Page 3 of Eye Candy

I didn’t know where I was. A shitty part of town, but that wasn’t saying much. Most parts of this place were shitty. The house I’d finally gotten out of was as nondescript as a house could be. All you had to do was keep walking, and eventually you’d wind up downtown.

People drove on the streets, not bothering to stop and help me. They probably didn’t care about a girl hobbling along, dripping blood as she went. Most people in this city had turned a blind eye to the bad things in it, especially during the day. Again, the sun was so freaking bright, it was damn near blinding.

Iwalked for what felt like hours, and maybe it was. Maybe it really did take me hours to reach downtown, to where the buildings skyrocketed toward the sky, all shiny and new.

This city had seen so much. One bloodied girl hobbling along wasn’t so out of the ordinary. Not long before I’d been kidnapped, for instance, the city was almost taken over by a man and his followers. A little makeshift army full of stupid, angry people who wanted violence. Law enforcement had handled it, as far as I was aware. My dad never told me any of the details.

I spotted a police car parallel-parked in front of a deli that took up the corner spot beneath a five-story high building, and I managed to reach the car and knock on the window with my elbow.

Nothing.

I leaned down and saw the cop wasn’t in there. Of freaking course.

“Hey, you. Get away from the vehicle,” a woman’s voice called out, and I turned to see a female officer exiting the deli, holding onto a brown paper bag. Her lunch, I assumed. She wore all dark blue, her uniform, and her mouth was drawn into a thin line. Her eyes were hidden behind aviator glasses, so I couldn’t see her expression.

She closed the distance between us, repeating, “I said—” But then she must’ve noticed how dirty I was, how beaten-up I was, the way blood dripped from my left hand and fell down my arm as I held it against my chest, for her tone quickly changed, “Do you need help?”

Uh, duh, I needed some freaking help.

“My name is Laina Hawkins,” I told her, sounding quite calm, given the circumstance. “My dad is Vance Hawkins, the mayor.”

The officer almost dropped her bag, muttering, “Shit. You’re that girl that was kidnapped.” She reached for the radio on her chest, repeating some code I didn’t know, along with requesting an ambulance. After that, she cautiously walked toward me, setting her bag down on the roof of her cruiser.

It was all a blur after that. She tried to ask me what had happened to me, where I’d come from, the house I’d escaped from, but I didn’t feel like talking much. I kept my mouth shut. Eventually, backup arrived, along with an ambulance. A crowd had gathered, and as much as the cops tried to keep them away from me, it didn’t matter.

It was only a matter of time until everyone in this city knew who I was, I’d make sure of that.

I was packed up and brought to the hospital, where they checked out my injuries and asked me countless more questions. The doctor tried to ask me how my injuries happened, especially the one on my left hand, but I told him I didn’t remember. It was all hazy in my head, the adrenaline pumping too much for me to really comprehend reality.

I didn’t know how long it took for them to clean me up, bandage me up, and get me hooked on IVs with fluids and some kind of medicine to help ward off infection, but it felt like an eternity.

Laying there in a hospital bed, bandaged up, watching everyone practically racing in the hall as they went back and forth, around the police who’d stationed themselves outside my door, was kind of funny. All this time, I’d been right under their noses, and they never noticed.

I wondered how long it’d take for my dad to come. It was probably why the cops had stopped asking me questions about my kidnapper and where I’d been, where I’d escaped from—he’d given them an order to leave me alone or something. Being the mayor, he had certain privileges, and therefore I did, too.

My dad had gotten what he’d always wanted. It was time for me to get mine.

Someone new walked in the hall, and I flicked my eyes to the windows in my room, watching. It wasn’t my dad. It was a woman, along with a man wearing a suit. She looked to be in her early twenties, with blond hair a shade off from mine. She and the man in the suit were talking to the police officers. Their voices were muffled, so I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

I didn’t know them, so I didn’t really care.

After a minute, the woman turned toward my door, coming inside. She gave me a smile as she shut the door behind her, locking the man in the suit and the police officers out. She wore a sparkly outfit that showed off her legs, and she had bright blue eyes that reminded me of mine. A pretty light shade that made other girls jealous.

She sat down in the chair beside my bed, pulling it closer. We had the room to ourselves, no roommates here. Again, being the only child of the mayor had its privileges.

“What’s your name?” she asked, her voice careful. She leaned toward me, her gaze focused on me and me alone. Though she sounded nice, she seemed intense at the same time, like she was two steps away from crazy.

“Laina,” I answered her.

“Laina,” she repeated. “My name is Lola. I hear you’re the mayor’s daughter.” She glanced at the windows, at the man inthe suit, who was still talking to the cops in the hall. “You’re probably wondering why I’m here.”

I managed to shrug. “I don’t really care.”

That got her to laugh. She didn’t seem to care about my attitude. “After what you’ve been through these last two years, I get that. Look, I know you don’t know me from some random person on the street, but I’ve made it my mission to protect the girls in this city. I’m sorry we couldn’t find you. I’m sorry this had to happen.” She gestured to my left side, where my hand sat, bandaged up.

I lifted my left arm, letting my eyes fall to the space where my pinky and my ring finger should’ve been. The doctor had said it was a clean slice. “Why would you look for a stranger? You don’t know me.”

“No, but like I said, I want to keep the girls in this city safe. When I heard you were kidnapped… to be honest, I thought you were dead. I thought no one in this city would ever see your pretty face again. Or your body. Bodies have a way of mysteriously disappearing here.” She smiled at that, like she was talking about rainbows and butterflies and not dead bodies.

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