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Oh fuck.
The cabin.
34
DANNY
“Where is he? Where the hell is he?”
Toby burst into the room in a flurry of coats with his tie hanging loosely from his neck. His face, drawn and pinched, immediately paled when he caught sight of Lucas in the wheelchair next to me and he darted forward with a soft cry.
“Lucas! What happened, what happened?!”
“Toby.” I moved forward and caught his arm before he could lay his hand on Lucas’ injured shoulder. Toby turned to me, his eyes wide and his lips parted when he finally spotted the Detective standing in front of me.
“Mr. Ashbluff? I’m Detective Banner. I’m investigating Scarlett’s disappearance. She’s your sister, correct?”
“Kidnapping,” I corrected immediately. Detective Banner sighed slightly, and he nodded.
“Yes, kidnapping.”
“Kidnapping?” Toby spun back to Lucas. “And you’re hurt—Sebastian, how is he?”
“Sir, if you’d like to take a seat?”
I surged forward, catching Toby as the gravity of the situation hit him and nearly toppled him over. As I guided Toby down into one of the plastic chairs, Lucas caught the Detective’s attention.
“Could we have a minute?” Lucas asked.
Detective Banner seemed unwilling to leave but after a few moments of Toby panting with his head hung between his shoulders, he agreed with a nod.
“Five minutes.”
The second the door closed, Lucas surged up from the wheelchair the hospital had forced him into and tested the strength of the sling around his arm. “This is bullshit,” he spat. “We should be out there looking for her, not wrapped up here.”
“What happened?” Toby lifted his head and glanced between us. “What happened?”
“Shane.” My voice was bitter. “I don’t know everything, but he turned up at the house and I guess Scarlett heard the door because she answered it. The next thing I know, I’m waking up to a scream and Sebastian is yelling and then there was a gunshot.”
“Shane, he brought a gun,” Lucas added. “Fuck knows where he got it from, but he shot Sebastian on the stairs, and he fell. He’s stable, mostly. The bullet nicked a lung, and he broke a few ribs in the fall, hit his head pretty hard too but he’ll be okay. He was so— I reached the stairs and Sebastian was at the bottom. Scarlett was there and Shane was waving the gun around. She tried to warn me but…”
Lucas trailed off and grimaced.
“The bullet hit me in the shoulder, and I went down. I came running out and by the time he got me up and we headed down the stairs, Shane had taken Scarlett and the last we saw was his truck. Then we called the ambulance, called you and now we’re here.” A permanent frown had settled on Lucas’ shoulders and after some pacing while he talked, he finally sat back down.
“Why,” Toby whispered. “Was there something she didn’t tell us? Why did he do this? Why?!”
I bit back the surge of irritation at the questions. How were we supposed to know the answer to these?
“No,” Lucas muttered. “We knew he was crazy. He tried something in the city, but we stopped him. I thought we’d scared him away.”
“She’s mentioned him before,” I agreed. “We bonded over our crazy exes, but she spoke as if he was something of the past. Instead, he’s here.”
“He was drunk. I could smell that much.” Lucas’ face twisted in disgust. “Ranting about how she owed him, and he was going to make her pay.”
“Money?” Toby glanced between the two of us. “Is she in debt?”
“I don’t think so. It’s not that kind of debt,” I said, thinking back to our previous conversations. “He’s possessive and psychotic. I think he feels like he owns her, or at the very least he has some crazy possession over her that he thinks he’s owed compensation for since they broke up.”
