Consolation Prize (Forbidden Men Book 9) (41 page)

You’re a fighter

And I was.

I was a fighter, so I was going to fight.

B
RANDT’S
C
HAPTER
|
34

I
wiped down the counter of the bar and glanced at the time. Twenty minutes until opening. I’m not sure why I was so obsessed with checking the time these past few days, but I did it constantly.

Obsessively.

It’d just passed the fifty-seven-hour mark since Julianna had gone missing. Twelve minutes since I’d called in to check on my brother. And about twenty-five seconds since I’d fought the urge to ditch work and drive the streets again, searching for my lost coworker.

Colton was a fucking mess. I’d never seen him this out of sorts before. He’d wept this morning, losing his shit all over Aspen, and none of us had known what to do to help him.

I didn’t like this powerless feeling. I had no idea what to do to ease my brother. None of us did.

They said he wasn’t eating or sleeping. When he wasn’t out looking for Juli, or hanging around her apartment in the hopes she’d show up, he was agitated and short-tempered. Not that I could blame him. If Sarah had disappeared into thin air, I’d freak the fuck out too. It was just so strange to see Colton like this and realize he really had gotten that close to Juli.

It had been so weird for me to think of them together. But in the last fifty-seven hours, my coworker had swiftly moved from one of my what-ifs and strictly to Colton’s one-and-only, which was bizarre in its own right. But whatever.

I was scared as hell for him. He was running himself into the ground and was going to be no good to anyone soon. I wanted to smack some sense into him and hug him all at the same time.

Pick exited from the back hall, talking on a cell phone. “Thanks for the info,” he was saying, “I owe you one.” When he hung up, he set his arms on the countertop and sighed heavily.

“Anything?” I asked hopefully.

He was doing everything he could to find Julianna too, pulling strings and digging up information behind the scenes, even hiring a private investigator. One of his bartenders had been abducted; he took that personally.

“My guy has a lead on the guy Colton got into a fistfight with.”

I frowned and shook my head, confused. “The racist drunk?”

Pick nodded and pinched a spot on the bridge of his nose. “His name’s Fulton Seymour. He’s been arrested a few times in the last couple years for some minor hate crimes, mostly drunken arguments, vandalism, petty theft. But it started about four years ago after his mom was murdered…” He looked at me meaningfully before adding, “By a black guy.”

I sighed heavily, not liking where this was headed.

“He bonded out of jail about an hour before Julianna disappeared.”

“Fuck,” I murmured, shaking my head. “Has anyone questioned him yet?”

“No one’s been able to locate him. He’s no longer living at his last known address. None of his friends know where he’s been staying and the orchard his family owned, about twenty miles outside town, was foreclosed about two years ago and is currently property of the bank.”

I ran my hands through my hair, relieved there was finally some kind of lead, and yet more frustrated and scared by what we’d learned. “Does Colton know any of this?”

Pick shook his head. “I don’t know what the point of telling him would be. If we can’t even find this Seymour guy, how could it help anything? I think it could only upset Colton more. Besides, who knows if he’s the one who took her or not.”

I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure if I agreed. If there’d been any kind of news about Sarah’s disappearance, I’d want to know every detail. It all just made me feel shittier.

Colton snapped at me more than he did anyone else, and he couldn’t look my way without glaring. He was pissed about the way I’d initially reacted to his relationship with Juli, and at the moment, I couldn’t blame him. But it all made me antsy and distressed. I wanted to do something for him—like find his Julianna—so he’d finally forgive me.

“I keep expecting her to walk through the doors for her shift,” Pick murmured, watching the waitresses set up tables for opening.

I nodded sadly. She’d been scheduled to work tonight, but I was filling in for her. For some reason, I thought it’d earn me a couple brownie points with Colton, but I don’t think he’d even noticed. I opened my mouth to ask what the chances were that she was still alive when the nightclub’s landline phone rang. We weren’t open yet and normally I’d let it ring through to voice mail, but I’d been answering every call coming in from every phone around me these last few days.

“Forbidden Nightclub. This is Brandt.”

At first, there was nothing, just some static, and then I thought I heard a faint sound.

“Hello?” I asked, my heart rate jerking with hope. Pick straightened, alerted to my reaction. His gaze pinned me with question. “Hello?” I said again.

The scratchy noise came again, but this time I swear it said my name.

It didn’t sound like her at all, but I still had to ask. “Julianna?”

Pick leaped over the counter to stand anxiously next to me.

Straining to hear, I pressed the phone harder against my ear. There was a hiccupping kind of sob, and then the person on the other end of the line began to cry.

“Julianna?” I said a little more urgently. “Is that you?”

“I…this was the only number I could remember,” the hoarse, faltering voice told me. “Should’ve called 911. Why didn’t I call 911? I can’t think. I should call nine…”

“Julianna.” Affecting my voice with a calm clarity I didn’t feel, I asked, “Where are you?”

“I don’t know.” The voice broke with either a bad connection, her inability to talk, or both. “Orchard,” I finally heard. “Country.”

“Okay.” I nodded, eager hope blooming inside me as I nodded. “That’s good. You’re at an orchard in the country.” I met Pick’s gaze meaningfully. “I think I know exactly where you are. We can find you. Are you okay?”

When she said, “No,” I shuddered, worried how Colton was going to deal with this.

“Just hang tight,” I told her, not sure what else to say. “I’m going to come get you.”

She began to cry again, and the only word I understood after that was, “Colton…”

“Yes, we’ll get Colton. You’ll see him soon. I swear. I’ll be right there.” Not wanting to hang up with her but ready to get where I needed to go, I tossed the phone to Pick.

He caught it easily and pressed it to his ear while I jumped over the bar and ran for the exit. I logged on to my phone as I jogged, typing
Seymour
,
orchard
, and
Illinois
into my map search as I went. Though it’d been closed for two years, I found that a Seymour Valley Apple Farm, located exactly eighteen miles outside Ellamore, was still registered as a place of business. I plugged in the driving directions and hopped into my truck.

Since my phone was busy with helping me find Juli, I didn’t call my brother. I trusted that Pick would contact everyone who needed to know, and besides, I kind of wanted to be the first one who found her so Colton would stop hating me, and of course because I wanted to help my favorite coworker, but the Colton aspect made it even more urgent.

It should’ve been a half-hour drive, but I made it in twenty minutes. I pulled into the weed-covered driveway that didn’t look as if it’d been maintained in two years and drove to the end of the lane until I was in front of the house and a couple outbuildings. One of them hosted a whole side of the building with the words Seymour Valley Apple Farm painted on the side in chipping red block letters.

I killed the engine and climbed out.

The place seemed deserted and rundown, except for a single older model truck parked in front of my ride. Evening had fallen and I squinted through the dusk, not sure where to even begin looking. So I cupped my hand around my mouth and yelled, “
Juli!
”

No one answered.

I began to panic, thinking I’d come to the wrong place. Maybe she was at a different orchard. But the name fit and the place looked as if it’d been foreclosed for a good two years. I jogged toward the abandoned two-story farmhouse with no curtains or shades in the windows, revealing the interior was bare of everything. But when I tried the front door, it was locked. I went around to the back and tried the back door next. Also locked.

I rubbed my face, thinking.

Julianna had called me from
somewhere
. There had to be a phone inside. Trying not to think about the fact I was breaking and entering, I backed up a few steps and then rammed my shoulder into the back door. Hurt like a motherfucker. I might’ve dislocated it. What was worse, the door didn’t even budge. Wincing, I eased off my jacket and wrapped it around my fist before going with option two and breaking out the glass.

Once I was inside, I searched the empty house from top to bottom for a phone, but there wasn’t one. And there was no Juli. So I tried the building I guessed had probably once been the storefront for the orchard. After breaking in there and finding no phone, I spun in a circle, stabbing my fingers through my hair.

“Julianna!” I yelled, walking aimlessly around the building. Where the fuck was she?

I was about to give up all hope when I spotted the storm shelter sticking about a foot above the ground on the side of the house I hadn’t used to get to the back door. And huddled on the ground beside it was a figure. No, wait. Two figures. One was kneeling with its head lowered, the other was lying on the ground next to the first.

“Juli!” I raced forward, skidding to a stop when I was close enough to take in the scene before me.

She sat on her knees, covered in blood, with her head bowed and scarlet-stained hands holding a cell phone to her chest next to some guy sprawled on his back like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. The dude looked dead, and like maybe he’d been stabbed, especially with that knife sticking out of his throat.

“Juli?” I said hesitantly, easing a few steps forward until I could creep out my hand and touch her shoulder. She jumped as if scalded and began to scream, and yet not scream. I think she was trying to scream but didn’t exactly have a voice left to do so. What came out was just a hoarse release of air.

And then she began to whisper, “No, no, no, no, no,” as she shook her head and clutched the phone in her hands.

I drew my fingers back and skipped away, holding up both hands to let her know I wouldn’t touch her again. Not that she even noticed or acknowledged me.

Beginning to shake out of control, I tugged up my phone and called Pick. “I found her.”

“Oh, thank God,” he breathed. “Is she okay?”

I shook my head. “Man, I don’t even know. There’s blood everywhere, I can’t tell if it’s hers or not. She flipped out when I touched her. She doesn’t act like I’m even here, but she’s sitting upright and rocking herself. I think…I think she killed the guy who took her. He’s lying here dead beside her with a knife sticking from his throat.”

“Holy fuck.”

I nodded. Yeah. That about summed it up. “Who have you called?”

“Everyone,” he confirmed. “Actually, I wouldn’t think they’d be too far behind you.” And even as he said that I heard a car in the drive, pulling to a stop behind my truck.

“Someone just showed up,” I affirmed. “Talk later.”

I disconnected with him to greet whoever had shown. Surprised to see Julianna’s father jogging toward me, I waved him forward even as I gritted my teeth.

He wasn’t exactly my favorite person at the moment. He’d treated Colton like a criminal since Monday, certain my brother was the reason behind all this. They had clashed tempers so often now, I think we’d had to stop them from coming to physical blows about a dozen times.

“She’s here,” I said, watching his face as he drew close enough to see what had happened for himself.

“Mother of God.” He gulped as if he were going to be sick, then he veered around the dead guy to get to his daughter. “Juli Bug. Baby girl. It’s okay. Daddy’s here.”

But he got the same result I had when he tried to touch her. He jerked away as she started to hyperventilate and scream in the same hoarse cry that tore something up inside me.

While her dad was forced to back away as well, I clutched my head, wishing there was some way to at least calm her down.