Page 24 of In My Blood
“She was fast,” Don spoke up.
“Fast?” Rafe scoffed. “Just go inside and see if you can get access to the hotel security tapes. Try to work out what direction she ran in. and start trying to follow her that way. Brax, get the car and meet us here.”
“Where are we going?” I asked as the others went off to do as they were told.
“She wanted to go to her place of work for her wages. She thinks we don’t know where that is, but we do,” he explained, then he held up his phone with the website of the club I had seen on the wage slip I found the night before –Jewels.
***
“I’m going to lose her again,” Rafe uttered as he leaned towards me from where he sat in the back seat. I was up front and Brax was driving.
We’d already been toJewels– the strip club where Cara worked - but it had been locked up and not set to open for hours. We’d waited a while to see if she would show up, and when there was nothing we decided to drive over to her apartment and check there. But the locks had been replaced by our clean-up crew and the door was secure. No one but the landlord had the new keys,and I was confident that Cara wasn’t in there, unless she had also learned to pick a lock alongside her martial arts skills.
Now we were just driving around her neighbourhood, scouring the streets for her, and getting some very suspicious looks from the residents who liked to hang out on street corners.
“We’re going to find her. She can’t go far without shoes or any money to buy some,” I pointed out.
“She said she had friends. What if one of them helped her? She could already have left the city. How have I messed this up so badly?” Rafe was about to rip the hair from his head if he pulled it any harder at it.
“Cara doesn’t trust easily, and she doesn’t know you or me anymore. She thinks she’s protecting herself. We just have to work harder to make her believe we at least won’t hurt her. Maybe we could let her video call my Mum, or Gia. Maybe if she could speak to them and see we’re not a thing like your father,” I suggested.
“Yeah, maybe, but we have to find her again first. I just thought…I wanted her to remember me. I never thought she wouldn’t feel safe with me,” he admitted.
“She will in time. She’s going to need us all to be patient with her. We have no idea, just like she told us earlier. We don’t know what she’s been through in the time she was gone from you.”
“I know,” he nodded. “Let’s circle back to the strip club. We’ll set up there and just wait for it to open.”
“Let’s go,” I agreed. We had to find her, because I wasn’t sure Rafe could ever live with losing her all over again. I had never seen him look as destroyed as he did right then.
CHAPTER 8
CARA
“Is that her?” A hushed voice whispering near me brought me back to consciousness, but I didn’t open my eyes or move. I had been a light sleeper for years, but I also had this habit of not jumping awake, so that I could understand my surroundings before I opened my eyes. It had helped me out on more than one occasion, especially on the streets and in shelters.
“Yeah, call the boss. See what he wants us to do. We were supposed to grab her tonight when she was working. That’s why he wanted these cameras disabling,” a second voice whispered.
They were close to me, but not too close. I could only just hear their words. At first I thought it had to be those two guys from outside the hotel suite, but then I realized the accents were American. Then they talked about grabbing me, and I was confused all over again. All I actually knew was that I could be well and truly fucked right then. Even without moving I could feel the aching and sharp pain in my body – likely a mix of the exhaustion, lack of food and water, and sitting in the cold for too long. I was still bare foot and my feet were a mess of cuts from walking around and standing on things I didn’t want to think about.
I would have to try and fight, but I didn’t know how big the guys around me were, or if there were more than two. Worst of all I knew they were very likely to have guns on them if they worked for some kind of criminal, which it sounded like they did.
I could hear the murmur of voices, but they had moved further away now. I knew that may be my only chance to flee, so I very slowly opened my eyes a slit and lowered my head enough to see ahead of me. There were three guys, all pretty large and intimidating. Two of them had tattoos up the sides of their necks and on their hands. The other looked cleaner cut, but no less intimidating. They were stood at the back of the parking lot, quite a distance from me now, but still directly in front of me. They were going to see me move. I’d have to be fast.
I moved my arms first, uncurling them from around my legs. No one was watching me right then, so I pushed up, as smoothly and quietly as I could, to standing. My legs instantly protested the movement, pain shooting through my thighs and calves, but I ignored it and hoped adrenaline would get pumping faster. Still no one was looking so I started to inch very slowly along the side of the shelter. The parking lot of the club was fenced in, but I knew there was a gap where kids had cut the wire fence the other week, sneaking in to climb onto the flat roof at the back of the club in hopes of catching a peep inside. I was sure it hadn’t been fixed yet, and I was also pretty sure none of the three guys I could see would fit through the gap after me if I could just get through it first.
I just made it out of the shelter when I heard shouting. I didn’t look behind me, despite the fact I really wanted to. I knew it would waste valuable seconds. Instead I set off sprinting as hard and fast as I could for the fence. I dropped to the ground and was halfway through the cut wire when my foot was caught bya strong hand. I turned and moved to kick out hard, but then another hand wrapped around my ankle. I kicked out anyway, but by the time I did, the third guy was over me and wrenching me back under the fence and towards them all.
I cried out in pain when the cut wire from the fence stabbed into the back of my neck as I was ripped backwards. It had cut me and the pain had been bad. I could feel warm blood trickling down under the collar of my hoody, but I couldn’t think more about it as I was dragged to my feet by Mr. Clean-cut. He turned me to face him and I instantly thrust my knee up into his crotch as hard as I could. When he doubled over in pain, releasing me, I thrust my knee into his nose instead, then I tried to run again.
“Fucking bitch!” was hissed as I fled in the opposite direction, but a meaty hand grabbed my wrist and ripped me backwards. I landed hard on my back on the concrete, but quickly rolled to my side away from the guy who had grabbed me, twisting his grip until he released me. I managed to get to my feet but I was feeling winded and light headed. I didn’t know how much longer I could stay upright.
I ran again, and started screaming for help at the top of my lungs. We were on a quiet block, but there were likely still people around. Surely someone would help me.
I got a little further this time before a hard and heavy body barrelled into my legs, bringing me down so hard that I saw stars as my skull bounced off of the concrete. I put my arm up to cover my face instantly and tried to roll out from underneath the man now straddling me. I bucked my body to try and dislodge his weight and he wobbled some, but didn’t move.
“Enough bitch!” he raged at me, then I took a hard hit to the side of my head that I barely even saw coming. Everything went dark for a moment, then as my vision started to come back, it was foggy and distant. My ears were ringing and I couldn’t seem to get a single thought straight in my head. Another blow landed to my side and I gasped desperately as all of the oxygen in my body left me. I moved to the side, doubling over as pain radiated outwards from the impact point, then I was coughing and fighting to breathe.
“Stop! The boss wants her alive!” a deep voice boomed close to me.
