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“Not a fucking clue. They make sure to always drug us before we’re moved.” She shrugged her slight shoulders and the hopeless look on her face scared me more than the chains.
“Us?” I looked around the room once more but didn’t see anyone besides Stephanie.
“Other women that have been taken. I woke up just like you, dirty mattress, dark room, chained to the wall. There were three of us then. They filled me in once I stopped freaking out. There had been others before them, too, and then one day I woke up from being drugged and they were gone.” She paused, hands fisting in her shirt, “I think—I think they are selling us.”
“Fuck.” I knew that my father had plans to sell me but I had no idea he was a part of something bigger. I’d always assumed he sold drugs, but people? How many girls had he helped steal, how many lives had he helped to destroy? Grayson said that my dad had been murdered not long after I’d run away. Clearly, he wasn’t such an integral part of the operation that it couldn’t continue without him.
I opened my mouth to ask Stephanie more but my words froze in my throat when I heard the creak of footsteps overhead. Stephanie scrambled backward, making herself as small as possible on her mattress. I followed suit and crawled back to my own.
The door at the top of the stairs opened and the man who’d kidnapped me appeared. He took each step slowly, as though he were deliberately drawing out his descent. When he reached the bottom, he turned toward me and walked over, his eyes landing on the puddle of sick next to me.
“Not feeling too good, eh?” He laughed and kicked the chain attached to my foot.
“Fuck you,” I gritted through my teeth. My nails dug into the skin of my palms, I wanted to attack him again, punch him in his smug face, maybe rip off his balls.
“Fuck me? You just might get your wish, whore. Although, I normally like them younger and skinnier,” his gaze drifted to Stephanie, causing her to whimper as she tried to push herself into the wall. He licked his lips and lazily perused my body, “But I might just make an exception for you.”
I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat and hoped he could see the pure hatred and disgust I had for him. Inside, I was scared shitless but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing it.
He crouched next to me, running his finger around the cuff and touching the torn skin of my ankle, making me wince. “Keep pretending you aren’t afraid. You’ll see soon enough what he has in store for you, and you won’t be so brave then.”
Footsteps echoed above and he stood up, leaning against the wall casually. Two more men appeared at the doorway and made their way down.
The first man was big, really fucking big. He looked to be taller than Grayson and wider than Kane, two of the biggest men I’d ever met. His jeans were dirty, his black t-shirt faded with age and the large boots that covered his feet were scuffed with mud. Underneath the clothes I could tell that he was stacked with muscles. Muscles that could probably do a lot of damage to two small women.
When he stepped into the pool of light in the middle of the room, I finally caught a glimpse of his face, it was mostly hidden by a long salt and pepper beard and scraggly hair that hung limply to his shoulders. In any other situation, he’d be someone that I might consider handsome but when he looked at me his features morphed into something terrifying.
Unable to make eye contact with him for a second longer, I took in the smaller man that had been hidden behind his behemoth frame. Now, this was a man that didn’t belong here, not in this building and not around any of us. He was older than the other two by quite a bit, I’d put him at my father’s age had he still been alive.
Dressed in an even more expensive suit than my kidnapper, he reeked of wealth. He was incredibly clean and polished from head to toe as if he were heading to a fancy fundraiser for some rare disease that only affects gerbils and somehow mysteriously ended up here with us.
He had a distinct paunch and though he was bigger than me, I didn’t immediately fear him like I did the other two. Not until his cold gaze fixed on me and I knew,I knew, he was the one pulling all the strings. He was the reason Stephanie and I were here and his next words confirmed it, turning my blood to ice.
“Hello, my pet.”
27
GRAY
My constant pacing seemed to be annoying everyone else in the room but I couldn’t sit down, not while every second that ticked by was another moment I might never see Lily again.
“Anything?” I asked Roe as my pacing took me behind his computer.
“Like I said the last seventy-two times you asked me, the second I find something I will tell you,” he replied, never pausing in his typing.
I was hovering, badgering and being an all-around bastard when everyone in this room was doing their best to help me. To help Lily. But I still felt fucking useless; former Marine, owner of a fucking private security business and I couldn’t keep my own woman safe. Dropping into one of the chairs, I hung my head, staring blankly at my hands that were flipping my phone over and over to have something to do, all the while praying it would ring.
There hadn’t been a single favor I hadn’t called in already. I’d spoken to everyone in law enforcement that I’d ever met. Checked in with informants that spanned the whole fucking state, I even called a judge that used to come into my parents’ diner regularly when I was a kid. Nothing came of it. Agent Greggs had been my first contact and he told me he would have to call me back after I told him what had happened. He still hadn’t called, maybe my first assumptions about him being a dick were right after all.
“Fuck,” I flung my head against the back of the chair and closed my eyes, Lily’s smiling face all that I could see.
“We’ll find her.” I made eye contact with my best friend, Kane looked so sure. I wanted to feel that same assurance but every scenario of what could be happening to Lily were playing on a loop inside my fucked-up brain.
After we found out that Lily was taken, we made the decision to send Winnie and Daisy away with my parents. There was no way that we were going to risk someone coming after them while we were focused on finding Lily. Benji was with them, too, and I knew he’d be able to distract Daisy, helping to keep her entertained even though he was just as worried as I was.
The five of them went to my Uncle Jim’s cabin. He wasn’t really our uncle, but he’d served with our father and now did most of the cooking at the diner. They’d been friends for a long time. I’d never been given the full story of his time serving our country but I knew enough to trust that he’d keep my family safe. The cabin wasn’t an easy location to get to if you hadn’t been there before and between him and my dad I knew that our family would be safe.
My phone rang in my hand and I nearly dropped the damn thing I was so eager to answer it.
