Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
“That sounds like a threat,” I say.
“It is.”
“Okay.”
We stare at each other. I really don’t like him and obviously he doesn’t like me either. He thinks I’m a stupid girl fucking a bad guy. The disdain is evident in the almost perpetual curl of his upper lip.
“Are you going to do what we need you to do?”
“Who are you, and what do you want?”
“Alright. This is getting circular,” the man on my left says accurately. “Let’s just get her done.”
“Get me done? What does that…”
Six hands take hold of me all at the same time.
CHAPTER 12
Sam
She’s late.
Just sixty seconds, but I know something is wrong. I can feel it. It’s like something pulling at an invisible web.
The doctor wouldn’t want me going out wounded, but I have to hope that thirty-six hours since being wounded is enough for my body to close the worst of the wounds.
I dress swiftly, arm myself, open up my phone, and search for hers. I’ve had a tracker on her since before she knew I knew her. I dropped it into her bag while she was in a study session. That bag isn’t with her now, but I have had access to her phone since, and all of her clothing, and I have a dozen ways to find her.
She’s over in the west side of town. There’s no reason for her to be there, which means she’s been taken. My anger grows, but I force it to become cold. I thought I could protect her by keeping her part of her world. I thought they hadn’t found me, but they must have followed me.
It’s not easy to be the sort of person I am and not make enemies.
Everything I do is on autopilot at this point. I think about possibilities and potentialities. I also imagine what I might do in the event of various… events.
If anybody touches Laura, the plan is simple. Kill them.
I get in my car and drive across the small city. This shouldn’t be the kind of place where intensely evil people play, but all it takes is one of our kind to inhabit the place and swarms of others inevitably land. That’s my theory; it’s a sort of social contagion too. Not only does like attract like, but like creates like.
I have wondered what I might already have done to Laura simply by letting her see what I did to the criminal who tried to violate her. I wish she had not seen that death. I am certain it took something from her that I will never be able to return. A certain light has gone from her eyes, never to return.
It is bad enough that I have damaged her. It is absolutely unconscionable that anybody else might be attempting to do so as well.
Her tracker leads me to a warehouse in the shipping district. I park a block away and do a brief, but thorough bout of surveillance. I don’t see anyone out here. That doesn’t mean they’re not there. It just means it’s a good trap if it is one.
I enter through a side door and find the warehouse spotlessly empty. It is as if the whole thing has never been used by anyone for anything.
But Laura is here.
Lying motionless on the floor. Her limbs are askew in a way I find deeply disconcerting. I run to her and kneel beside her. She is breathing. Thank god.
I can smell something sweet on her breath. It is a tang I am familiar with, but have never used. She’s been drugged into submission. Other than that, she seems unharmed. Her clothing has not been disturbed—or if it has, it has been returned to the same place it was before.
I pick her up and run her out of the warehouse to my car. She doesn’t rouse with the motion. She’s completely knocked out.
I call Black on the way to his house.
“You can’t bring her here,” he says.
“I’m outside,” I reply.
He makes a snorting sound. “I’ll see her in the garage. Don’t make a sound going in. The baby just got to sleep.”
I carry her into the garage as he asks, and a moment later he is there, wearing pajamas and a faintly put-out expression.
“What happened?”
“She was abducted and I found her like this.”
I hold her in my arms while he conducts a cursory examination. “She’s breathing,” he says. “That’s a good start. She doesn’t seem to be in any respiratory distress at all. I’ll take some blood and send it off on the emergency courier to the lab. In the meantime, get her to the hospital basement. That’s the only place we can treat her. My potting shed isn’t exactly well stocked.”
“I didn’t know you had a baby, Black.”
“She’s a three-month-old schnoodle,” he says. “And she’s not mine, but she screams the bloody house down whenever she thinks she’s alone. It’s called separation anxiety.”