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“I’m very fucking sure,” she snaps.
“Still got that fire in you, huh?” I grin down at her, needing to take a moment in the right now to appreciate just how much these people haven’t been able to take from her. This attitude is also what worried me the most about her being abducted. I find it cock-twitchingly cute, but I know men who insist on always having the upper hand, don’t. It makes me smile. For them, it could’ve been the deciding factor between letting her live and silencing her forever.
“I’ve had better days,” she whispers in answer to my question. “That couple used me as bait on some college campus. I imagine it’s close. I wasn’t young enough for the man, so they took me to campus and used me to draw in another woman. They took her, Trenton. Is Kincaid looking for her?”
I shake my head before I can stop the action, automatically reaching for my phone. “This is the first I’ve heard of it. You were brought in only six hours ago. No one may even realize she’s missing.”
Chapter 12
Grace
It’s hard to keep my mouth shut while he talks on the phone, relaying my story to whoever is on the other end of the line. How do men get better looking with age? How is he even here? Is the world so damn small that Cerberus has now been involved in my life twice, and this time it involved this man, the one I’ve tried for years to forget and never could manage to keep him far from thought?
“She doesn’t know her name, just that they took her from the same campus Grace was found.”
Tell them I was Karen Bishop.
“Karen Bishop,” I sputter. “Before the woman who took me walked away, she said, Tell them I was Karen Bishop.”
“Did you get that?” Trenton asks in the phone. “Was not am?”
“Was,” I say.
I found her past tense weird as well. Does she go by a different name now? I don’t know if it was purposeful, but neither of them called each other by name while I was there. She used sir a lot, and he used expletives when referring to her.
I relay what I can remember of their vehicles, but I can’t give them much more.
It seems to take forever for him to get off the phone, the last couple of minutes spent with him nodding and giving one-word agreements. It kills me not to insist he put the call on speaker phone so I can hear everything.
“Keep me updated,” he says before finally ending the call.
“I want to help you find her,” I whisper.
“You need to worry about healing and getting better.”
I hate the use of the word better. It makes my stomach turn. It insinuates that I’m not good, that something is more wrong with me than the injuries to my body.
“I know that look in your eyes, Grace. Now is not the time to double down.”
“You know nothing about me,” I say, my words wavering more than once, and I hate that I can’t be as strong as I need to be right now. “I’m not the same eighteen-year-old girl fresh out of basic training, Trenton. I won’t be told to sit and look pretty.”
He leans in, fire in his eyes, and as much as I hate seeing the anger, it’s better than the flat affect he’s had since he walked in here, and it’s definitely better than the sympathy I’ve seen a few flashes of.
“You make it sound like I was some fucking predator back then. Don’t forget there is only a two-year age difference between us, and you pursued me.”
He leans in even closer, an intimidation tactic, but I don’t move a muscle. I’ve been through hell and back, not knowing if I’d survive and for a while just knowing I was going to die, but this man has never scared me. The lies he used so easily pissed me off, but I never felt fear, never wondered about my safety around him. If anything, I’d describe him as overprotective and a little soft in the middle when it came to me.
“And not once have I ever told you to sit and look pretty.”
He spits the last word, and it’s not even close to the way he said that over and over to me in the past.
You’re so fucking pretty.
God, look how pretty your pussy is.
Your mouth looks so pretty wrapped around my cock.
I shake my head. Getting lost in the past won’t help me or the girl that was taken from the college campus.
“She was taken because of me,” I say instead. “I need to help.”
“She was taken because there are a lot of psycho people in the world, Grace. None of this was your fault.”
“I feel helpless,” I confess. “I need to help.”
