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And she wouldn’t want me to.
“No, I don’t. I’m not coming back to pick up anything. Because I fucking quit.”
I hung up to the chief’s spluttering and Richards’ wide eyes on me. “Did you mean that? Are you seriously quitting?”
But my path was suddenly clear. I couldn’t do this job anymore. Not after everything with Jayela, and now with Eve. I was so disillusioned with the entire system.
I didn’t want anything to do with it anymore.
“Yeah. I think I am.”
Richards let out a low whistle. “So what now?”
“Get me everything you can find on Eddie Sinclair.”
28
EVE
By the time whatever I’d been injected with had completely left my system, I was wishing I had another dose to shoot up with. Because this was not a situation I wanted to be lucid for. It would have been pure bliss and a relief to fuzz right out again and forget that Fawn and I had been huddled together on the floor of an empty room for hours.
The others would be getting to the club by now and wondering where I was. Boston’s shift would finish soon, and then he’d go to the club as well. When I didn’t show, they’d come looking.
I could just sit tight and wait. But every so often, I glanced over at my phone, clutched in Fawn’s fingers while she played a card game on an app I’d downloaded once and then forgotten about. It didn’t require internet connection, and I’d thrust it in her direction as a distraction when I was sure she was going to hyperventilate. She’d played round after round ever since, until her breathing evened out.
No corner of this room had any sort of connection to the outside world. I’d left Fawn’s side long enough only to search the room by the light of my phone, and determined we were in a basement. There was a single set of stairs, and a water heater that gave off a menacing hiss every so often, but other than that, it was completely empty. The door at the top of the stairs was solid wood, and when I dared to try the handle, nothing had happened. The room was locked tight.
But it wasn’t in me to stay down for long. And though I might have yearned for the heavy oblivion the drugs in my system had offered, a bigger part of me knew I was going to have to help myself. It wasn’t in me to be a damsel in distress, though I would have welcomed Boston breaking down that door anytime now.
“Screw this,” I muttered. We hadn’t heard a word from our captors, just the chilling laugh that I knew I’d be hearing in my nightmares for years to come. I was already dreading the therapy bills.
I got to my feet, but Fawn grabbed my leg, fingernails digging in through my sweatpants. “Where are you going?”
“I can’t just sit here.”
Fawn let out a tiny mewl like a baby kitten being left behind by its mother, but I used that to push me up the stairs. She was my responsibility. I threw the side of my closed fist at the door, banging on it loudly. “Hey!” I yelled as loud as I could.
It felt good after being silent for so long. The thump of my fist against the door gave a place for my coiled-up energy to go, and as that released, so did the anger. I was so sick of people I was biologically related to letting me down. I imagined telling my mother her precious William had kidnapped me and immediately came to the conclusion she’d find a way to blame me. I let the anger swirl and join at my chest, and the words that came out were a bellow of disgust and anger. “Open the door, you piece of shit! What kind of man kidnaps his own daughter? You hear that? Yeah, I know who you are. I wouldn’t have told anyone your dirty little secret, Reed! You could have gone on playing the perfect Christian politician, living in your own dream world. All I wanted was my club.”
I paused to catch my breath. The rustle of somebody on the other side of the door only increased my frustration. “Fucking open the door and face me, you coward!”
“Shut up, bitch,” came the growl from the other side.
Not William. His voice was too deep and gravelly. It only gave me pause for a minute, though. “What’s he paying you to kidnap women, huh? A hundred bucks? Fuck, you’re probably so stupid you would have done it for a fifty. Is that it?” I pummeled my fist against the door again, both of them this time, one after the other, pounding the wood until my hands screamed for mercy and I let loose with a barrage of language. “Open the door and face me!”
The door flew open, and I stumbled forward, not expecting it.
A meaty hand closed around my throat and slammed me straight up against the doorframe.
I only had a second to take in the man, his eyes a steel blue and as dead as stone, before he leaned in and hissed in my ear, “I said shut up, bitch. Nod if you understand, or I can stay here with my fingers around your throat until you have no breath left to yell.”
I couldn’t have made a sound even if I wanted to. His fingers choked my air supply, leaving barely enough for me to remain conscious. The only sounds that came out were choked wheezes as I fought in vain to suck in enough oxygen.
From below, Fawn let loose with a scream of her own. She barreled up the stairs, charging for the man. “Get away from her!”
It all played out in sick slow motion. Her reaching the top of the stairs. Him putting one hand out and throwing her straight back down them.
I watched in horror as her body tumbled, her limbs hitting every step, her head cracking against the railing, until she lay sprawled on the cold cement at the bottom.
