Page 122 of Unbroken

She sat up and reached for the tape over her mouth. It looked new, the edges were still flat against her skin and the silver was shiny. She cringed when she pulled it off. Remnants of the glue stuck to her skin. She whined but tried to suppress it.

Familiar features—features I’d only ever seen in the mirror—made me take a step back. Fair skin, gray eyes, and higher cheekbones, her cheeks were slightly sunken in, and her full lips were chapped.

She wetted them before she said, “You’re—” She had to clear her throat several times before she continued, her voice still hoarse. “You’re Blakely.”

Not a question but a confident, definitive statement. All thoughts vanished from my mind as she took my silence as confirmation.

“How do you know that?” Devon asked quietly for me. His hand settled softly on my lower back, and I startled at the touch before I could suppress the reaction. I knew it was him, but telling my body that was something different.

The woman shook her head, eyes bouncing between me and Devon. “Because that’s what he called me. He—he—” She shivered, and I momentarily ignored her statement. It wasn’t cold, but it was cooler than a normal night.

“We have a blanket,” I said, opening the back door and retrieving the blanket we’d forgotten about after a picnic date Devon had planned a few weeks ago. Slowly, I walked back around to the trunk and set it on the edge. She reached for it and tentatively hung it around her shoulders. “Do you want to get out or…?”

“I’ll…umm…sure.” She scooted to the front and took Devon’s offered hand to help her down. Her legs nearly gave out, but she caught herself against the side of the car.

When she stood, I realized that without the help of my two-and-a-half-inch-tall boots, we would’ve been the same height.Then she stepped into the yellowish glow of the streetlight above us, and I could see her much lighter brown roots didn’t match the black dye streaked through her hair. Like it was haphazardly painted in the easiest-to-reach places.

It was all intentional. It was a message tome.

The thought had been sitting, unacknowledged, at the back of my mind since I saw her for the first time, but suddenly, the realization was all I could think about. And my mind shut off. I was still there, at least for the most part. Physically, I was there, I could feel my body—my legs trying to hold me up and my arms hanging limply by my sides. But it was like I was watching it all from somewhere else, and the entire world was on mute.

Things were happening around me, but I wasn’t part of it.

Devon guided the shivering woman to sit on the curb as red and blue lights came speeding down the street and careening into the parking lot. Two cars worth of cops descended upon us with an ambulance a second behind them.

The paramedics tended to the woman first, and the cops separated me, Devon, and Jason. I jumped when the female cop tapped my shoulder and motioned for me to follow her. She was saying something, too, but the world was still silent.

She led me to the other side of Devon’s car and away from the major commotion. I saw Devon as we passed, already in what appeared to be the throes of the story with the cop who’d been assigned to him. But his eyes still found me, even in the middle of everything.

FIFTY-FIVE

Devon

“This is my top priority.I’ve managed to gather everything I can on Blakely’s case and reviewed it already,” Marie agreed with a nod. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find anything worth mentioning.”

I thanked her for the tenth time since she arrived and shook her hand. I’d texted her and Detective Baker seconds before the cops arrived, and they’d both come as quickly as they could.

She had a good relationship with the Austin Police Department, and coincidentally, Detective Baker himself. She’d worked with him to review the very little camera footage available and take our statements. Again, which did little to help since none of us had seen anything since we’d found the woman—Jade—in the trunk.

“We’ve already tried contacting the business next door,” Detective Baker said, stepping up beside me and motioning to the brewery that was in the next warehouse over. “We left a message for the owner requesting the security camera footage. It doesn’t look like any of their cameras are pointing in this direction, but no shame in trying.”

“Did Jade tell you anything?” I managed to ask, even with emotion clogging my throat and squeezing my chest. Nothing, they still hadnothing.

Detective Baker glanced around us and cleared his throat. In a voice a little above a whisper, he said, “I’m not supposed to discuss it with you, but honestly, Devon, I think you’re a good guy, and you care about your girl, which goes a long way with me.” He took a deep breath, and I braced for what he was about to say. Given the state of Jade and how long she’d been speaking with the police, I knew it wouldn’t be a story I really wanted to hear. “We haven’t taken her full statement yet, but she was picked up while she was on a run in a nearby park early yesterday morning. He approached her from behind and threw her in the trunk of a car. She passed out while in the trunk and didn’t come to until they were stopped somewhere else. He kept her blindfolded the entire time, but she knew he had dyed her hair, drew the tattoos on her, and kept saying Blakely’s name. Honestly, he kept her so drugged, there’s not much she remembers.”

My hands balled into fists at my sides. A deep anger coursed through me, so potent it felt like it was blistering my skin.

Jade was shaken just from a night spent with that psychotic fuck. I wish it didn’t, but it made me wonder how unlike herself Blakely likely was after months locked in his basement. It made me want to kill the fucker over and over and over.

“—message.” Too entrenched in my own rage, I missed everything Detective Baker said.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I said, this was clearly a message to Blakely.”

I gritted my teeth and turned to find her exactly where she’d been sitting for the past half hour—next to Jade on the curb, both of them silent and staring off in the distance.

“Issue is, what the fuck does the message mean?” The words were barely more than a frustrated whisper, but Detective Bakerheard. He patted my shoulder and gave me a weary, understanding smile.

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