Page 83 of Kidnapped By the Beast
“Lexi—thank God you’re home. I’m worried sick!” she exclaimed. Herbert said he was going out for some milk two hours ago and he still isn’t back. I’ve called and called, but he’s not answering his phone. Where can he be?”
Lexi’s heart dropped into her stomach. She knew exactly where Uncle Herbert had gone…and she had a pretty good idea of what had happened to him.
The twenty thousand dollars she’d given him to pay his debt should have been enough, but men like Butcher were never satisfied.
“I’ll find him,” she said quickly, kissing Aunt Helen’s cheek. “I think I know where he is.”
“Where? Can I come with you?” Aunt Helen started to grab her sweater but Lexi shook her head.
“No, I’ll only be a minute. You stay here in case I’m wrong and he comes back.”
That placated her aunt long and she agreed to stay, much to Lexi’s relief. She didn’t need two elderly relatives to look after while she confronted Butcher. Though she wasn’t really going to confront the loan shark, she told herself. She was just going to see if she could extricate Uncle Herbert and bring him home.
She just hoped Butcher hadn’t hurt him.
47
LEXI
The neon sign for Bad Intentions buzzed in the night, one corner sputtering and going dark as Lexi parked in the lot behind it. When she walked inside the club she smelled the familiar reek of cigarette smoke, spilled beer, and desperation. A bass line pounded from the front room, thrumming through her chest as she shoved her way past laughing men and women reeking of sweat and cheap perfume to get to the back room.
But the further she went, the worse she felt. Her palms were slick with sweat. Every nerve screamed at her to stop, to turn around before it was too late. But Uncle Herbert was somewhere in here—she couldn’t go back without him.
Lifting her chin, Lexi marched straight to the back. She went down the dark hallway marked “Staff Only,” and found herself in the small passage outside a room hazy with cigar smoke. A single, sickly yellow bulb burned overhead, illuminating the green felt of the poker table. Butcher sat in the center like a spider in his web, cigar clenched in his teeth, a grin spreading across his heavy face. His cronies sat around him, slapping cards on the table, laughter booming as though the air wasn’t thick with menace.
Lexi kept to the shadows, watching warily. So far none of them had seen her and she would like to keep it that way, if she could. Her eyes scanned the room, trying to see through the smoke. And there he was—Uncle Herbert! The old man was crumpled in the corner like a broken doll, his John Deere cap lying on the floor beside him, his face pale and damp with sweat.
Seeing him like that made Lexi’s heart stop. Oh God, was he even breathing? Was he dead?
“Uncle Herbert!” she gasped, rushing forward.
But two massive officers were suddenly in her way. One seized her right arm, shoving her hard enough to make her stumble.
“Hey! Let me go—he’s hurt!” She struggled, but his grip was like iron. Then the other officer grabbed her left arm. Her skin prickled where their hands dug into her flesh.
They dragged her toward the table.
“Hey, Boss—look what we caught,” one said. “Looked like she was trying to get to the old guy you had us work over.”
“Well, well,” Butcher drawled, smoke curling from his lips as he pushed back from the green felt of the poker table. “If it isn’t a pretty little lady. Who do you think you are, coming in here?”
Lexi lifted her chin, though her knees felt like water.
“I’m here to get my uncle Herbert. He came to pay a debt—which he obviously did.” She nodded at the neat stack of bills on the table. Butcher had clearly been using the money she’d earned with such difficulty to gamble with—the bastard! “So I’m here to take him home.”
Butcher tapped ash into a chipped glass tray.
“Hang on now, girly—you’re not taking him anywhere. Uncle Herbert there hasn’t paid his whole debt.”
“What are you talking about?” Lexi demanded. “He told me he owed you twenty thousand dollars, and that’s what he paid. I know because I gave him the money myself!”
Butcher’s eyes gleamed, hard and greedy.
“Oh, so you gave him the money. And where’d a sweet little thing like you get that kind of cash?”
Lexi’s stomach dropped, ice pooling inside her.
Stupid—so stupid, she scolded herself. You never should have let him know you’re the one who paid Uncle Herbert’s debt! Now he’s going to want more! Men like him always want more.
