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Laura stood up from the couch. “What’s wrong?”
“My friend’s in trouble.”
Paul was standing now, too. “What kind of trouble?”
“What’s the real estate office on Broad Street?”
“Higgins and Fletcher. Why?” Paul asked.
“Because my friend is there with her friend and a couple of guys and I have a bad feeling about this.”
“The friend we met tonight?” Laura asked. “Rayma?”
He nodded, already at the door, sliding his feet back into his shoes and grabbing his coat from the coat hook. “Yeah.”
Paul shoved his fingers into his hair and made a face of regretful understanding. “There’s been a lot of that shit going on in the city right now. Guys luring women back to their downtown offices and assaulting them.”
Yeah, Jordan knew that. He’d only been back in the city for three months, but he was caught up on the escalation of assault crimes. Not that he thought that there was actually an increase. Assault was always prevalent and a problem, it was just that now women were finally feeling brave enough to come forward and name their assaulter.
“How can we help?” Laura asked, concern in her eyes.
“Call the police and send them to Higgins and Fletcher, they might be able to make it there before me.” He opened the door, caught Laura’s eyes, and nodded. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“I’m going to get Paul to drive me home, actually,” Laura said, folding the blanket that she’d had across her lap and draping it over the couch once more. “I’ll meet you there.”
Jordan nodded, lifted a chin at Paul in thanks, then was out the door.
Thank fuck he’d worn decent shoes because as soon as his feet hit the sidewalk, he was running.
The streets were mostly empty, and James Bay wasn’t that far from downtown. He ran along the harbor front, past the homeless people tucking into corners and makeshift shelters for the night, past drunk and goofy groups staggering to their next watering hole, then finally, he turned left up toward Broad Street.
His shoes were comfortable, but they weren’t running shoes, and eventually, his arches started to scream mercy at him. But he told them to shut the fuck up and powered forward.
He hit Broad Street and slowed his roll a bit. It wasn’t a long street, but he had no idea which end of it Higgins and Fletcher was located.
Until he got a text from Paul, that is, with coordinates to the address.
Fuck, Paul was a genius.
It was a block and a half north.
Jordan kept running.
He was in good shape, worked out constantly in the gym at the precinct and often he and Laura went for runs when they both had some time off. It was important for cops to stay in shape. But his fear and adrenaline kept him moving even when he was starting to feel a bit of fatigue. He needed to keep moving.
It’d taken a lot for Rayma to open up to him about her past. Longer than date ten like she joked. And when she finally let him in and told him some of the shit she’d been through, his heart didn’t just break, it shattered. She’d been so young, and innocent. Nobody deserved to have that happen to them.
So if she was in peril now, he didn’t want to even think about how this was going to affect her. She still had PTSD even years later. She’d only woken up in a sweat and screaming panic twice in the year they were together, but it was enough of a fright to be burned into his memory for eternity. And if he didn’t know for a fact that the people who had hurt her that first time were dead, he would have hunted them down himself.
The sign for Higgins and Fletcher appeared up ahead, so he pushed forward, sprinting the last five hundred feet. He didn’t bother to knock, but just tried to open the door.
Obviously, it was locked. And dark inside. But he could tell by the design of the building that it was deep and the guys probably had the girls in a back room and were standing in front of the exit.
He pounded on the door. “Rayma!”
It was his day off, so he wasn’t carrying, but if he was, he’d have shot off the fucking lock.
He looked around for something to throw against the glass panel of the door to break it, but nothing stood out.
