After that…
It was nothing but flashes of fucking frowny faces and his voice.
Anytime I tried to remember anything more, it was just…
Darkness.
I looked around the room, my pulse climbing with every second I stared at a new section of this confusing hell.
My badge sat on the nightstand, and it was like a fucking reminder of my obligations that I couldn’t seem to remember.
My wallet was beside it. My phone, keys, and everything else were exactly where they should’ve been.
So why did I feel like something had been stolen?
The answer hit me before I was ready for it.
Not stolen.
Fucking taken.
A cold wave rolled through my stomach, and I resisted the urge to vomit. “You sadistic bitch.”
The words barely made it past my teeth before the puke followed.
He’d gotten exactly what he’d wanted, hadn’t he?
He’d gotten under my skin, and the feeling of revulsion warned me it was far worse than just that.
I slammed my fist into the drywall beside the bed, and the dust rained onto the carpet, but the sting in my knuckles didn’t make me feel any better.
Nothing would, and for the first time in a long damn time, I couldn’t remember what had happened to me.
That scared the hell out of me and pissed me the fuck off even more.
I showered longer than I needed to, scrubbing at my skin until it turned red and blotchy. But no amount of gargling with water and soap made me feel better.
I still felt dirty.
I still felt like I was carrying around someone else’s fingerprints.
By the time I threw on yesterday’s jeans and drove to the precinct, all that humiliation had hardened into something simpler, an emotion I knew rather well....
Hatred.
I was going to find Jailbait.
And when I did…
He’d finally stop smiling.
The bullpen buzzed the way it always did.
The phones rang, and the damn printers whined as loud as rookies bitched.
Nobody noticed I was one bad question away from putting my fist through another wall.
I spotted Ryan slumped behind his desk with a coffee the size of his head. His black hair stuck out in three different directions, and he looked about as miserable as I fucking felt.
