Page 123 of Single Teddy
“Boys! Are you okay? Are you hurt? Injured?”
I didn’t wait for them to tell me. I scanned their bodies looking for any hints of harm, other than the tight restraints that had made both their wrists red.
“I’m okay,” Niko said.
“I’m okay too.” Valentin agreed.
I sighed in relief—it was the small graces in situations like these. It was only then that I took notice of our surroundings. The building was small and rather damp, with wooden beams supporting the angled roof and the walls seemingly made of wooden planks and not much else. There was a layer of dust and dirt across the floor, but in the middle of the room, there was a large, bolted trapdoor.
“We’re in a boathouse,” I mumbled and turned to the kids. “Does your dad own a boathouse? A boat?”
Was he planning on shoving us into a boat and abandoning us in the middle of the ocean? Or taking us onto the mainland for easier disposal? I didn’t know which fate was worse.
“Boat?” Niko asked. “I-I don’t know.”
I took deep breaths and tried to steady the chaos inside me before I spoke again. Even if it was hard or impossible, I had to keep a semblance of control. For them. If these were our last moments, I didn’t want them to be shaking like leaves.
“I’m so sorry, boys. I should have… I should have done something sooner.”
Or I should have let things slide and run to Teddy for help and advice. Instead, I’d made everything ten times worse.
But it wasn’t entirely my fault. There was someone else who’d screwed up, not that he cared.
Detective Bennet.
That man! I should have known he was a scumbag by the way he moved, talked, acted, and even breathed. But I’d been stupid enough to believe I’d be safe at the station. Why would a cop want to hurt me and the kids?
How naive of me.
“I’m sorry it’s come to this,” I told them, and they looked back at me with big puppy-dog eyes that literally made my heart shatter into a million pieces. “But we’re going to be okay. I know it. This is just…a hiccup.”
I didn’t like lying, but in times like these, it was okay if it offered some comfort.
Because it was a lie. We were doomed. No one was coming for us. We had disappeared from inside a police station. I doubted there’d be any clue of us come tomorrow.
Except…
Except for Ruby and Lexi. I’d told them what had happened.
Shit. What if they’d been grabbed too when they went to the police station? What if Bennet got to them too? Or Dakota. Just because he was handsome didn’t mean he wasn’t dirty. Hell, the whole station could be dirty for all I knew. How else could a detective take us out so nonchalantly without concern for being caught?
Stupid, stupid, stupid Wesley.
I was too trusting. Too innocent. Too stupid to live, apparently.
Instead of making me give up, this whole situation and the accompanying soliloquy in my head made me hotter. Angrier.
I won’t go down without a fight!
I gritted my teeth and sat up, determined to get us out of here. I moved my hands, trying to free myself, but it was pointless. The zip ties wouldn’t budge.
“I need something sharp,” I said, more to myself than to the kids.
I looked around, trying to find anything. A knife, a nail sticking out of the floor, a broken piece of wood. There was nothing I could see from where I was sitting. So I forced myself to get up on my feet and walk to the edge of the room to the countertop out of breath by the time I got there.
It was pretty bare with only a few pieces of paper—invoices from the looks of it—and a few dirty old pens in a pen holder.
“That might do,” I muttered and bent over the countertop to grab a pen with my mouth.
