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But I went ahead and latched it, hoping the buzzer might be some form of protection to me.
I didn’t know where I was, but it didn’t seem like the best of areas. And it was highly unlikely that anyone would come to answer the door to someone slamming on it and asking for help.
Because, of course, if someone at your doorstep was in trouble, they were going to bring that trouble into your life.
I couldn’t even be mad about it.
I turned instead, going to the elevator that looked like it had been installed before my parents—hell, my grandparents—were born, and pressed the button for the basement.
It wasn’t perfect.
But it was a place to hide.
To let some time pass.
To maybe give me a chance to find a way to call Cary.
I held my breath the chugging trip downward, then poked my head out, paranoid about some angry-faced super might be hanging around, demanding I get the hell out of his building.
But there was nothing but the groans of the building and the scattering sound I was trying to tell myself wasn’t rats.
The basement was drafty and damp, but I took a certain kind of comfort in how packed it was with random crap. It seemed like a mix of old, outdated vacuums and various tools I didn’t even begin to claim to know the names of or uses for. There was scattered, stained, moth-eaten furniture likely from when tenants moved out and left them behind.
I wandered around the space until I saw a small utility room in the back corner.
It was the most hidden I could get.
I absentmindedly snatched a dusty cushion off a chair as I passed, trying not to think about what kind of filth or creepy crawlers might be on it.
The utility room held a series of mops and buckets, rusted and useless, and a metal shelf with a series of different parts of, I imagined, appliances.
Taking a deep breath, I moved behind the door, tossing down the cushion, then carefully lowering myself down onto it, using the wall to hold myself up.
I probably should have kept moving.
Because the second I stopped, the adrenaline that had kept me numb to all the various pains in my body vanished, and everything burst to life at once.
The throbbing pain on my shoulder, elbows, hips, and knees. From the impact of the fall. Then the burning feeling on my hands, arms, chin, and the side of my forehead where my arm must not have been covering.
Alone, in pain, a little too stunned by the events to think straight, a sort of hysterical cry bubbled up and burst out.
There was no stopping the tears or the way my whole body shook as I was finally able to start to process the fear and uncertainty, the reality of what I’d just been through.
I felt like I cried for hours, for days.
And by the time the tears dried, my face felt raw and my eyes were almost swollen shut.
It was right about then that I heard something. Something that had my stomach tensing, that had my heartbeat slamming in my chest.
The elevator moving downward.
Someone was coming.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Cary
I was in the middle of laughing at some asinine shit that Dezi had just said when the call came in.
I didn’t think much of it when I saw Seth’s name on the screen. He was hanging with Abigail. I figured maybe they had a question about the apartment, or when I might be back.
I was still chuckling when I slid to accept then raised the phone to my ear.
“What—“
“They took Abigail,” Seth snapped, cutting me off, making my heart drop to my fucking feet.
“What?” I barked. And it must have been louder than it sounded to me because every conversation around me silenced at once.
“They took Abigail. In a moving truck. Finn and Louana are down. Breathing, but down.”
“Finn and Louana are shot,” I called to the room, already rushing out the front doors, hearing Dezi at my heels, barking out the address to the apartment to the others who hadn’t been there yet. “Where? Where did they go?” I demanded.
“Took a left out of the street. I have nothing else to give you. I’m sorry. But it was a plain white moving truck with a red triangle on the side. That’s it.”
I hung up as I turned over my bike, peeling out of the lot as the others got on their own bikes to head toward the apartment.
My priority probably should have been Finn and Louana, club members. That was always where my loyalty had been in the past. It was where it likely should have been right then too.
But all I could think about was Abigail.
Who I’d promised was safe.
Who I’d told I would never let anything happen to her.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I flew through Navesink Bank, going in the general direction that Seth had told me about, even though, logically, I knew there was no way I was going to find them. They had too much of a head start. They could be in any direction. They could be moving or hiding out somewhere.
