Reckless Mind (26 page)

“I have to head out, I work tonight,” Becca pulled her face into a frown. “You guys ready?” I told them I needed to go to the bathroom, so they said they'd get the bill and meet me out at the car. I nodded and headed down the hallway as they handed the cash to the waitress.

Chapter 22

Washing my hands, I heard my phone beep at me from my back pocket. I rolled my eyes thinking Emma was probably texting me to hurry up because she was tired of waiting. I hoped it was Cole telling me to come over soon, or that he'd meet me at my place. Drying my hands and leaving the bathroom, I went to grab my phone out.

Two strong hands grabbed me from behind. I went to scream, but one hand slapped so hard over my mouth it brought tears to my eyes.

I felt something sharp poke into my back and I screamed out into the palm of whoever was holding me. “You make one fucking move you little whore and I'll slit your fucking throat,” shivers ran down my spine, vomit burning in my throat. “Did you really think they wouldn't send someone after you when you ran your mouth about the shit they did to you?”

I couldn't even remember to breathe let alone come to a concrete understanding of what he meant. The air was coming in struggled breaths on its own because I was panicking, then add in the person's hand over my mouth and I was damn near suffocating. My vision swam hazily, but I knew I needed to fight even if it killed me.

The guy started to drag me backwards and I fought to get away. I stomped down on his foot and quickly rammed my elbow into his ribs. It startled him, but did nothing to slack the hold he had, which only made me positive he'd had enough experience doing this sort of thing to know what to be prepared for.

A burning sensation made its way down a small part of my back, and then pain shot through the area. Being pulled backward my feet weren't really staying underneath me, and I kept falling to which he would pull my hair to get me to right myself again quickly.

With the knife to my throat he told me he'd kill me if I so much as breathed, and then he tied something over the top half of my face, I couldn't see anything. I heard the door open then he dragged me backwards quickly, again using my hair to keep me on my feet. I slammed against what felt like the side of a car, the knife pushing up against my throat. I was sure the warmth I felt on my neck was blood because every time I swallowed, or moved my neck too much while breathing, it felt like I was getting a cut.

Taking his hand off my mouth, telling me if I screamed he'd kill me, he shoved me into the vehicle. I took my chance, “Who did I tell what to? I don't even know what you're talking about,” I whispered trying not to piss him off.

“You told someone at a hospital what'd happened to you. Either that or they took it upon themselves to notify Child Protective Services for some reason. The CPS here turned around and notified CPS in Clark County. Couple days ago they came and arrested your parents.” I couldn't say I was sad to hear. I hoped they were still rotting away in prison.

“They aren't my parents. They are low life drug addicts who thought putting a young girl out as bait would bring in more business.” His hand smacked across my face so fast and rock hard my head snapped the other direction. The metallic taste of blood ass
aulted my mouth, and I spit on the floor of the car.

“I don't give a shit what you think of them. They hired me to find you and do a job, all the other bullshit I don't care about. Soon enough the local authorities would have told you to come in and give a statement about what you'd gone through. Eventually you may have even been told to fly back to Vegas to identify them and testify. They know they can't let that happen. So,” I imagined him shrugging, his smile, rotted teeth, and the sores covering his face too close, and I leaned to where I thought would be out the door of the car in time to throw up on the ground.

He used rope to tie my wrists and ankles, then buckled the seat belt so tight I could barely breathe let alone move. Climbing into the car himself, the engine rumbling to life loudly, he pulled out probably staying on the back side of the restaurant using the ally that would never take us past the front of the building where Emma and Becca waited for me.

I still had my phone in my pocket, at least he wasn't too smart to take that away from me. Not like it mattered seeing as I couldn't use my hands. All I wanted to do was cry, or throw myself out of this moving vehicle, or anything. If I was going to die it wasn't going to be at the hands of this psychopath. Yet, I couldn't move, I couldn't do anything in this moment to save or hurt myself.

There had to be some way though. I was smart, I was stronger than almost anyone I knew, not physically but mentally, and I would just have to bide my time and keep myself alive until an opening came where I was able to get away.

All to soon we were slowing down and it felt like he pulled into a parking lot. He apparently already had a place ready for me, because he took the ropes off my wrists and ankles and moved me out of the car just a few feet. I heard him messing with the lock on a door. I still couldn't see, but I didn't hear anyone...no other cars, no talking, not a single noise. No one would know, I couldn't scream for help and have it matter even if I wanted to.

My hands were slick with sweat, and every single second I fought against the bile that rose up my throat. Shoving me onto what felt like a wooden chair, he secured my hands around the back with the rope again. Then he took my blind fold off, and I saw what I already assumed, the guy from inside the restaurant. I tried so fucking hard to keep my breathing regular, but I was losing the battle and spots were flooding my vision now. I couldn't lose consciousness, if I did I knew I'd be dead before I ever got the chance to open my eyes again.

So I thought about Cole. About how much I loved him, being in his arms, his acceptance of everythin
g I was and am. If I died I would know what true love felt like. I hadn't known Cole for very long, but I felt like I'd know him forever. Past lives, current lives, and every lifetime to come...I would always find him, somehow some way, because that's the kind of love this was. The kind you fight to keep no matter what.

I'd get away from this asshole. Not because I cared whether or not my old guardians rotted in jail for the rest of their lives, even though I would make sure that happened too, but because there was no way I could leave Cole behind. I needed to love him every day for eternity, and it still wouldn't be enough. He still had to ask me to marry him, I still needed to carry his child and give him the boy he wanted, and he needed to know he was the best damn thing I never thought I ever wanted but now know I could never live without.

“Yeah, I got her,” the guy's voice pulled me back to the present. My head was clearer now though, my breathing more regular. Every time I threatened to go under I would take my mind to Cole and it would pull me through until I got out of this fucking nightmare of a situation. “She's alive. No. Yeah.” I couldn't pick anything out of the conversation because he was only answering questions, not actually saying anything. “Yeah fine, I can hold her til tomorrow. How'd she get out? That dirty bitch. Doesn't surprise me though. Too bad I don't get to have my fun.”

This guy seriously needed to die. His
fun
was either raping or killing me, and he was right about at least one of those things...he would not be having any fun raping me because I would die before that ever happened. Someone was coming though, someone who told him not to mess with me. A female obviously based off of him saying bitch.

The sinking feeling in my stomach drove into me like a ton of bricks. She was coming, Helen, my foster mom, was coming out here. Somehow she'd gotten out of jail and was coming to what, kill me herself? No that would be too nice. She was coming to take me back to Vegas, and this time I knew my fate wouldn't end how it had before. My body would be handed over willingly by her to those men. And if I showed up there she would force me to makeup some story to the police to not only get them off of any possible charges, but to make anything I could ever report going forward look unreputable.

I started dry heaving, but because my hands were tied behind my back around the chair I couldn't bend over. Tears polled in my eyes then ran down my face, my heart beating so fast I was sure you could see it from outside my chest. She was coming in twenty four hours. I had twenty four hours to get the fuck out of here.

Chapter 23

Cole

Normally I didn't work on Sundays, but I was doing a side job while my pretty girl was out with her friends to pass the time. I had pulled a car out to the front lot, my dad directing me to back into a specific space so the customer could pick it up first thing tomorrow, when I heard it. That sound of the power of an engine tearing down the road like someone was street racing, and fast.

The black Mercedees whipped into the lot, gravel and dust flying up, as the tires tried to grab traction. But the car slammed to a stop, drifting a little because of the sudden change in speed. The dust hadn't even settled when I heard a door pop open hard straining the hinges holding it in place.

Emma came tearing around the front of the car, slipping on the gravel but catching herself with her hand and pushing right back up, moving toward me fast. She was screaming my name, tears pouring down her face, sobbing so hard she was barely breathing.

My eyes shifted to the car seeing Becca now running to where I stood with my dad. And I waited, as time stood still, I waited. I no longer heard Emma screaming, I didn't feel her pounding her fists into my chest or pulling at my shirt. My eyes locked on the car, Emma had come out and Becca too, but I was waiting for her. For Kahlen.

But it never happened.

It was Becca who walked up to me and slapped me so fucking hard across the face but that got me nowhere near back to reality. She spoke to me now, my dad held Emma tight in his arms because she was freaking the fuck out, but my mind was still in slow motion. She must be in the car, sleeping maybe, so I'd just get her and carry her up to my bed where she belonged, where she'd be safe, and I'd keep her there forever.

I started to walk toward Emma's car when Becca ran in front of me, fisted my shirt in her hands and shook me way harder than I thought possible. “Cole! Damn it, snap the fuck out of it!”  She hit me again, tears pooling in her eyes now. “Just sna
p out of it!” Her voice broke, tears falling from her face. “He took her Cole, he had to of...there was no one else,” she inhaled rough breaths, and behind me I heard Emma barely dragging in enough air between sobs.

I dropped to my knees on the gravel, rocks cutting the palms of my hands as I went down on all fours trying to make sense of what she was saying to me. Kahlen...someone took her. And a scream that ripped my heart right out of my chest tore through me, leaving it to die on the dirt in front of me. I couldn't live without my heart, and Kahlen was my heart, my soul, she was everything.

Pulling in short exaggerated breaths, eyes stinging from the tears pooling there and the reality of what was beginning to sink in, I began pounding my fists into the ground. I knew they were splitting open because I saw the blood on the ground, but I didn't feel anything.

My dad was shouting at Becca to come and grab Emma, I also heard him talking to someone else, probably on the phone, but my mind was going black and all I saw was red. Not red from my blood on the ground and on my fists, but red from the blood of whoever touched my girl that would be all over my hands when I found him.

“I don't know the details,” I heard my dad shouting. “Just get to my fucking shop now, she's gone, someone took her. Get here now!” Screaming by the end of the call, he threw his phone to the ground and I heard him running up behind me. “Come on, son,” he lifted me off the ground, but my legs wouldn't work.

My mind wasn't functioning, not really. “She'll be here in a minute,” I felt like I was choking
on emotion. “She's fine, right? I mean, she's gone through so much,” my voice broke. I turned to my dad then, clutching him as everything in me seemed to shatter, the tears finally spilling over. “Tell me she's fine, tell me I didn't just hear what they said...that I didn't hear them right,” I shook my head back and forth so hard.

I could hear the sirens getting closer and closer, but it was like I was being held underwater. If I opened my eyes I was surrounded in darkness. If I tried to hear anything it was muffled if I heard anything at all. And if I made an attempt to breath I would die. That was exactly how I felt.

“Officer,” my dad made sure I would stay upright before he reached to shake the cops hand. “These girls were out to lunch with my son's girlfriend, they said some guy asked for directions to campus, and then left. Kahlen, the girl that's missing, she used the bathroom while the other girls paid the bill, but she never came back from the bathroom. They came here first and that's when I called you.”

“What is the victim's name?”

“Her name is Kaylen Jourdan, no middle name.” My voice came out raspy, barely audible. “She's five five, long dark hair, emerald green eyes.” Silent tears fell from my eyes.

“When was the last time y'all saw her?”

“About forty five minutes ago,” I heard Becca answer. “We waited for her for a while thinking she was having female issues in the bathroom,” she cleared her throat trying not to cry. “Then we went back inside and saw the back door down by the bathrooms was propped open slightly. Thinking maybe she was sick from the food we opened the door, but no one was back there. Emma noticed what looked like drag marks through the dirt lot in the back though.”