Page 96 of Touch Me Not

Nikoli cracked. Seeing her again, after all these weeks, all the lies he’d told himself laughed right in his face. The pain in her eyes, the pain he’d been responsible for putting there not once, but twice, was the slap upside the head he needed. He loved her. He’d tried so hard to convince himself he was better off without her, but she haunted him. He loved her, dammit, and it was time he told her. It was time he put them both out of their misery.

If she’d have him after this.

He started cursing and detached himself from the girl, meaning to follow Lily, but the little bit of fluff in the doorway stopped him.

“How dare you!” she shrieked. “Do you know what you did to her? Do you even care that she laid on my bathroom floor for two days crying? Do you care that she sobbed so hard she lost her voice? Who the fuck do you think you are, Nikoli Kincaid? You’re nothing but a worthless, no good…”

“First, this is my frat house, and I didn’t expect her to show up here. Second, I sure as hell didn’t mean for her to see that. Now, get out of my way so I can go check on her!”

“Check on her?” Janet yelled. “You stay the hell away from her! She doesn’t need you causing her any more pain.”

Nikoli simply picked up the pixie-like woman and set her aside, ignoring both women shouting at him as he ran down the stairs. He looked and didn’t see her anywhere, but everyone was staring at him.

“Where?” he barked, and several people pointed to the front door. He wasted no time and ripped the door open to bound down the steps. He knew exactly where she’d go. The small gazebo up the street in the center of the outlying buildings. She loved it there, said it was peaceful.

He stopped dead about twenty feet from the gazebo. There was a cell phone on the ground, with a trail of blood leading from it to the street. He took several more steps, and dread froze his heart.

The phone was Lily’s.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A wave of nausea woke Lily. She groaned and rolled over but found no relief. She was lying on something hard. She opened her eyes to the smell of gasoline and darkness. Wherever she was, she was moving.Calm down,she told herself.Calm down and focus.She listened and heard the sounds of the highway. She was in the trunk of a car. They weren’t going fast, probably under the speed limit.

Her head was killing her. She closed her eyes and tried to remember what happened. She’d been running away from Nikoli and the girl he’d been with, and smacked into someone. She’d mumbled an apology and tried to go around him, but he’d caught her arm and pulled her around. He’d told her to be quiet and come with him or he’d cut her. Her upper arm started to sting as soon as she remembered him saying that. She’d tried to get away, and hehadcut her. That hadn’t quieted her down, however. Adam’s dad and her own father taught her to scream and fight like hell if she ever got in this kind of situation, and that was exactly what she’d done. The last thing she remembered was the guy’s fist barreling down at her, and then it had been lights out.

If she panicked now, she’d end up dead and missing instead of just missing. She ignored the pain in her arm and started feeling around the dark space. The first thing she looked for was a trunk latch. All new cars had them in case someone got locked in. There wasn’t one, which meant this was an older car.

Next, she examined the taillights, and this was her first bout of good luck. She turned and kicked the taillight several times as hard as she could, and it knocked the light out. Wiggling around, she managed to turn so her head was now looking out of the broken taillight. They were surrounded by cars. How to get their attention?

She searched the interior of the trunk as best she could but found nothing. It was completely empty.Think, Lily, think!Her bra! It was white. She rolled so she could unsnap it and worked until she got it off. She wrapped one strap around her wrist so the wind couldn’t rip it out of her hands. Then she thrust it out the taillight’s now-empty hole and started waving.

She prayed to God someone would see it and call the police.

Nikoli called Luther and explained what was going on and asked him to call 911. The campus police were not the ones to handle this. His thoughts kept running to the one place he didn’t want them to. The serial killer. He’d been getting closer and closer to the Boston campus for months now. He knew how worried Lily was about it. What if the guy had found her, taken her while she was too upset to even think about fighting back?

Dear God, he’d never forgive himself if anything happened to his Lily Bells, hisMilaya.

Kade. He’d call his brother.

“What?” Kade barked into the phone when he answered.

“It’s Lily.” Nikoli’s voice cracked, but he didn’t care. “She’s gone, Kade. Someone took her.”

“Tell me.”

“I came outside to find her, and all I can find is her phone…”

“She might have accidentally dropped it,” Kade soothed.

“No, you don’t understand. There’s blood leading from her phone to the street. Someone forcefully took her,brat.”

“How long ago?”

“Maybe five minutes.”

“Stay where you are. I’m coming. Text me the address.”

Nikoli did as he was told, but he knew enough about these kinds of situations to know every second counted. He looked up when he heard running steps. Luther, Mike, Adam, and several other guys were barreling toward him.

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