Page 97 of Love Him Like Water

And the way my gut twisted was nothing to the way my fucking heart did.

The idea of sweet, innocent, tiny Lore in the hands of the man who wanted to tear down my organization, who wanted to hurt me? No. Fuck. That was unbearable.

“What do you want to do here, boss?” Rico asked, bruised ribs forgotten, ready to spring into action.

“Elian, call in Cage to watch the apartment. I want you on the streets.”

“Got it,” he said, hanging up.

“Call Cinna,” I demanded, handing Rico his phone as I rushed back toward the building.

One look at me had Dav stiffening.

“Put him on ice,” I said, nodding toward the small back room. Made of concrete with a fucking industrial door that was impossible to open from the inside. We knew. We’d used it many times over the years. “Call in your most trusted soldier,” I told Dav after he dragged the chair into the room and locked the kid in. “I need you on the streets. Lore is missing.”

With that, we all sprang into action, trying to wipe most of the gore off of us before going to the local businesses, asking them if they’d seen Lore.

But aside from the coffee shop, it didn’t seem like she’d stopped anywhere else.

Panic, a tightening sensation in my gut and around my throat, grew with each passing moment as I pictured Lore being hit, punched, kicked… worse. And crying out for me.

“Fuck,” I growled, turning and slamming my fist into the wall, making Dav’s brows raise.

“That’s constructive,” he remarked as I just barely managed to keep myself from hitting it again, the pain helping me think past the increasingly dark, horrific visions in my head.

“Boss!” Cinna’s voice called, making me turn to find her striding across the street toward me. “I got him to let me look at his cameras,” she said, waving toward a sleazy-ass looking guy, leaning against his storefront, rubbing his stomach as he wiggled a toothpick between his lips.

“Yeah? How’d you do that?” Dav asked, smirking despite the seriousness of the situation.

“Luckily, all you men are the same,” Cinna said. “Come on,” she said to me. “He has a camera right on the corner.”

With that, unstable hope rising in my chest at a possible lead, I ran across the street with her.

We moved through the crowded aisles of pawn shop shit covered in a fucking inch of dust, heading toward the back room, a claustrophobic space not even big enough for two people, let alone the owner who tried to stay inside even after bringing up the feed on the cameras for me.

“Give us a minute, handsome?” Cinna asked, voice purring.

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard Cinna adopt a flirtatious attitude to get her way. But it never failed to shock me how well she pulled it off when I knew she was mentally imagining castrating someone.

“Sure, honey, sure. Be right out front when you’re ready for me,” he said, rubbing his stomach some more, his tongue flicking out to press against the toothpick, then moving out into the front of the building.

Cinna slammed the door closed. “Gross,” she grumbled, coming back behind the desk with me, both of us standing shoulder-to-shoulder. “What time was this?” she asked, reaching for the mouse.

“Two hours. No, closer to three or three and a half now,” I said.

Cinna jumped back the footage, and we watched everyone moving around, living their lives, both of us scanning the faces for Lore.

“She was wearing my leather jacket,” I reminded Cinna. “Holding two frozen coffees.”

Cinna made a noise in the back of her throat, but said nothing as she kept jumping the footage back, trying to catch sight of her.

“There,” she said, stabbing her finger on the pause key as we saw Lore walking up toward the corner.

Her gait was stiff, like each step was an effort.

This had to be directly after I’d talked to her. And she’d been walking fine then.

Strange.

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