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I knew he was capable of that.
I’d sported the bruises for well over a week.
But it took several minutes to strangle someone. And I was running on the assumption that they hadn’t been far from the diner when they’d been intercepted by Josh, that Liam hadn’t been knocked out cold, that he’d ran as fast as he could back inside to me.
That left them, what, five minutes ahead of me? Ten, tops.
“This is it,” I said, hitting the partition when the driver didn’t seem like he was slowing down.
I barely managed to toss a tip at him before I was all but spilling out of the cab, rushing up the front steps, and hitting every button for each apartment in the building.
“Come on come on comeon,” I whimpered, running my hand over all of them again.
“Is that my pizza?” a voice called through the speaker.
“Yep!” I answered then rushed to the door as I heard the buzz of it unlocking.
I was painfully aware of the twists and turns of the building. I could run it in my sleep.
I braced myself for the cries, for the screams, as I got to his door and found it locked in my hand.
But all I heard from the inside of the apartment was the loudest kind of silence.
“Open this door!” I yelled, pounding my hand on the unyielding wood as my other hand plunged into my purse, rummaging around for a bobby pin or anything like that.
I was no pro at it, but I’d gotten myself out of those handcuffs when I was desperate. I could get his door open too.
“Goddamn it, Josh! Open the fucking door!” I shrieked.
“Ah, he’s not here,” a voice said behind me, making me jolt and turn, finding a teenager standing there with an energy drink in her hand and her hair pulled up in spacebars.
“You’re sure?” I asked. “He should have gotten in just a couple of minutes ago.”
“No. He hasn’t been around in a few days,” she said. “I don’t like him, so I keep an eye so I don’t accidentally run into him.”
“You’ve got good instincts,” I told her. “Stay the hell away from him.”
Could I have beat them to the apartment?
Not unless they stopped somewhere first.
But if he hadn’t been around his place in a few days, why would he bring Wren back?
He wouldn’t.
Where would he take her, then?
I don’t ever remember Wren saying he had another apartment or anything like that. He didn’t have that kind of money.
“Think, damnit, think,” I hissed to myself, trying to sort through all the ugly abuse conversations I’d had with her to find the conversations where she was, once again, gushing about him.
To be honest, I half-zoned out during those. Maybe that made me a shitty sister, but I think it was a coping mechanism for me, a way to muzzle myself to keep from screaming that this was the guy who’d given her a black eye and a split lip and a dislocated shoulder.
But I remembered her talking about Josh’s mother. Likely because it infuriated me that I couldn’t get any help for my sister because the entire damned police department defended him, covered for him, even refused to come to the apartment to take a report about the abuse from him.
It had been naive of me to imagine that the only favors that were afforded to the police commissioners child was, maybe, a speeding or parking ticket that went mysteriously away.
Not a get-out-of-jail free card for spousal abuse.
