect with his contact, he’d found out that the lead he’d been teasing out wasn’t just a tease. It was the lead. And that lead was that the manager at the facility where the local PD kept their evidence was dirty, and he’d gotten it in him to make a quick buck by skimming evidence off the top and fudging their labels and entries in the system.

  Made easier because this PD hadn’t transitioned fully to electronic records.

  Not to mention, he’d helped himself to those drugs slated for incineration, marking them as destroyed but carting them off in his truck after hours instead.

  Chance had sent that information off to the department, along with the samples of the fudged records his contact had rummaged up. They could close the case on that alone. But then, since he was close and was already late meeting Misty, knowing she would be asleep by the time he drove the two hours home, he had decided to follow up on his final lead, wanting to get some pictures, to catch the manager red-handed, and make it as easy as possible for the case to be prosecuted.

  So, he’d gone to do some recon.

  At the warehouses.

  Which the manager of the evidence facility was dumb enough to lease under his own name.

  Which meant that Chance had gotten cocky.

  Because what kind of dumb fuck stole evidence, housed it in a warehouse leased under his own name? Leased! Not even owned, because seriously, what would happen if the landlord came in and found pallets of drugs—because also seriously, the amount of evidence they’d finally tracked down as missing was in the hundreds to thousands of pounds, not something that was easy to hide or conceal.

  He’d been snapping pictures when he’d sensed the movement behind him.

  A scuff of a boot.

  He’d spun.

  And then everything had gone black.

  Now, he was awake with a splitting headache and tied to a chair.

  Sure glad he went for that recon now.

  “I saw what was on his camera, Bobby,
” the voice snapped. “I know it needs to be dealt with. We’re ready to move. We just need to deal with this fucker first.”

  Even more glad for that recon.

  Fuck.

  The footsteps slowed. The two men were right in front of him, but Chance stayed limp and just barely slit open his eyes. Two pairs of feet in front of him—one a pair of boots, like those a police officer might wear. The other, wingtips—fucking expensive wingtips—and he knew those belonged to Bobby, the warehouse manager.

  Because the man wasn’t exactly subtle with the suits he wore, with the shoes he wore, with the wealth he sported (in gold watches, sports cars, and a big ass house)—much more than he would make as a facilities manager.

  The officer—or at least that was who Chance was assuming the other boots belonged to—stepped close and he braced, knowing what was coming.

  Pain in his shin, radiating up his legs, rattling his teeth.

  The fucker had kicked him.

  He forced himself to stay limp, even though those boots appeared to have steel toes. Fucking hell, that hurt. As did the backhand to the face, splitting his lip, jerking his head to the side.

  “Fuck, McCannon, how hard did you hit him before?” Manager Bobby said.

  “Hard enough.”

  McCannon. McCannon. Chance tried to go through the names on the roster of the department while hanging there limp, the two men discussing the details on the move. He focused on absorbing those, too, along with breathing slow and deep, staying relaxed, going through the names from the list of officers he’d pulled early on in the investigation.

  Because when evidence went missing, typically there was a person on the inside.

  He’d found them.

  Two people.

  Rolf. That was the dumbass’s first name. Rolf McCannon.

  And Bobby Hoyden.

  And he knew where they were taking the drugs. Farmhouse off Old Crenshaw Road outside of town.

  Now, to stay alive long enough to get that information to the police.

  25

  Should Haves

  Misty

  It was after ten at night.

  She was beside herself.

  She’d heard nothing aside from a text a few hours ago from Detective Hopkins, telling her they were still looking into it.

  Which meant they had nothing.

  Nothing.

  And she was done hearing nothing, done doing nothing, done having nothing.

  Which was why she had used the key Chance had given her to go into his office, why she’d just spent the last twenty minutes trying to get into his computer.

  And finally succeeding.

  His password was Cloudless.

  Yes, that would have filled her with joy if not for the fact that her man was missing and no one could find him.

  She began looking through his files, knowing it was an invasion of privacy but willing to do whatever was necessary to find him, even if that meant he wouldn’t forgive her for it later. Most of the files were password protected, so she didn’t have much luck, especially since they were named with some system she couldn’t decipher.

  Heart sinking, she turned to the internet browser, not having much hope that he hadn’t already cleared his search history. He had. But she also saw that he still had a tab open. It was just showing a random browser, but she tried hitting the back arrow, just in case. That was pretty much the extent of her computer sleuthing abilities.

  But to her surprise, it worked.

  Loading a map, directions from his office to an address.

  Searching the desktop, she found a pad and wrote it down. Then hit the back arrow again. It brought her right back to the same search engine she’d started with.

  Shit.

  But it was something.

  She picked up her phone, called Detective Hopkins, and was met with his voicemail. After leaving a message with the address and an explanation of how she’d found it, she spent a few more minutes searching his desk and not finding anything.

  “Fuck,” she hissed, sitting in his chair, her hands in her hair. “Fucking hell.”

  What did one do when her boyfriend went missing and his work was potentially dangerous? She’d called the police. She’d gotten them looking. So, what now?

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  If only she was a fucking secret agent or knew one or—

  Carter. Ben.

  They were both, or at least in Ben’s case, had been FBI agents.

  They had resources. They had training. They—

  Fuck, she should have called them sooner. Oh God, why hadn’t she called them sooner?

  Snatching her phone out of her pocket, she grabbed her purse and ran for the door. Ben and Martha lived close by. Carter farther. She’d call Carter on the way to Ben’s.

  So, she did that.

  The phone rang a couple of times before a female voice picked up. “Hello?”

  “Hi, um, is this Carter’s phone?” Misty asked, jumping into her car.

  “Yes.” But there was question in the woman’s voice, a question that said she didn’t much like the fact that Carter was receiving a call from a random woman after ten at night.

  “This is Misty, his brother’s girlfriend. Can I talk—?”

  “Anika,” he heard Carter say, voice slightly muffled. “What are you doing?”

  “She says she’s your brother’s girlfriend.” Her tone made it clear she hadn’t believed Misty.

  “Misty?”

  A sigh.

  And no offense, Anika sounded like a bitch.

  Then there was a scuffle, and Carter’s voice came in loud and clear. “Misty. Are you okay?”

  “No,” she said and tried to explain the situation as quickly as possible. Carter was absolutely silent. “And I’m so fucking stupid. I called Detective Hopkins, but I never even thought about calling you or Ben. I should have—I just thought, I don’t know, that I was overreacting, or it wasn’t as big of a deal as I worried it was, but if something happened because I-I—” She broke off, near tears and knowing this was not the time for stupid tears.

  “Mist?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Breathe, babe.”

  “Babe?” she heard screeched in the background.

  And yeah, Anika was a bitch.

  “Okay,” Misty said, blinking back the tears and sucking in some air. “I’m breathing,” she whispered.

  “I want you to go to my mom and dad’s place. Tell my dad everything you told me, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said again. “I’m already driving there.”

  “Good girl.” And somehow the use of good girl didn’t piss her off. It just calmed her enough to take another breath. “Now, give me the address again.”

  She gave him the address.

  “I’ll find him, sweetheart. I promise.”

  Then he hung up.

  Then she drove to Ben and Martha’s.

  Ben had listened to her as silently as Carter had before turning for the hall and grabbing a gun, a jacket, and a pair of boots.

  He’d kissed Martha.

  Then had asked for the address.

  And then had disappeared out the door.

  “I’m so sorry,” she told Martha. “I should have come to you guys this morning. I-I’m so fucking stupid and—”

  “Stop.” Martha squeezed her hand. “You didn’t sit on your butt and do nothing. You called the police, first thing. They should have reached out to us if they thought our son was missing. I don’t know why they didn’t, because that’s standard operating procedure, but you”—another squeeze—“are not a police officer. You can’t expect to have acted like one.”

  “He’s your son,” she countered. “I should have called you.”

  “Misty, baby. If, God forbid, Chance ever goes missing again, you’ll know just what to do. But going over and over this in your mind isn’t going to help anyone.”

  Misty blew out a breath. “You’re right.”

 
; “Of course, I am,” Martha said with a small smile that didn’t hide the worry in her eyes, and Misty felt a burn of guilt for making Martha comfort her when Chance was missing. It should be the other way around, since Chance was her son. Or they should be comforting each other. Or—

  “Chance is really good at what he does,” Misty blurted. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

  “Of course, he is.”

  But Misty didn’t miss that neither of them sounded convinced.

  No word.

  Still no word from anyone.

  Martha had gone to bed a little bit before, but Misty didn’t think Chance’s mom was actually going to sleep. Instead, it seemed like she needed a moment.

  Which was fine.

  Misty needed one, too.

  She was sitting on Martha and Ben’s front porch, smelling the salt of the ocean, feeling the cool air on her skin, and searching the street, hoping that Chance might just pull into the driveway and be miraculously fine.

  But as the hours went on and the sky began to lighten, Chance still didn’t show.

  26

  Overlord

  Chance

  A noise at his right.

  Bobby and Rolf had come back twice, and Chance knew he couldn’t keep pretending to be asleep.

  They were either just going to kill him, or they’d realize he was faking…and kill him.

  Good times.

  But he’d managed to shift the chair toward the rack, and now he was sawing his way through his restraints.

  Or had been.

  Because the noise had him freezing.

  He played at unconscious, since that was pretty much his only option at this point.

  “Chance.”

  His brother’s voice.

  He blinked, slitted his eyes, and saw Carter emerge out of the shadows. He wanted to ask how in the fuck he was there, but this wasn’t the time for questions. It was time for a quick imparting of information and then quiet.

  “Two guys back office. One for sure armed. I’m restrained ankles and wrists and torso.”

  Carter was already moving.