Page 81 of Playing for Keeps

“No.” My body felt hollow. Felt like I was swimming in slow motion against a current that was too strong. Time slowed and I stumbled back from the table, unable to breathe, unable to swallow down this bitter pill.

My stomach heaved as I tore my headset from my ear. I grabbed my jacket from the back of my chair and raced to my car. The drive across town took ages. The ringing of my phone felt like an icepick to my ears. I didn’t even bother turning off my car when I pulled up in front of my apartment building and slammed it into park.

The fucking elevator wouldn’t move fast enough, and I felt like clawing my clothes off my body to get more air. And when I raced down the hallway to my apartment, I found my worst nightmare.

The door was ajar, the lights on and the living room a mess. The grays of my chairs were coated with a sprinkling of red, the blues of my rug covered in blood.

Brendan Stone lay dead on the floor, face twisted with pain and two bullet wounds in his chest. My coffee table and one end table were overturned, a blanket and Levi’s helmet in the middle of the floor. And in my bedroom, near the leg of my bed, lay a broken silver chain. A foot away, next to a little blue-green stone, was an empty syringe.

I’d left Jen and Levi here to keep them safe.

Left them locked up and guarded to keep my heart secure.

I’d left them here, and now they were gone.

18

Jen

My stomach churned and my head pounded, the ground beneath my body seeming to sway as I came to. I didn’t want to open my eyes. Didn’t want to remember the nightmare I’d just lived through. The door had come crashing in. Brendan had jumped from his perch on the sofa, had been reaching for his gun. But he didn’t get that far.

The gun in the hands of the intruder exploded.

Droplets of blood flew through the air as the bullets burst through Brendan’s back and lodged somewhere across the room.

I’d barely had time to process. I’d jumped off the couch and dove for Levi’s hand, yanking him up, out of his chair, his helmet clattering to the floor as he stumbled and nearly fell. Despite my urging, he fumbled and tried to pick it up.

It was that fumble that cost us. Kept him from reaching the door to Vinny’s room, the closet where Vinny had shown me the two guns he bought after Vivian was kidnapped. Levi was captured as I’d raced across the threshold. I’d made it as far as the bed before I was tackled to the floor.

Another wave of nausea hit. I tried to raise one hand to my mouth as if it could stem the flow of bile that rose in my throat. I tried to raise my other hand to my throat, to clutch at the necklace that’d been ripped off in Vinny’s room.

But I couldn’t move. My arms snagged on my back, a bite of pain hit my wrists and made me cry out.

“Jen?” My name sounded faint, an echo sloshing through water before it hit my ears. I blinked my eyes open and tried to understand where I was.

The room was barely lit, the dim lights hanging from the steel beams along the ceiling cast shadows like it’s what they were meant to do. The hard floor beneath my cheek felt ice cold. I lifted my head as the floor seemed to buck, and found lumps of cloth bound up in thick ropes and tied to the thin handrails bolted to the floor.

“Jen? Is that you?”

Zeroing in on the sound, I blinked my eyes, trying to clear away the haze. Red waves bounced as the floor bucked, and I blinked again as I focused on a face across the room.

“Kelly?”

“Oh, God, Jen! What are you doing here?”

My friend sat on the floor with her back against the wall, looking as if she’d been sleeping for days. Her green eyes drooped as if she were half-asleep, her hair was wild like she’d just rolled out of bed. She was wearing the same blue-plaid shirt and denim skirt she’d been wearing when I’d last seen her on Friday afternoon.

I struggled to sit up, falling over on my elbow twice, one time landing on my face. By the time I got upright, my body felt like I’d run five miles. And after looking around the room, my heart raced like I’d been running for my life.

Those lumps of cloth weren’t lumps at all. They were bodies of young women and girls. Some cried where they sat, others slept on the freezing cold floor. They all looked sick, drunk, with hands tied behind their backs.

Ice raced through my veins.

I wanted to run to Kelly. To dive into her arms and give her comfort the way she’d comforted me. I wanted to assure her that Vinny would find me. That he and Lee wouldn’t stop until we were home safe.

But I couldn’t. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think about anything but the things that terrified me.

We’d been taken by human traffickers.