Capturing Hearts - Faleena Hopkins Page 0,44
wasn’t there! I wasn’t there for her! And he fucked with my car to make sure I wasn’t. I just checked. It’s been fucked with. I thought it was just a weak battery. What am I gonna do? She’s gone!”
Mark’s taking in the horror of what I’ve told him, and he interrupts me. “Brendan! Stop! Listen to me. I’m coming. I’ll catch a flight out today. I’ll be there.”
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“Where are you now?”
“I’m at our house. I can’t go in. There’s a tree in there! We got a tree!”
Mark knows what this means. He knows who I am, who I’ve been. How jaded I was about women and love and commitment. He knows me better than anyone, which means he knows I will never survive this if she doesn’t come home. I will never survive.
“What’s going on?” Nicole’s sleepy voice asks in the distance.
“Honey, hang on. It’s Brendan. I’ll explain in a minute,” he murmurs. “Brendan? I’ll be there. I’m coming. We’ll find her. We’ll find her together, okay? Now go inside and try to sleep so you can have your head screwed on straight.”
“I can’t sleep tonight.”
“Then pray. Pray for her safe return. Pray for the baby. Pray. I’ll call you in a half hour when I’ve booked the flight, tell you when I arrive.”
I make a sound close to a snort. “You want me to pray?” Even as I say it, I know that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
“I’ll call you right back.” He hangs up and I head inside, taking the elevator up. When I walk in, the tree lights hit me hard and I fall to my knees in front of them, right in front of that little blue and white sweater ornament.
“Dear God, Please watch over my wife tonight. She’s carrying our son and they’re with a bad guy. Please make him see what he’s doing. Please help him wake up…do the right thing. Please help him have the strength to call me and let me come get her. Please, God, I’m begging you…”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Annie
Head: throbbing. Body: heavy. Where the hell am I?
Waking from a dreamless sleep, I become aware of the ropes around my ankles and my arms tied behind me, before I open my eyes. Doing a quick mental inventory with my head still hung low, I feel the chair I’m sitting on, that my body aches, that the drug I was given still has an effect on my brain as it’s hard to think. I don’t feel any exceptional pain around my stomach and I’m not wet anywhere, so I think my baby’s okay. Blinking, I look at my belly, unable to not look.
“Well, look who’s up,” an unfamiliar voice bellows.
I struggle to raise my head, which is harder to do than I would have imagined, and in a drugged haze, I struggle to focus on the man standing above me. Squinting to understand why he looks familiar, I recognize pieces first. The angry tilt of his jaw. The tone of his voice. The brown eyes similar to…
“You’re Tommy’s father,” I croak, fear setting in. The manhunt has been out for this man ever since Tommy testified against him. He went on the run then, and everything that’s come out about him says he’s a horrible person; abusive and full of rage. My heart starts to race as I glance around the room to ascertain where we are.
“This is my old house,” he hisses, watching me. “You see that? That bureau is the only thing they left in here. I had to bring that chair you’re sitting on. Can you fuckin’ believe that?”
Glancing to the window, bright sunlight disturbs me. What time is it? What day is it?
“That’s terrible,” I carefully offer. “You must have lost a lot.”
“I LOST EVERYTHING!” he yells in my face, the spittle from his tight lips hitting my eyelids.
Suddenly I realize, and ask him, horrified. “You blame me?”
He laughs like a lunatic, all his sense of right and wrong, gone. “Damn right I blame you, BITCH!”
“It was you following me last night!” When he doesn’t say anything, I whisper, “What are you going to do with me?”
The smile that spreads across his face is terrifying. “What aren’t I going do with you? We’re going to have a little fun.” He opens up the bureau and I see a knife, two guns and a hammer.
“Oh God,” I croak in terror, pulling at my ropes.
“Ain’t no use pulling at those, Mrs. Clark. Man, you should have