“How ya hanging in there, Laurel?” he asked me, flashing a small, but genuine smile.
“Oh, you know,” I said with a forced laugh and a shrug. “I suppose I could be worse.”
He gave a twitch of his lips to let me know he saw through the attempt at humor.
“We’re gonna make sure you’re taken care of, okay?”
“Thank you. I really appreciate it. And for… all the other stuff, too.”
I shouldn’t have been thanking him. I wouldn’t have been in the situation I had been in if it wasn’t for this club.
But something inside of me just couldn’t hate them. Not any of them. It wasn’t like they had made the guy crazy or whatever. It wasn’t like they made him kidnap me and keep me locked in a cage for weeks. Though they were wrapped up in this somehow, it wasn’t their fault.
“I hate to do this to you, but can you tell us anything else? Maybe something you missed or overlooked?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered honestly.
I couldn’t even remember what all I had told them before. I had been half out of my mind then. I still was. I felt like I was waiting for it all to hit me and I feared the moment it all came crashing down.
“He-he got angry. He was so mad because you didn’t get or figure out his clues or something. At first, it just seemed like he had this simple plan. Take me then you would come running. But then I sort of told him that… um, that I wasn’t that important to… anyone here. And I may have let him know that I wasn’t a very good friend and no one probably knew I had been gone.”
Bryan looked away. I wasn’t looking directly at him but I could see his head turn out of the corner of my eye. What I had said had been the truth, and I wondered just how long it was before any one of them noticed I wasn’t around.
“How long did it take you?” I asked coldly as I shifted my focus to Bryan. “How long until someone realized I was missing?”
Bryan’s eyes went to the floor. I shifted my focus to Iron and asked the same questions with my eyes.
“A week,” he said holding his head high. At least someone had the decency not to try and hide the truth from me.
“A week,” I whispered and closed my eyes. That stung. To know that I hadn’t been around a week before someone even thought about me. Or to check on me.
But could I really be mad at anyone other than myself?
“You said clues?” Iron said pulling my focus away from all the sadness that washed over me.
“Yes, but I don’t know what. He never told me. At one point, he was so mad that he threatened to cut my finger off and send it to you. But he didn’t.”
“The hell?!” Bryan raged from beside me. I placed my hand on his knee in hopes that it would calm him down.
“I didn’t know how far he was going to go.” I shook my head. As much as I didn’t want to think of what happened right before I escaped, I knew they needed to hear it. “The man with the accent had said something about giving him three more days…”
I went on to explain everything, trying to recall all the little details that I could. I explained how he was running out of time and I was scared what would happen to me. How he got so mad that last time. And how I ended up looking like, well, this.
“He said I was nothing but a whore. That all women were. He pinned me down and undid his pants. He tried to… put it in my mouth, I think that was what he was going for. I don’t really know. But he couldn’t get it to… work. Thank, God. It hit me, after all of the things he had said. I think I was too old for him.”
The thought turned my stomach. It was all I could do to not to jump off the bed and run for the bathroom. All of it. It was so horrible.Hewas so horrible.
“I think he killed his little sister,” I went on. I was starting to feel tired again and I just wanted to get this all over with. “He said something about his father, and the club, I think. Payback for killing his father, maybe? I don’t know.” Everything was fuzzy and I was having trouble remembering if I had already told them that part.
“It’s okay, Laurel,” Iron said. “Just tell us what you remember. How did you get out?”
“After he beat me or whatever, there was a knock on the door. I guess he thought I was out cold or something because he walked out and left me on the floor. I heard arguing, it was the man with the accent. I managed to get the window open and jumped out. That was when I ran into… someone and they brought me here. I don’t even know where that guy came from.”
“He was at the house next door. Saw you trying to get out the window and rushed outside.” I was thankful that Iron filled in the gaps for me.
“He knew you were looking for me?” I asked though it wasn’t really a question. I had never seen the guy before but he seemed to know about the club. “And did you guys do what he said you did? Did you kill his father?”
Iron looked at Bryan pointedly. They shared some kind of secret eye code or something. It was clear that they weren’t going to say anything. Which made me a little bit mad.
“Laurel, B-ry and I are going to step out and talk about something. We’re going to try and figure this all out, okay? Why don’t you just rest for a bit? I’m sure this has been hard on you.”
The way he said it was sweet. Almost like he did care about me a little.
However, those weren’t the words that I wanted to hear and I wasn’t dumb enough to miss that it was a distraction.
“No,” I said defiantly as I stared him down.
Who was this woman speaking from inside of me?
And where had she been all along?
