Page 27 of Toy

6

Mason

Three dots appearedon my screen to indicate that Jolie was typing. They vanished about thirty seconds later.

Frowning, I waited, expecting to see the dots pop back up. They didn’t. No message came through either. Finally, I sent her a message of my own. What? Who was it?

She didn’t reply.

I tried calling a minute later, but it didn’t ring. It went straight to voicemail.

A sour taste appeared in the back of my mouth. To anyone else, an ignored text might not seem like a big deal, but I could tell something was wrong in this case. Jolie wouldn’t make such a bold statement without any follow-up. She certainly wouldn’t bait me by claiming to know exactly who the snitch was before turning off her phone just to be an asshole. She wasn’t like that.

I opened the tracking app I’d installed on my cell months ago when Jolie was still my captive. With all the drama of the last month or so, both of us had forgotten about the little chip I stuck inside her, and she hadn’t had it removed yet.

Device offline,the app told me. A sick feeling appeared in the pit of my stomach.

I swallowed thickly and opened my wallet. After finding one of my business cards, I tossed it toward the harried medical receptionist. She was still fielding calls from patients. “Send the bill to my office,” I said. I turned and strode out of the building.

I headed back toward Jolie’s apartment as fast as possible. It was already a fifteen minute drive at best during rush hour times, but today it was even longer due to a nasty car accident on one of the streets I usually took to get to her neighborhood. I had to turn around and go another way, which added another five minutes to my journey.

“Fuck!” I seethed as I slammed my hands down on the steering wheel. Yet another street on the way back had issues now—a pothole being fixed by a crew in high-visibility gear. I had to slow down all the way to twenty miles an hour before being waved around by one of the guys on the edge of the road.

The seconds ticked by like hours as dread rolled around my guts. Finally, I made it to St. Andrew Street. I raced into Jolie’s building, heart thudding, and my suspicions were confirmed when I caught sight of the black-clad security guy slumped outside her apartment. The door stood ominously ajar.

I didn’t need to check the other five security postings to know the other guards were out cold too. Of course they fucking were. There was no time to look, anyway. My number one priority was Jolie.

I shoved the door all the way open and dashed inside to assess the situation. “Jolie!”

I wasn’t sure why I bothered calling out. The second I saw the unconscious guard at her door, I knew she was gone. I could feel it in my bones.

I suppose I hoped deep down that she’d somehow managed to fight off her attacker and evade capture, despite the fact that he—or they—had easily disposed of a six man security team.

It seemed as if she’d certainly tried. As I swept my gaze around the apartment, I spotted a big kitchen knife on the counter and an upended saucepan on the floor with dark brown sauce oozing out of it. A broken wine bottle lay on the floorboards a few feet away, large shards of dark green in a sea of crimson. Jolie must have tried to use the knife and bottle as makeshift weapons against her attacker, and at some point she’d also thrown the pan at him.

The rest of the sauce and food from the saucepan was splattered over one side of the kitchen counter, part of the small dining room table, and the upper portion of the beige wall to the right of it. A shattered wine glass sat on the table in jagged slivers. Dark droplets of blood marred the white linen cloth around the broken stem.

I strode into the kitchen to turn off the gas burner on the stove. When I turned around, I spotted another kitchen knife on the counter. It was smaller than the first one, but unlike the other, it was speckled with blood.

A chill shot through me as my eyes dropped to the floor directly below. The white tiles were marked with a bloody partial shoeprint, and several tiny bits of black plastic were scattered around the area. Whoever attacked Jolie had cut out her tracking device and crushed it under their heel before taking her.

My blood boiled at the thought of someone hurting her. Or worse.

It was my fucking fault. I shouldn’t have let her stay here by herself, even for an hour. I should’ve known those cult bastards would jump on any opportunity to get her, even if it meant fighting off six beefy bodyguards.

I was about to dash out of the apartment when I caught sight of Buddy’s aquarium on the other side of the room. An enormous crack ran along the front of it. Most of the water had seeped out onto the floor below, and the fish was flopping in less than half an inch of whatever remained.

“Shit…”

I ran back to the kitchen and grabbed a container from the cupboard. After filling it with water from the sink, I raced back over to the broken tank and picked up Buddy. Tap water would have to be good enough for him for now.

I shot off a text to Beck, telling her to meet me right away. Then I walked over to the apartment opposite Jolie’s and pounded on the door.

An old man with receding white hair answered on the tenth knock. “What is it, Ashwood?”

“You know who I am?” I asked, brows lifting. That made things slightly easier.

He shrugged. “Yes. I have eyes, don’t I?”

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