I looked to her for confirmation, but she shook her head, her eyes wide and filling with tears.
“It’s okay.” She blinked back tears. “Just do what he asks. We don’t have any other choice.”
“Good girl,” Frankie nodding approvingly. “See, gentlemen, you could learn a thing or two from this young lady. She knows her place in the world.”
Rue’s chin dropped, and anger at her reaction grew inside me. Rue’s place in the world should never be this. She deserved to be treated like a queen, not a goddamned slave. Where was her spark? She was like the girl she’d been when she’d first come to us. What the fuck had they been doing to her? Had they hurt her. Raped her? I wanted to launch myself at Frankie and rip his fucking head off, but I was unarmed, and he wasn’t, and besides, he still had Rue. He wouldn’t think twice about hurting her if it meant punishing me, and that was the last thing I wanted to happen.
Ryan’s voice came from beside me. “It’s okay, Kodee. Just let them in. Let’s do what Mr. Capello wants. We don’t have any choice.”
I spun to face him, opening my mouth to demand to know what the fuck he was talking about, but then I caught the look in his eye. It was one I recognized—one that told me to shut the hell up and just run with this.
I suddenly understood what Ryan was thinking. This whole time, we had needed to make Rue a passport to get her out of the country and away from the Capello brothers and Joe Nettie’s men, and now the opportunity to do so was landing right in our laps.
Maybe we’d have Frankie standing over us while we did it, but once all the information was in the computer, there was nothing to stop us from making two copies of the passport instead of just the one. Of course, it also meant we would be handing Frankie the opportunity to get Rue out of the country without us, and that was a dangerous risk. Yes, we might have the chance to do the same, but we would have to get Rue back first.
Time was running out.
If Frankie was planning on selling her, he would do so right after the trial. That meant we only had a matter of days to get her back and out of the country. If we didn’t achieve it before then, Rue would be sold on to some bastard on the other side of the world, and we would probably never see her again.
But we had to do it. Like she and Ryan said, what other choice did we have? If we didn’t do as Frankie asked, he would probably decide to shoot one of us anyway just to make a point.
At least this way, we would still have a chance.
“Fine,” I relented. “I guess you’d better come in.”
Frankie stepped into the apartment, looking around. I doubted this was the first time he’d been in here. He would have come when we’d done our vanishing act, wanting to see if there was anything we’d left he could have made use of or anything that would tell him where we’d gone. The place was in a better state of tidiness than it had been before. We’d at least made an effort to clear up the mess Dillon had created before we’d gone on the run, and the subsequent damage I assumed Frankie’s men had made after we’d left.
Rue was pushed in behind him.
My heart ached at the sight of her back in the apartment. This place should have been her home. She should have been safe here if it wasn’t for men like Frankie Capello.
“This way,” I said, leading them toward our office.
I had to clench my fists by my side to stop myself grabbing Rue, wrapping my arms around her and fighting off anyone who tried to take her away again. But the sensible part of my brain told me to play it cool. At least we were doing something. Fighting them now was never going to work. Frankie Cappello needed to believe we were cooperating on all levels.
I paused at the door and turned to Frankie. “We can’t have everyone in there. The equipment is delicate. Just the slightest knock can throw something out of whack and render it useless. We’ll take Rue in with us, but that’s all.”
Frankie snorted. “You don’t actually think I’m falling for that? He jerked his head at the bigger of the two. “You can take Clay in with you. Stand at the door and make sure they don’t try anything stupid.”
Clay nodded.
Ryan’s crutches were propped up against the wall right outside, and he picked them up and used them to get to his feet. I wondered what he’d done with the knife that had been in his lap. Had he secreted it somewhere in the wheelchair, or did he still have it on his person?
Leaving Frankie outside, we took Rue into the office. We needed to control the lighting in the room, so I had no choice but to shut the door after us. The man we now knew to be called Clay took up position in front of it, as though one of us might escape, despite his boss being on the other side.
I needed to take digital photographs, and to make sure she was sitting in the right position for the photograph to be acceptable, I needed to get close to Rue.
I leaned in and spoke against her ear, my heart aching with my proximity to her.
“Are you okay?”
She gave me a tight smile and nodded.
“Did they touch you?” I murmured, flicking my attention to Clay. He was standing by the door, scrolling through his phone, apparently bored with watching over us. I didn’t want to hear the answer, but I needed to know.
“Not badly,” she replied, her gaze shifting away from mine, her cheeks pinking with embarrassment.
That embarrassment filled me with fury. She shouldn't be the one to be ashamed. She hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Hey!” Clay shouted from the doorway, clearly having lifted his attention from his phone and noticing us. “No talking and step back.”
I clenched my teeth. The fantasy of snatching up Ryan’s knife and plunging it into the chest of this man then bursting out through the door and hacking Frankie Capello to pieces, together with the men who worked for him, filled my head.
It was tempting.
But I knew I would end up shot before I even managed to plunge the knife into Clay’s heart.
I tried to work out the logistics of my plan. With a passport, all we’d need to do was grab Rue and get her out of the country. Of course, it would mean we would have to find Dillon before then. We wouldn’t just abandon him here.
I wished there was a way we could explain to Rue what we were planning. In her eyes, it must just look as though we were going along with whatever Frankie Capello wanted, no matter what the result.
“Are you okay?” Rue asked Ryan, when Clay’s attention was once more taken up by his phone.
I imagined Frankie wouldn’t have been overly impressed if he’d seen him.
She nodded to Ryan’s leg. “I’m worried about you.”
Trust Rue to worry about someone else when she was in the worst position of all of us.
“It’s only temporary, Rue.” Ryan gave her a tight smile. “Don’t worry about me, okay?”
“It’s hard not to.”
He nodded. “I know. Me, too.”
Her gaze flicked over to Clay then back to Ryan. “Do you think Dillon is okay?”
“Yeah.” He gave her a tight smile. “I hope so.”
“Hey,” Clay snapped, pointing his gun in our direction. “What did I say about no talking?”
We all fell silent and got on with our work.
I took photographs while Ryan inputted everything into the computer. I stood over him, and once everything was uploaded, I nudged him in the arm and nodded toward the flash drive already sticking out of the computer’s USB port. He understood what I was getting at and quickly saved all the information onto the flash drive, as well as the computer’s hard drive. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Clay wasn’t looking and swiped the flash-drive and pocketed it.
“Okay, we’ve got what we needed,” I said, raising my voice. “We can get out of here now.”
I shot a look to Rue, hoping she’d know we were doing our best to save her.
Clay opened the door, and in the apartment, Frankie rose to his feet from where he’d been sitting on the armrest of our couch.
“Done?” he asked.
“The completed passport is going to take at least twenty-four hours,” I told him.
His lips thinned with displeasure. “That will only leave another day before the trial.”
“Are you likely to need it sooner?” There was both a challenge and a question in my words.
He tilted his head to one side. “Not at all. Rue will be going through with her testimony, no matter what. Isn’t that right, Rue?”
She pressed her lips together and nodded.
“We’ll make sure the passport is brought to you when it’s done,” I said.
“No need. I’ll get someone to pick it up, together with the two passports for the other girls. I assume they’ll be ready by then, too.”
“Yeah, they’ll be ready.”
They might be ready, but we’d make sure the information held on the chips inside the passports were mismatched. We’d deliberately muddled up the details so each of the girls’ images had been switched around. Wherever they ended up, they wouldn’t make it through passport control. I wished I could do the same for Rue’s passport, but if we screwed it up, we wouldn’t be able to move her either.
We could have kept Rue here for longer, and a part of me wanted to do so, but I also wanted Frankie and his men out of here. If they said they’d stay until the passport was done, they might also insist they watch us deleting all of Rue’s information off our computer. It wouldn’t take much for them to search both the computer and my pockets to find and delete the information. They couldn’t delete it, however, if we still needed it to make her passport.
“Okay, let’s get out of here.” Frankie nodded at Clay, who grabbed Rue by the arm and dragged her toward the door.
She threw a glance over her shoulder at us as she was hustled from the building.
It’ll be okay, I mouthed at her, hoping she understood what I was saying.
She gave me a tight smile in return before she was pulled out of view.
Ryan had switched from the crutches back to his wheelchair, and he wheeled himself to a halt beside me.
“I hope we know what we’re doing,” he said.
I placed my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Yeah, me, too.”
Chapter Seventeen
Rue
I WAS TAKEN BACK TO the house.
The moment we arrived, I could tell something had happened. Otis and another of Frankie’s righthand men were waiting outside the front door, and they rushed forward as soon as the car stopped. The atmosphere bristled with tension, and even as Otis grabbed me and yanked me away, back into the house, I strained to decipher the low, urgent voices of the men I’d left behind.
“What’s happened?” I dared ask Otis as he shoved me through the house. My stomach churned with nerves. “It’s nothing to do with the trial, is it?”
My worst fear was that Joe Nettie would break out, and the trial wouldn’t happen. At least with the trial still in my future, no matter how close, I knew I still had time. If the trial was no longer going ahead, however, I’d be handed over to the man from Malta who was planning on purchasing me and whisked out of the country at the first opportunity.
“It’s none of your business,” Otis snapped.
From the direction we were taking, I realized I wasn’t going straight back to my bedroom. Instead, we were heading to the wing of the house where the kitchen and utility room were located.
We approached the door to the pantry, where I’d eaten with the other girls previously.
Excited whispers came from the room. “—heard he was locked in there and was seriously pissed about it.”
There was a girlish giggle. Laughter wasn’t something you heard often from women in this house. “Serves him right. The other guy broke his nose, too, before he escaped.”
Otis reached past me and unlocked the door, throwing it open.
The two girls were sitting at the small table, and they jerked upright in surprise, eyes widening with panic as we entered.
“Stay in here,” Otis commanded, “and behave yourselves. I’m needed elsewhere.”
He backed out, and the locked clicked shut again.
May and Skye relaxed a fraction again when they realized it was only me they’d been left with.
“Hey,” I gestured toward the hallway I’d just come from, “I couldn’t help overhearing. Did you say someone escaped?”
“Yeah.” May nodded. “Some guy managed to lock one of Frankie’s main men in the cellar at the restaurant and escaped.”
My heart lifted. I’d last seen Dillon at the restaurant. Could I hope it had been him?
I perched on the corner of the table. “Do you have any idea who it was?”
Skye nodded. “I overheard them saying it was some ‘Irish prick.’”
I almost laughed in my delight. That had to be Dillon. There were plenty of Irish in New York City, but I couldn’t imagine the Capellos had too many of them kept captive in the cellar of their restaurant.
Was there any way I could use this knowledge? Frankie had been using his threats to kill Dillon as a way of controlling me, but if Dillon was free, that was beyond his ability. He could still hurt Ryan and Kodee, though. I wondered if they knew about Dillon escaping. Would Dillon go to the apartment? He wouldn’t be silly enough to do that, I was sure. He’d realize the Capellos would have their men watching the place, especially after last time.
So, where the hell was he? I hoped he wasn’t going to attempt to come here. His chance of sneaking inside one of Frankie Capello’s properties without being shot was almost zero.
“Do you know who it is?” Skye asked, her forehead creasing with concentration as she regarded me.
I nodded. “Yeah, I think so. He’s someone I care about.”
“Like the two men at the apartment. The ones who do the passports.”
This was news to me. I perked up even more. “You got to meet them?”
Of course they had. Frankie had asked about when the passports for the other girls would be ready.
“They were asking about you,” May said. “They were trying to figure out where you were being kept.”
“Did you tell them?”
Skye nodded. “As best we could, anyway. We don’t know much ourselves.”
Would Kodee and Ryan come here to try to find me? This place was heavily guarded, and even with Dillon free, they’d be massively outnumbered.
But still, I couldn’t help the combination of hope and fear fluttering through me.
Frankie Capello was losing control.
Chapter Eighteen
Dillon
I FELT LIKE A CRIMINAL.
Fuck, I guessed I was a criminal, but when you mixed with the same type of people, it diluted that feeling, made you feel more normal, as though you were just like everyone else.
But right now, I was planning on dragging someone who was completely innocent into our fucked-up world, and as much as I felt like shit for doing so, it was my best option.
I lurked beside the building opposite the one that was focusing my attention, watching the main entrance and the parking lot. I hoped the person I was after wouldn’t use a rear exit, so I missed him, but it was impossible for me to keep an eye on both areas at once.
It didn’t help that I had a gun tucked into the waistband of my jeans, my fingers never far from the grip, and that I’d been wearing the same clothes for almost a week now. It had been the same amount of time since I’d last taken a shower, too, and every time I moved my arms, I caught a whiff of myself. If anyone caught sight of me, they’d probably assume I was homeless. I glimpsed my reflection in a parked car window. It wasn’t pretty. Blood was crusted in my hairline, and my face was streaked with dirt. I’d lost weight as well, my cheekbones sharp and cheeks hollowed, though the lower half of my face was hidden with dark beard-growth.
Would he even recognize me?
I wasn’t sure. We’d only been in the same room for maybe twenty-minutes—half an hour, at
a push—and I hadn’t been the focus of attention either. He would remember Ryan, though, I was sure of that.
I remained hidden in the shadows, watching the parking lot as people left the building. At first, it was clearly patients who were making their way to their cars, but then staff members, lanyards with their names and job titles hung around their necks, left as well.
I still hadn’t spotted the person I was looking for. Could he have had the day off? That would royally screw up my plans.
The minutes passed. There were still lights on inside the building, but there was a chance they were on for security purposes.
Then I saw him, backing out of the main door, a set of keys in his hand as he went to lock up.
Moving quickly, I pulled the gun and stepped forward. The man was bigger than I was, but I’d proven that size wasn’t important when I’d taken down Meathead. I had no intention of harming this guy, but he didn’t know that, and I was unfortunately going to need to make him think I was happy to hurt him if I didn’t get what I wanted.
He didn’t hear me approaching, and I jammed the muzzle of the gun against his ribs. “Open the door. We’re going inside.”
Gordon Little froze but didn’t turn around to look at me. “There’s no money kept on the premises,” he said, his voice level. “And all the equipment is security marked, so you won’t be able to sell it.”
“I’m not interested in any of that. Just open the door so we can go inside.”
I was aware of the wide-open space at my back, the possibility someone might come back—a member of staff who might have forgotten something and needed to return to their office—so I jabbed him harder with the weapon.
“Hurry up.”
The lock clicked as it disengaged, and the door swung open. I pushed Gordon into the building, and we passed through the reception area and down the corridor.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“To your office.”
“Why?”
I jabbed him with the gun again. “You’ll find out when we get there.”
Captivated with Them (Dirty Twisted Love, #3) Page 10