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So, the car thought crossed my mind in that moment between trying to figure out more of Ferryn's hotspots, and calling her deliberately turned off phone.
"Fucking kids," Virgin muttered at the car as the one who'd been driving threw open the door, climbing out so fast he stumbled, making the guards by the gate readjust their guns, the ones that Lo's guys could wear with no concern of the cops for reasons she refused to disclose.
It was right about then that I recognized this particular kid. Though, he could hardly be called that, closing in on twenty.
Which I knew because I knew his sister.
Because Ferryn was friends with her.
Because this guy would drive Ferryn home some nights, leaving Summer to press her lips together to keep from smiling.
"What?" I'd asked one night, watching out the window as Ferryn prattled on, and the guy just kept staring forward.
"She's madly in love with him," Summer had informed me.
"I'm gonna need you to repeat that."
"I overheard her on the phone with Iggy one night. Madly in love with Vance."
"And the reason we're letting her sit out in the car with him..."
"Oh, please. Look at him. He won't even look at her. He knows he can't even do that."
"She's a baby," I'd insisted.
"She's a young woman, and you know it," Summer had insisted, putting an arm around my lower back, leaning her head into my arm.
"Don't gotta like it," I'd grumbled, knowing I would likely never be able to see her as anything other than the little girl in the Chucks and tutu, giving me sloppy kid kisses on the cheek, smearing jam on my face, and telling me that my scruff tickled.
"No," she'd agreed. "I don't think you ever will. But let her have her crush. She'll have a thousand of them. And this one is the most harmless."
"How do you figure?"
"Because he's too old for her. Because he clearly knows and respects that. Because if you shut this down, and she crushed on a boy her own age, she wouldn't be sitting in the front seat in the driveway right now; she'd be in the back, parked in some lot somewhere, doing things that you never want your little girl to do in the back of a car."
"Or fuckin' anywhere," I'd added.
"Yes, yes, of course. She will never do any of that... ever ... anywhere," she'd placated me, patting my stomach.
"Damn straight."
So I knew this guy from countless stops in my driveway, each time, his gaze not even drifting to my daughter, no matter how much she was clearly trying to get it.
I also knew that look on his face.
Eyes huge.
Muscle ticking in his jaw.
Fucking frantic.
His eye was blackened, too. And his lip split and still bleeding down his chin onto his shirt.
"They got Ferryn," his voice rose up out of him, roaring across the field between us. And since I'd had a talk with the kid once, and knew his voice for low and raspy, I knew his voice was matching his face. Fucking freaked.
"The fuck'd he just say?" I heard myself asking Virgin, sure I misheard him.
"Someone got Ferryn," he repeated, taking off across the field even as Lo's guys worked to open the gates to let him in.
It was then that my feet carried me over to him. How? I don't know. Because everything felt numb right then.
"What?" I hissed as I came up almost nose-to-nose with him.
"Two men. Black Cadillac. Old. No plates," he rambled off as one of Lo's guys picked up his phone to call it in. "Outside the pizza place in Farehold," he added. "Both white. Tall. Wide. I tried," he added, voice begging me to believe him. "I tried to get her back," he added.
That was why his eye was black, why his lip was bleeding. Trying to save my daughter.
Save my daughter.
"From the fucking beginning," I growled, trying to keep the panic from welling up, knowing it would do me no good.
"They snuck out of school. Convinced me to bring them to my show tonight. But I dropped them off to go to the bookstore and eat. I had just come to pick them up. She was getting up to walk to my car, but someone behind her grabbed her purse. I was getting out, thinking some asshole was just trying to mug her. But then he was dragging her. He was grabbing her and pulling her to a car. And shoving her into the trunk. I tried," he repeated, sounding frustratingly helpless.
"I see you did," I agreed, giving the kid a bit of comfort I didn't even have for myself as my mind raced.
Words crossed my mind that I never wanted to think.
Kidnapping.
Rape.
Trafficking.
Or V.
"Tell them everything," I demanded, motioning to Lo's guys as I flew across the yard toward the compound, screaming out the news as soon as I was inside the door, making everyone's face match the kid outside - and likely my own - frantic.
