Page 69 of Stowaway Whirlwind
I swivel my hips and drop my head back against the mirror as he moves lower to drive two fingers in and out of me slowly. “Daddy, oh god, just like that,” I moan when he curls his fingers.
Davis stops abruptly and clutches his bare chest over his heart, a thunderbolt of pain piercing mine at the sound of the front door slamming shut. Davis whips open the bathroom door. The flood lights on the front exterior of the house are glaringly bright through the window, illuminating Lily’s empty crib and our open bedroom door. I scream my rage and grief.
Screeching tires reach our ears just as Davis yanks his pants up and runs into Vincent, who comes charging out of the spare bedroom with Amanda in her silky black pajama shorts and cami right behind him. Vincent yells, “What the fuck is going on?”
“Someone took our daughter!” Davis shouts, and I’ve never heard such devastation in a man’s voice before. He shoves Vincent out of the way with me right on his heels.
I slap the fucking useless, silent alarm pad by the front door, setting off the ear-piercing house alarm when I hit the red button, knowing the cops will immediately be notified. Somehow, someway, someone got past our new locks and alarm system, and I’d stake my life that Mrs. Fitzroy is behind it.
And she is going to fucking pay.
I rush back to the bedroom, screaming at Amanda and Vincent to get out of my way so I can grab our cell phones and yank open my nightstand drawer.
Amanda gasps, and Vincent shouts with panic, “Is that a fucking gun?” when I run back through the house and out the front door, counting the small blessing that it’s stopped raining.
I throw Davis’s phone at him through the Buick’s open window, and he reverses in a circle until he’s turned around on the lawn, flinging leaves and muddy grass behind his tires when he takes off like a slingshot down the driveway, turning right onto the wet road with squealing tires.
With no idea which way the kidnapper—orkidnappers—went with Lily, I climb into the Ford with my gun on the seat to my right. Just as I’ve got the truck turned around, Amanda climbs in on the passenger side.
“What are you doing?” I scream, my heart slamming into my ribs, though I’m already speeding down the driveway before she’s closed the door. Vincent is hoofing it on foot behind us, waving his arms and yelling something in the rear view mirror.
Amanda is eerily calm when she picks up my gun and asks, “Do you know how to use this?”
“Yes!”
“On a moving target?”
“Fuck!” I slam my hand repeatedly against the steering wheel after miraculously managing to keep the Ford on all four tires when I take a left too fast onto the road. “No.”
“I do.” She inspects the gun while I charge down the pitch black road with my high beams on, going as fast as I can without losing control of the truck. She answers my phone when it rings, putting it on speaker while I keep my head on a swivel for anything suspicious, like the car that used our driveway to make a U-turn.
Davis is yelling into the phone, and I can’t make sense of what he’s saying. But Amanda can. She calmly tells me, “Take a right at the fork.”
I nearly piss myself when I make the turn past the gas station on the corner, lit up by flickering neon signs, and pass two cop cruisers and a big ass SUV with their red and blue lights spinning atop their vehicles going the opposite direction. The two cruisers continue on, turning left toward our house, while the SUV makes a U-turn in the empty gas station parking lot, bouncing over the curb, and then pulls up fast on my tail.
I don’t care what happens or if I end up going to jail for leading the cop on a high-speed chase. I’m not pulling this truck over until I find my baby.
Davis
Acid burns deep in my chest, eating away at muscle and bone, when I take a right at the first stop sign after pulling onto the road from my driveway. Following my gut instinct at its meaning, I turn the Buick around fast, the acid receding. I let it guide my way at each flashing red or yellow traffic light and stop sign.
Thank god for voice dialing because I can’t spare a second to look away from the wet, winding roads to call Wyatt, who says he’ll put the word out that my daughter is missing and we’re hunting down the bastard who took her.
Amanda answers the phone when I call Goldie next, just when I catch a glimpse of red brake lights up ahead that disappear out of view behind the dense trees lining the roads.When they make a left turn, the back end fishtails dangerously, making my stomach lurch. That’s the car. It has to be. Which means they’re driving erraticallywith my daughter in the car, putting her life at risk.
I’m going to kill them for this.
Goldie is cursing in the background, and as soon as Amanda tells me where they are, I know where they need to go to catch up to us. I drop the phone on my lap to bark out each direction as I clench the steering wheel with white-knuckled fists, following the brake lights.
I plead with the Buick’s old engine not to give out, praying for it to go faster as I slam the gas pedal to the floor, catching up to the suspicious gray sedan that had pulled up our driveway. I fucking knew it!
I follow the sedan turn by turn, cutting off Amanda to call Wyatt back to give him our location, hoping he can head the bastard off from his place. Fury erupts when I realize the car isn’t taking last-minute turns. The driverknowsthese roads and how to navigate them, which means someone from this area has betrayed us, someone Fitzroy could have paid off.
I keep pace, debating what the fuck I should do. My first thought is to pull a pit maneuver, but I’ll fucking die if I cause a crash that hurts my Lily Jo. Headlights up ahead race toward us, and just when my soul about leaves my body, thinking there’s going to be a head-on collision, the gray sedan turns off the road into a clearing when the tree line breaks, their back end bottoming out repeatedly until the bumper is hanging off, dragging behind them, as it speeds through the field with me right on their ass.
Wyatt’s lifted black truck heads the sedan off in front like I was hoping, his massive tires eating up the dirt and distance easier and faster than the car, making the driver steer diagonally to avoid a crash until Wyatt picks up a burst of speed, blacksmoke spilling from his exhaust in my headlights, to veer his truck sideways in front of the sedan, coming to a dead stop. The car slams on their brakes but can’t find the traction needed to stop in time to avoid T-boning Wyatt’s driver’s side door.
I swing the Buick perpendicular behind the kidnapper’s vehicle right before they put the sedan in reverse. They slam back into my passenger side, but the Buick holds long enough for me to bolt out of it and jump over my hood to wrench on the driver’s side door handle. And when it doesn’t give way, I punch the window over and over again near the edge where it’s the weakest, splitting and breaking my knuckles until the window cracks and finally gives way.
