Page 34 of Protection for Rowan

“No worries. Happy to help.”

Shine was glad to have Griz there to drive him to Rowan’s house. He was certain he would have gotten into a wreck if he had to drive.

Approaching the door, he could see a note. Griz pulled it off and read the note.

“Great, the cops left a note for her to call when she returned.”

“Fuck. What are they doing to find her?”

“You okay with me breaking in?” Griz asked.

“Sure am.”

It took Griz about thirty seconds to get the door opened. They went in and closed the door behind them. The place smelled a little stale, and then an unpleasant odor hit. He didn't want to think of her possibly dead in here. But the scent wasn't strong enough to be a body.

Griz smelled it, too, and shook his head. "It's trash, not her."

“Fuck. No way she would have left her trash inside like this. Not if she knew she was leaving.”

Griz moved closer to her bedroom and stopped. “Look at this.”

Shine stepped over, seeing a lamp on the floor. “That’s wrong.”

Griz stepped around the mess and stuck his head in the bedroom door. “Her phone is in here.”

“Shit.”

“She didn’t leave with her phone. Someone was in here.”

“We should call the police.”

“Do you think they’ll do anything?”

Griz shrugged. “We have no idea where she went or what happened. We also only have two days off. She needs the cops searching for her.”

“How are we going to explain being inside her house?”

Griz moved to the kitchen and opened a few drawers before he bent and pulled out a key. “Say she gave you a key. They won’t know. You can give it back once she’s home.”

Shine pulled out his phone and punched in the numbers for emergency. He hated that it had come to this. He couldn’t believe the cops hadn’t entered her place to look for her. She was in trouble, and the police had done nothing to help.

It took about thirty minutes for the police to show up, and in that time, Thario and the rest of the team had started looking for Rowan but hadn’t found anything. He felt sick about everything. Rowan was out there somewhere, probably afraid, and they had no way of finding her.

When the police showed up, he was glad Griz was there to confirm they were overseas on a mission. If he’d been around, he couldn’t imagine what he would have to go through to prove that he was innocent. But if he’d been here, maybe Rowan would still be around.

He left her place close to five and headed back to Thario’s house. His heart felt heavy. Had the police taken her disappearance seriously when her receptionist called, they would have already been looking for her.

“We’ll find her,” Griz said as they parked out front of Thario’s house.

“What if…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Then we’ll track down the bastard and make him pay.”

Shine didn't want to make someone pay. He wanted Rowan with him. The thought of never seeing her again overwhelmed him. He didn't want to think about the bad things that could have happened to her. He knew from his time as a SEAL exactly how disgusting people could be. He'd seen it firsthand and hated the idea of Rowan being subjected to that kind of torture. He had to find her. That was the only acceptable response.

Chapter 26

Rowan wasn’tsure how long it had been, but Charles had drugged her at least one other time, changing her clothes and doing whatever he wanted to her body. She wanted to call him out on the violation, but he’d reacted badly when she’d challenged him on not leaving her food. Her cheek still hurt from the backhand he’d dished out the other day.

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