Page 60 of Up in Smoke
“More likewho.” He started to speak faster, sounding more impatient. “That day at the courthouse wasn’t the first time I saw you in Chicago. No, I’d been following you longer than that. Saw you go into a building down in Lincoln Park.” Erin tried to show no reaction, but his sickening grin told her she’d failed. “I watched the building a while. Saw your boyfriend coming and going with his mother.” His hand flexed around the gun. “Drop the knife and the cell phone in your pocket. Get your ass up and come with me now, or I make a call and she’s gone.”
Erin’s heartbeat pounded in her ears, her mouth dry as dust. He could be lying. As far as she knew, her stepfather had always worked alone, and this plan would require another set of hands. But she couldn’t chance it. It was too in character for him to prey on weakened women. Goddammit. She couldn’t allow her life to affect the ones she cared about. She wouldn’t.
“Fine.” After letting the knife clatter to the dingy floor and digging out her cell phone to drop beside it, she stood with her hands up, tightening the muscles in her legs so they wouldn’t shake. “Lead the way.”
Luther cracked open the door and looked out before pulling back. “Ladies first.”
Erin swallowed hard as he shoved her through the open door. The hallway was a funnel of noise captured from the bar, but it was deserted of people. She thought of Connor kissing her there just minutes before and wanted to wail at the ceiling. The cold muzzle of her stepfather’s gun dug into the middle of her back, directing her in the opposite direction of the bar. A gated back door stood partially open, just beside the kitchen. The cook’s back was turned to them as they passed, his focus on a tiny television screen above a giant fryer.
They walked through the door and into a dim alley, music and laughter from the bar following in their wake. She peered through the night’s freshly fallen darkness for Luther’s car, but only saw a white panel van with no windows. He shoved her toward it so suddenly that she stumbled.
As if she’d never made an iota of progress, the wings started beating in her head, drowning out rational thought. Trap. He was going to lock her in that airless van and trap her.No, no, no.
When they reached the van, he threw the back doors open. And she saw it.
A cage.
“Get in.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was an odd feeling, being exasperated over the amount of time your girlfriend took in the bathroom. Was it stupid that something so typical felt…good? Sure, there was an invisible countdown clock over his right shoulder, tick-tick-ticking away the seconds since the last time he’d put eyes on Erin. It would always be that way, because looking at her erased the bad in him. She was a signal of peace he need only think about, and the rapids inside him became a still pond. She’d turned his constant craving for control into something positive, because she’d given him the power to be in control ofhimself. A feat he’d had to accomplish to be with her.
And that made it his life’s accomplishment. This internal head-shaking versus pacing the floor was a healthy change. They would build on small milestones, like allowing her out of his sight for extended periods of time, until they had a fucking city.
“Erin must have fallen in,” Polly remarked with a smile and a good-natured elbow in his side.
Connor put the kibosh on his tingle of nerves. “She needs her space sometimes. Needs to…”
“Feel unfettered?” Polly nodded. “I get that.”
Connor picked at the beer bottle label with his thumb to avoid glancing toward the bathroom.Baby steps.“You don’t think it’s possible to actuallyfall in, do you?”
Polly’s answering chuckle cut off when her gaze fixed on something over his shoulder, the smile leaving her face in degrees. Connor pushed back from the table and jumped to his feet before his brain registered the command. Derek stood just inside the entrance. The captain held a cell phone up to his ear, speaking into it sharply as his razor-like gaze raked the table. He looked over and locked eyes with Connor.
“Where’s O’Dea?”
Connor was running for the bathroom before Derek had even finished posing the question. Knives twisted in his gut as he careered through the door and turned in a circle. Switchblade. Her fucking cell phone. On the ground. Bathroom empty. No Erin.
Gone. I let my guard down and now she’s gone.
Fear tearing at his insides, he turned and lunged at Derek, grabbing him by the shoulders. “How? How did you know she was gone?” His voice cracked. “Where is she?”
Derek pried Connor’s hands off, but there was a hint of empathy in his eyes. “We’ve been following Luther’s car since yesterday. He ditched it in a lot. Best we can tell, he picked up a different vehicle.” He checked his phone and cursed. “We don’t know for sure he took her. It’s just a hunch. You know her, she likes to take off once in a while.” Even as Derek said the words meant to calm him, his eyes were grave. He knew what the ditched cell phone and knife meant.
“No,” Connor felt the need to reiterate. He swiped a hand through his hair, denial over the entire situation coursing through him like bolts of electricity. “No, she wouldn’t have left like this. She doesn’t need to. Not anymore. He has her. Jesus, he fucking has her.”
Connor shot toward the exit, intending to drive like a bat out of hell to the bastard’s house. If she wasn’t there, he’d turn over every block in the city until he found her.
Derek stepped into his path. “Look, you’re not going to help her by flying off the handle. I’ve got a guy at the lot questioning the owner. We’ll find out what he’s driving.”
Connor had lost the ability to reason. All he could think of was Erin, scared and alone. Wondering why he hadn’t come to check on her sooner.God.Before he could bypass the captain and leave the bathroom, Derek’s cell phone rang. He answered it without delay. “Captain Tyler.” He listened for a moment before his gaze locked with Connor. “White panel van. License plate number?” He nodded once. “Put out a BOLO on the vehicle. Do it now.”
It was the laughing that snapped her out of it. Luther’s high-pitched chuckle coming from the front of the van. Erin had no idea how long she’d been lying there, caged on the floor, listening to her thoughts deteriorate into a vacuum of noise. Her fingers were curled around the thin metal crisscrosses, but she hadn’t made the futile attempt to shake them, nor could she work up the wherewithal to scream. One thought went round and round in her head, sounding like it was being spoken inside a cave.
She’d done the right thing. She’d let him live. And she still didn’t get to win.
“Fair” had never been an active word in her vocabulary, because the concept had never really existed for her. But right now, as the van took her farther and farther from the life she’d only just managed to get a foothold in, she wanted to shout and rail at the unfairness of it. Unfair.Unfair.She’d regressed back to the child in the closet, screaming for a mother who would never come. A savior who would never save her.
