Page 3 of Wicked Vengeance

This doesn’t feel peaceful, though.

What happened?

Sifting through the haze clouding my mind, I try to grasp onto a memory– any memory, but nothing comes through clearly. It’s like trying to grasp at smoke. The second I connect with it, it dissipates into vapor, leaving nothing in its wake but more smoke.

My heart beats slowly– slower than it should, considering I don’t know what the fuck is going on right now.

Maybe that should worry me, but it just…doesn’t. The familiar flutter of anxious energy isn’t thrumming through my veins.

Everything in my mind moves in slow motion, but I can’t comprehend anything other than the darkness.

Only darkness.

Chapter 3

Royal

“There’s no one in the house.”

Dejection colors Ronan’s voice as he walks back into the bedroom and sits next to me on the bed.

After we’d searched the entire house, I came back to this room– her room, hoping to find any kind of clue. But there’s nothing here besides Em’s little white horse.

Clutching it in my fist, I stand from the bed and walk to the window. This is where the picture was taken– in front of this window. I recognize it now. She’s so close I can feel it.

I stare out into the forest through the frosted glass, trying to run through every possible move we could make next. We are too close to finding her to let this lead slip through our fingers. It’s the first lead we’ve had and the only one I think we will ever get.

“We’ll keep looking. We won’t stop until we find her,” Ronan says, squeezing my shoulder in reassurance.

My mind reels with ‘what ifs,’ but the thoughts come to a halt in my head when something peeking through the tops of the trees catches my eye.

“What the fuck is that?” I mumble, straining to see through the coating on the glass. But it’s distorted. Tossing the white horse on the bed, I frantically pull at the window to open it up.

“What is it, man?” Ronan asks, helping me lift the window from its near-fixed position. It might as well be nailed shut.

Grunting and straining, we manage to unstick it, and when it finally slides free, it slams loudly against the frame.

“There.” I lean out the window, pointing off into the forest. “Is that a roof?” He leans out with me, squinting off into the distance.

“Well, would you look at that? That’s a goddamn roof,” he says, slapping me on the back and grinning like an idiot.

“Let’s go,” I tell him, grinning back at him with renewed hope. I grab the little white horse from the bed, stuff it into my back pocket, and stride from the room.

By the time we make it back into the kitchen, where the rest of the guys are gathered around Dax, hope has spread through my whole body, filling me once again with vigorous determination.

“Can you hold on a little longer?” Ronan asks Dax as he squats down and examines the bullet wound.

“I’m fine,” he grunts. A grimace paints his features when Ronan leans him forward, searching for an exit wound.

“It’s still in there, but it looks like it missed everything major. We’ll have to get a doctor to remove it once we’re done here, though,” Ronan tells him, gently pressing him back into the cabinet. Dax grumbles under his breath but doesn’t make his obvious opinion on it known.

“There’s another structure on this property, just through the forest,” he continues as he stands up, his voice laced with authority now as he addresses everyone. “Jasper, stay with Dax. The rest of us, let’s check it out.”

“She’s got to be here, man. There’s no way we missed them leaving the property altogether and no reason for those men to be here if they weren’t here to guard her.”

Maddox rambles on as we trek through the thick forest. Hope still fills my chest, but the closer we get, the more on edge I feel because I know Maddox is feeling it, too.

“She’s here,” I whisper, mostly to myself, but it seems to calm his chaos just a little.

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