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“Don’t do anything stupid. If you need backup, you ask for it.”
“I will.”
Danny pocketed his phone and followed the sidewalk to the double doors where Macy had disappeared earlier. He entered the fellowship hall and noticed the bulletin board greeting visitors with a calendar of events and a daily itinerary of meetings written in dry erase marker. There were two meetings in progress, one for AA and the other a retired men’s Bible study group.
He walked down the aisle where the support group meetings were held and found the door to the room where a group of alcoholics sat in a circle on folding chairs. He didn’t see Macy inside so he kept walking. Where had she gone?
He saw the exit at the end of the hall and got a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. What if the person who had taken Janie had been waiting for Macy? Had he just let her walk into a trap?
His stomach was in knots as he pushed open the exit door and left the building. There was a row of air conditioning units to his right and a sidewalk that followed the perimeter of the building back toward the parking lot. He walked quickly, starting to fear that something awful had happened.
It was the squeal of tires that spurred him into a sprint. He emerged from the side of the building to see a familiar green Challenger racing out of the parking lot.Paulie.
Danny ran into the parking lot, watching the Challenger disappear down the street. He turned back toward his truck—and his heart stuttered painfully in his chest. Macy’s phone and her keys were waiting on the hood. He picked them up, wondering if she had left them willingly or been forced to abandon them.
Her phone was locked. His thumb hovered over the keypad. What code would she pick? Her birthday? The day she was supposed to graduate? A random number?
Four numbers. There were thousands of possibilities.
But maybe…?
He tapped in the four digits of his old townhouse address. The phone unlocked and revealed an open text message from Paulie. His instructions to leave her things and come alone or else he would call Sean Leung infuriated Danny.
The photo of Janie, crying and battered, her hands bound in front of her, sickened him. Burt was right behind her, his hand gripping her hair as he shoved her into a ramshackle trailer house that looked like the set of a horror movie.
He suddenly had a choice to make. He could ask for help from his criminal brotherhood, or he could ignore Kostya’s advice and do something really, really stupid.
Chapter Fifteen
“I wish I could have seen the look on Danny’s face when he realized you were gone,” Paulie crowed in the most despicable way.
I shifted even closer to the passenger side door, doing everything I could to make myself as small as possible. I wanted as much space between us as I could get.
Now that I was alone with him, I regretted my decision to get in his car. It wasn’t only the rank smell of his body odor that made my stomach all twisty. It was the realization that I had chosen to trust a man who had extorted me into dancing half naked.
But what else could I do? As soon as my phone had dinged with Paulie’s message, I had been faced with a choice. His offer had been simple. He knew where my dad was hiding and had sent me a photo of Dad dragging Janie out of a junky Suburban as proof. He would take me to them, but only if I came alone.
So, here I was, gripping the handle of the door, ready to bail at a moment’s notice, and praying that I would get to Janie before my dad did something really dumb.
“Just to be clear,” Paulie said, “I intend to call the Leung brothers as soon as you get your stepmom away from him. I want that money.”
“Of course, you do,” I muttered, not at all surprised by his greed.
“Don’t get all high and mighty on me,” he snarled. “You were happy to get up on my stage and shake your tits for the chance to make some money.”
“I wasn’t happy! I was humiliated. I did it because I wanted to save Janie.”
“Oh, lord, here we go.” He dramatically rolled his eyes. “You’re just like all the rest of them. Acting like I should feel guilty for running a business and making money!”
As much as I wanted to argue with him, I bit my tongue. There was no point in engaging with him.
“So, now you’re giving me the silent treatment?” He grew more agitated. “Maybe I should take you somewhere more private to see how much noise you can make.”
His threat hit me like a wave of cold water. The way he said it made me think he had done just that to some other woman. Probably more than one other woman.
“Go ahead.” I sat up straighter and lifted my chin. “Go ahead and take me somewhere and do something terrible to me.” I turned to glare at him. “Just remember that, eventually, Danny will catch up with you, and he won’t be alone. He’ll have his whole family behind him. Every last violent, bloodthirsty one of them.”
To his credit, Paulie seemed to take my threat seriously. He must have known what I said was the truth. There was no limit to how far Danny would go to get revenge.
