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I take her face in my hands. “Justice, princess. Look at me, baby. Show me those beautiful bright eyes.” I touch her cheek. Guilt and shame feed the ire, causing my hands to shake, and I can’t tell who it belongs to—me or all four of us. I let her leave knowing she had nothing underneath her skirt and barely-there shirt to cover herself with and even that was questionable given the huge splash of coffee down the front. Because of my weakness I let her leave without even the tiniest of barriers between her and the world. Why did I have to be so stupid? Careless with such a precious gift? When we get her safely home, we will pull back, find another security gig and get the hell away from her. None of us were cut out for domestic lives.
Her green eyes turn to me, and realization quickly dawns as Lucian and Jacob step into the small pool of light flooding the table. We use our masses to create a protective shield around her. She’s so young. Barely starting her life and now she will have to carry this dark memory forever.
“Seth! Lucian!” Her eyes dart to each of us, her hand going to Jacob. “Oh, thank God! You all found me! I really didn’t look forward to getting dumped in some alley as rat food. Please, hurry. Cut me loose!”
She is cocky and spirited, I’ll give her that, and the fear clamping down over my chest lessens.
Our girl’s high fighting spirit makes its appearance, but I can hear the strain of the whole ordeal fringe the edges of her words. I pull a knife and start on the ropes around her wrists first, moving fast.
Lucian comes up beside us, leaning in close. “We need to move quickly. Local law enforcement doesn’t exactly know we’re operating here. Plus, we don’t know how many there are. We’re locked in a tight space and that has my hair on end.” With a hand on the side of our Justice’s face, Lucian pauses before asking the question we all fear the answer to. Lucian’s expression tightens. “Did they touch you, sweetheart? In any way? You need to tell us.”
We all go silent. A plethora of possible scenarios murders our good sense in a blink until she shakes her head, forcing her hair to dance over her shoulders. “You got here before…before...”
Her words trail off and that clamp on my chest returns.
“No,” she comes stronger this time. “No one touched me.”
I swallow hard but I still feel like I’ve downed a pint of sand.
I’m not a praying man, but it’s the first thing that hits me when I hear those words from her lips. I nearly fall to my knees and give up a prayer right then and there.
Her long light brown hair is knotted and tangled. She swats at a big chunk covering some of her face, clearly annoyed and pissed.
“Did they hurt you in any other way?” I ask, not needing the answer. It stared back at me in an array of blues and purples across her face and neck.
She shakes her head again.
“Brave girl.” I reach out and brush the tip of a finger across the nasty bruise sitting high on her cheekbone. “You sure about that?”
She winces but that brave face of hers never slips. If anything, there’s a tinge of anger toward me in those bright irises. I’ll take it over the fear any day.
“Nothing I can’t handle. Are you done with your questions now? There are only two of them. Rookies, best guess.” She pulls at the ropes, tugging off the cut pieces. “They forgot to frisk me. Too bad too. For them. That’s how you found me, right. Your phone. I felt it in my pocket. It almost fell out when they threw me in their van.”
Her smile is tired and that worries me. I look to Jacob, who makes quick work to check her for any needle marks.
She turns those pretty eyes on me.
“Thank God you always leave it on vibrate. They just tied me up and left saying something about it holding me until later. Whatever that meant. I think they got bored, though.”
She’s a babbling nervous wreck with good reason, but strong too.
“Breathe, Justice,” Jacob soothes, taking her freed hands. His are larger by far and cover hers completely. I can see her take comfort from my brother.
“They said they were going to use me, dump my lifeless body in a back alley somewhere if my mother didn’t pay the ransom. Said there were less than ten hours on the clock. I think they were serious. That one seemed to want me more than the money while the other kept him in check. I think he wanted the money most.” She pauses and a dark sheen of fear crosses her expression. “Then you guys showed up,” she whispers.
There was a ransom. One that had the Thorne matriarch gasping into the phone when we called her with the news of her daughter’s abduction and the note delivered by a courier.
Jacob pulls her into a sitting position and helps straighten her clothes.
“My mother. Is she outside?”
“Not quite, sweetheart. She’ll be here soon though.”
The split second of hope I see in her eyes dies as she looks at me in disbelief. “I see.”
“Let’s get you out of here,” I say, pulling her attention back on us. “You can bitch about her to us all you want after you’re safe if it will make you feel better.” Her bitch of a mother is more occupied with losing money out in California than her own daughter. The only thing that grabbed her attention was the twenty-million-dollar price tag for her daughter’s ransom. If my phone hadn’t been in my jacket pocket tonight would have looked drastically different.
How the fuck could I have left her side? Why the hell didn’t I walk her straight to her own detail?
