Page 72 of Reclaiming Adelaide

She put her hand over the speaker and shook her head. “I swear to God these people…” Her hand slid away. “Yeah, I’m here. Hey, don’t forget to bring some water. She’s gonna be thirsty.”

My brain rattled, desperate to hear the conversation brewing on the other end until she hung up with a scowl.

“He owns that yard. It’ll buy us some time. I hope.”

Thoughts about the crazy things I’d said to her beat against me, breaking me down until I felt just as worthless as I’d made her feel. I couldn’t let my hatred be the last thing she’d heard from me. I wouldn’t allow it.

But sometimes, she drove me stark raving mad, making me feel things I couldn’t control, even though she tried to rob me and my company blind.

Even though she infiltrated my life and watched me.

Even though everything we had was a lie.

I needed her.

And that was a feeling—for some insane reason—only she could invoke.

I wasn’t one to attach myself to someone, but with her… it was as if we were made for one another. We went together like wood and fire, and the moon and the stars. She was the sun, and my world revolved around her, even if I didn’t want it to. Her gravitational pull had my mind stuck in a perpetual state of motion with nothing butherbinding my thoughts.

She consumed me day and night. And no matter how much I tried to pull away from her, her hold on me was infinite.

I just hope there was a moment in time where I’d overcome her moment of deception and forgive her for it. Because as much as I hated to admit it, I needed her more than she’d ever need me.

Charity’s phone rang, freezing my thundering heart in my chest.

“Yes,” she answered. “You found it?”

I swung my gaze to her. What was he saying to her? I needed to know.

“Is she inside? You didn’t get her out? What do you mean it’s stuck? Well, keep trying. Cut it apart for all I care. No. We’re almost there. Keep working at it. Yeah. Bye.”

My frozen heart cracked with a deafening crash.

“How close are we?”

She glanced down at her phone. “Five more minutes.”

I pressed on the gas, making it four, and skidded to a stop in the parking lot with gravel flying behind us like mini-missiles. By the time they’d found their target, pinging off of parked cars, I’d opened my door and ran through the opened gated entrance, leaving the car running and my door wide open.

Let the car run.

Let someone steal it.

I didn’t give a shit.

All that mattered was finding Adelaide in time.

“You go left, I’ll go right, and we’ll meet in the middle at the end,” Charity said before darting left, leaving me shaking my head with confusion as if she didn’t just give explicit instructions to do the opposite.

I ran down a row of vehicles, striking out, then another and another. The blazing sun sat high in the sky, pelting down its hellacious intensity, which caused an endless array of mirages in the distance. This would be a comfortable day on any other day, but today it was like stepping through the gates of Hell.

A heatwave, they’d called it.

Humidity sent rivulets of sweat down my forehead and back. My shirt stuck to me like a second skin, and my jeans were no longer appropriate attire.

I ran my hand over a crumpled blue truck when my heart leaped. The tops of two men’s heads one row over caught my periphery, along with their grunting and muffled speech.

There she was.

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