Page 101 of Violent Little Thing

“But you were going through your own nightmare,” I finished for her. “I’m sorry, Zee.”

She burst into tears and threw herself at me.

“What’s the plan?” I asked Missy after I held Zee for a long while.

“We found this guy,” she said. “There’s this all-boys school here. One that specializes in troubled boys. They own a huge camp just a thirty-minute drive from here—this is the closest town.”

“Grizzly Lock?”

“Yes.”

“They’re good,” I said. “I’ve heard a lot about them in the short time that I’ve lived here.”

She nodded.

“The owner, Milo Purdue, really knew what he was talking about. I was really impressed with him,” Missy murmured.

I reached for her, and she came into my arms so fast that she rocked me backward.

I dropped a kiss to her hair. “Seems like we’re all fucked up, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” she mumbled into my chest. “I’m so sorry, Courtland. I’m so sorry.”

I squeezed them both. “We’ll figure this out, ladies.”

Sirens started to sound, and I whipped my head around, getting this really horrible feeling.

The two women in my arms must’ve had the same feeling because they both pulled away, looking out into the parking lot as police sirens sounded.

Then an ambulance followed.

“What do you think happened?”

I pulled out my phone just in time to see Black’s name light up the screen.

And I knew.

Something had happened to my girl.

Twenty-Nine

Note to self: don’t argue with people that don’t know when to admit they’ve lost the argument.

—Charleigh to Court

Charleigh

I woke up and knew that something was seriously wrong.

I was lying on the roof in the inside of a vehicle.

When I looked through the grate, both Dempsey and Gentry were hanging upside down, still buckled into their seat belts, both very unconscious.

Hopefully not dead.

Please, please, please. Don’t be dead.

A groan of metal on metal, and then the door beside me was being pulled open with a…crowbar?