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I shook my head, firming up my resolve. He could take a few minutes out of his day to look into the issue he promised he’d deal with days ago. It didn’t take me that long to cross off his top contender. I deserve some answers.
We waited in Liam’s office, it’s where the video was so I could prove my point. Liam’s face was impassive as he came in but Jaime was right, James looked pissed. He grabbed my elbow, pulling me away to whisper harshly.
“What the hell is this? I told you I’m busy so you use Jo to get Liam to send me home? I told you I’d look into it.”
I jerked away from him. His anger only fueled my own. “Tell me what you’ve done to look into what happened at my apartment.”
He ground his teeth, clenching his fists. “Elizabeth–”
I shook my head. “See, you’re going to start arguing instead of answering my question and I am tired of being pushed aside. Since you obviously haven’t done anything about it, let me fill in some stuff for you.” I shoved my phone into his hands. “For one thing, I told you already that Kyle wasn’t involved. He’s been in jail since Sunday, he couldn’t have anything to do with it. I told you, it didn’t sound like him.”
James actually rolled his eyes at me. “People can put out attacks from jail, it happens all the time. We could’ve easily discussed this when I got home.”
“And when would that be, exactly? You’ve been disappearing more and more. I’m alone here more than I’m with you and you almost never tell me where you’re going or when you’ll be back. You could’ve just as easily picked up the damn phone to answer my questions.”
I could feel the rest of the room watching us, but I didn’t care. Every argument James threw at me made me feel like a little kid being yelled at by their parents. He wasn’t even bothering to pretend to listen to me.
“I told you, I am working. I can deal with your problem when I’m done.”
He turned like he was going to leave and I lost it. I grabbed his arm, shoving the picture against his chest. “Kyle isn’t my fucking problem, James! You are! This guy was at the hotel, trying to break into my room. And since I don’t have any ties to motorcycle gangs in Chicago, I have to assume it’s your problem, not mine. So fucking deal with it and leave me out of it.”
I shoved past him, throwing open the office door. I was halfway down the stairs when I heard him shouting at me.
“Where the hell are you going?”
“Home!”
I threw the front door open, slamming it behind me. I got as far as the gate before I realized that I had no idea how to get home. I resisted the urge to scream. Well, I sure as hell wasn’t going back into that house so I might as well start walking. I was about to ask one of the guards to open up the gate for me when a car pulled up and Jo stuck her head out of the passenger side.
“Get in. We’ll go get some air.”
I wanted to argue, I wasn’t out here for air but if they brought me downtown, I’d be able to find my way home. Or I could call my parents and have them pick me up or something. I don’t know. I slid into the backseat, releasing a breath when I saw that James wasn’t in the car. Jaime was driving.
The ride was silent for the most part. Jo tried to talk to me a couple times, but I just stared out the window. I wasn’t in the mood to chat. Eventually, Jaime told her to give me a break and she stopped trying. We made it downtown but parking was being a pain in the ass and I was tired of going around in circles.
“I’m just gonna get out here. Thanks for the ride.”
I popped the door open while he was at a light, ignoring their protests. I was across the street, waiting for the next crossing symbol when I realized Jo was following me.
“I know you’re mad but if you’re right about the guy following you, it’s not safe to be out here alone. Please, just give us a chance to make it right. It’s not just James working on this now. Liam is pissed that Harrington is still around and is working on it himself.”
I shook my head. “I’m not waiting around anymore. I don’t want to play second fiddle to James’s job and I don’t want to sit on my hands and wait for someone to fix the problem. I’m just going to call my parents and go home for a while. I kinda doubt people are going to follow me that far.”
The light changed and I started across the street. Jo looked conflicted, uncomfortable walking away from Jaime who was still in the car trying to follow us. She eventually chose to follow me, racing across the street. She was only a couple feet behind me when I heard tires screeching. I turned, watching the huge group of motorcycles headed our way.
I lost track of what I was doing after that. One minute I was standing on the curb, looking at Jo and the motorcycles. The next, I was shoving her as hard as I could away from them, taking her place. I heard Jaime shout, gun blasts go off. I even saw Jo pull out her own weapon from her purse. An arm wrapped around my waist and I was yanked onto a motorcycle that was speeding away.
I am not a fighter, the closest I get is video games and if I play too much my hands start to hurt, but I fought as hard as I could to get away. Whoever it was that grabbed me was wearing a helmet so I couldn’t see their face, I couldn’t try and hit them. I could only flail and try and punch them where I could. It didn’t do any good. They got far enough away that I couldn’t see Jo anymore, then they tossed me off the bike into the arms of another guy in the back of a van.
I screamed, trying to hold onto the edges of the door to stop them from pulling me in. If they shut that door, the likelihood of me getting away was slim to none. I thought maybe I was tiring him out because he let one hand go and I slipped from his grasp. I made it as far as the door frame before something hard slammed into the back of my head and everything went dark.
* * *
When you wakeup in a room with a bare mattress and broken furniture, you kind of hope you’re in some sort of virtual reality game instead of being kidnapped by your boyfriend’s enemy right out in the open on the streets of downtown Chicago. My vision swam and the back of my head throbbed. I was honestly surprised how much I remembered. I figured that like most video games, I’d have no memory after being hit that hard.
I whimpered as I sat up, clutching my head. My thoughts kept scattering every time I tried to focus on what was happening. Noises in the hall caught my attention and I scrambled off the bed, pressing myself against the wall as far away from the door as I could.
The door barely opened, a tray of what looked like food was dropped carelessly onto the floor, before they slammed it shut again. The noise made me wince. I had no idea where I was or how much time had passed. The room I was in was small, I could walk the length of it in a couple of steps and the width was even shorter. There was one window and the door and that was it. There were some broken bits that looked like there used to be a table in here and some puddles on the floor I didn’t want to look too close at. Wood floors, old wallpaper. If this was a video game, I’d think I was in an old abandoned mansion.
