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“The asshole she’s just been talking with told her to come over.” I watch her slowly approach, apprehension high within her, which causes me to frown. “Something isn’t right.”
“I feel it too.” Julian slightly adjusts his position so that he’s ready for whatever is about to happen while I refuse to move my eyes from the trouble heading toward us.
When she gets close, she drops onto Julian’s lap, her arms going around his neck. If the situation weren’t so serious, I’d laugh at the look of horror on his face. He finally reacts and reaches for her arms, stopping when she begs, “Please help me.”
Her eyes plead as tears run silently down her cheeks. I meet Julian’s startled look and make a decision that I hope doesn’t get us into a shit load of trouble.
“You got her?”
Julian nods, tightening his hold on the woman. “We’re going to get you out of here and then we’ll talk, but if this is some sort of distraction then we’re turning you over to the county jail.”
“I’m behind you.” I toss money on the table and follow Julian and the woman out of the bar.
As soon as we’re outside, I wipe my hands on the leg of my jeans and remove my weapon. The people we’re after play dirty and after they used my wife as some sort of warning, I’m constantly on my guard.
What just happened in there doesn’t sit well with me and I’m half expecting some assholes to come at us, but as Julian settles the woman in the back of the SUV, I glance around us and nothing.
Julian checks under the hood to make sure it hasn’t been tampered with and getting the all clear, I jump into the back with the woman while Julian quickly gets us out of the area.
We’re not being followed but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything in this day and age, she could be carrying a tracker.
He drives around the city while I watch the shivering woman. Her scantly clad figure is thin and looking more closely, she has bruising to one side of her face. Her wrists look to have had something fastened tightly around and no makeup can conceal the red marks.
I grab the blanket from the back and move slowly to cover her as she watches me carefully. I consider what to say because the last thing I want to do is terrify her more than she already is. “Can you tell me your name?”
She licks along her dry lips and swallows a few times, her hands that are tightly clutching the blanket tremble. “Carrie.”
“Hi Carrie.” I smile, hoping to put her at ease. “I’m Hunter and my friend in the front is Julian. Can you tell me how you knew that we’d help you?”
“The man in the bar. He told me you’d help me and that I could trust you to help my sister.” Carrie’s eyes flittered back and forth between Julian and I.
She was scared and it was obvious that she was trying her best to trust us. She wasn’t there completely.
“Who hurt you?”
Crying, she buries her head into the blanket. Her whole body shakes as she sobs and I feel so damn helpless.
Minutes tick by and eventually her sobs subside and turn into sniffles. Her tearstained eyes lift and hold mine. “My sister disappeared one night on her way home from college.” She hiccups and closing her eyes, rests her head against the seat. I thought she’d passed out, until her eyes snap open.
“She’s eighteen, in her first semester. We’d been brought up in a good home. Both our parents are happily married. Jessica was on a full scholarship. Her friends said that she’d probably ran off to get away from the hold we’d had over her.” She pauses.
“We didn’t have a hold on her, at least not the kind that was implied by her so called friends at school. Even if she did have a problem with someone she’d always text me. She’d never just leave without a word to me.” She laughed. “If you saw a picture of me from before she disappeared you’d find it hard to believe that I’m the same person.”
“What’d you mean?” Julian asks.
“I used to be more conservative than I am right now. I’ve done things that I’m not proud of to try and find my sister. That bar was the last in a long
line. I’ve been through hell and back, and Neil who told me to come over to you guys was trying to help me. Word had gotten out that I was looking for my sister and I was being watched. He had a soft spot for me and must have known you two were my only safe way out of there. He said he knew you.” She nodded at Julian.
“I didn’t recognize him.” Julian frowns and briefly meets my gaze before focusing on the traffic.
“Neil said when we’d left the club if you wouldn’t help me or believe me to tell you, ‘Jekyll wants you to help me’.”
“Fuck.” Julian slams his fists on the steering wheel. “I was so close to him.”
“He said he had something to do before he could come in…whatever that means,” Carrie added. “Who are you?”
“Friends,” I drawl. “We’re going to get you somewhere safe okay.”
