Page 76 of Cruel Expectations

He whirled and scanned the front of the garage where all the vehicles should be parked.

Meadow’s was missing, as was one other truck.

“Dammit!” He whipped out his phone and dialed Ivy. Every muscle in his body shook with the urge to move—now.

No answer.

“Goddammit!” He ended the call and stabbed at the app to track her. She was savvy and had all the locator services activated on her device. When she was sleeping, he linked to her phone just in case.

Now what had looked like him being controlling could save her life.

Immediately, her little pin came up on his screen. She was at Badlands.

His chest burned with fear and anger. What made her think that she could just take off?

As he made the call to the saloon, a growl rumbled low in his core.

“Badlands—this is Livia!”

“It’s Hunter. I’m looking for Ivy.”

Silence filled the line. “Ivy left half an hour ago.”

Panic rampaged through him. Fury pounded through his veins along with a rush of adrenaline.

“Go outside and look if her truck’s in the parking lot,” he shot out to the owner.

“Ok-a-ay.” Her voice wavered. “Going now.”

His fingers tightened on the phone until he feared he’d crush it with his bare hand. He heard footsteps and then a door swinging open.

Livia’s voice shot ice through his veins. “Oh god! Her truck is here. The food she bought is on the ground. The truck is here…but Ivy’s gone!”

* * * * *

Ivy’s shoulder joints felt about ready to pop from the strain of having her hands bound behind her back. Each time she tugged, trying to loosen the bonds, her shoulders screamed in protest, so she stopped trying to free herself.

The metal back of the chair had her spine screaming from the unusual ramrod-straight position. And even through her boots, her ankles were bruised from yanking on the bindings locked to the chair legs.

Since she was taking stock of her body, she might as well focus on her brain.

Her mind was still foggy around the events that had ended with her locked in this dark, dank basement. At some point, her kidnappers had knocked her out. She’d lost too much time between the time she was getting in the truck at Badlands and now.

All she knew was that one minute she was opening her truck door to put the food inside, and the next, she was being yanked off her feet. She barely recalled being tossed around the back of a van and had no memory at all of being chained up to this chair.

Great. Her knees were beginning to ache as bad as her shoulders were.

At least she’d managed to spit out the cloth they stuffed in her mouth to silence her screams. It left an oily residue on her tongue, which turned her stomach as much as the sight of the ugly man watching over her.

He probably thought his greasy blond hair was edgy, but he looked like he’d just crawled out of the sewer. His small cruel eyes had roamed all over her body at least a dozen times in the short span of time she’d been here.

The shirt he wore might have once been white, but it had been dulled by filth and now looked like a gray rag. His jeans, too, had seen a better life on a much larger relative. The thing she couldn’t bear to even glance at were his feet. He wore no shoes. His feet were black from whatever he’d walked through. And the state of his toenails made her stomach pitch and heave.

Forcing down the bile pushing against the back of her throat, Ivy cleared it twice before attempting to speak.

She craned her neck high. “I would like some water.”

He shifted his gaze from her breasts to her face.

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