had money on Nik.
The sound of computer keys clicking came over the line. “There. And good luck trying to restore your credit, asshole Rafael. Speak to me that way again, I’ll wipe your whole organization off the face of the Earth. You’ll be back to writing on stone tablets to send your messages.” She clicked off.
Rafe looked at me, fire in his eyes. “If she’s done something to my credit or this family…” he trailed off.
I lifted my hands into the air. “That’s all on you, bro. You were an asshole to her. Would you have spoken to Willow like that?”
He opened his mouth. Snapped it closed.
My computer dinged with an incoming secure data packet. I turned away as Rafe pulled the phone back up to his ear. I heard the words “I’m sorry” come from his mouth before I got sucked into the information that I’d pulled up on my screen.
I skimmed through the known information. I wanted to know if there were any holding companies, shell corporations, anything even remotely attached to Errington that held land that hadn’t been disclosed on his public information.
It was going to take forever at this rate to find anything. We’d already gone to the house Errington had listed on his driver’s license. The house Willow had been held in before. And we’d even gone to his apartment. All three were strike-outs.
And this was taking too much fucking time. Every single second her phone stayed off, was another mile he could be moving her. A different place he could be holding her.
And I had no one to blame but myself.
Chapter 41 – Willow
When I surfaced through the haze of worn off sedatives, I had no idea what time it was. In my old life, I could have listed the minutes and seconds. But since the new paralytic serum had reacted differently, I had no clue as to when I was right now.
All of my straps had been removed. Ethan didn’t like the idea of me getting bed sores, so he made sure I could get up and wander around my space between each experiment. A small ensuite bathroom was nestled in the left corner of the room.
That dry burning ache of a newly removed catheter had me forcing my thoughts to just getting into what little privacy I had in the tiny bathroom. I pushed through the door, did a quick check to make sure no new cameras or listening devices had been installed since the last time I was here.
It was clear. I guzzled down a large cup—plastic, of course—of water. I forced myself to drink so much that my belly hurt from the rapid expansion. I pulled my pants down, did a quick check to see if any new marks had been added.
A long, thin cut had been sliced into my upper right thigh. Just a couple inches north of the matching horizontal bruises of the table. Almost directly below the crease of where my leg met my body. I pushed on it. No pain. No sensation at all really.
I bit back the scream that flooded the back of my throat. Move on. You can’t fix it now. Do the rest of the check, the cold side of me ordered.
Raising my shirt, I checked my upper body, my back as well as I could. I was truly astonished to see that my phone was still plastered between my side and my bra band. I pulled it from the material and powered it on.
Please, please, please, please, please, the word sounded on repeat in my head as I waited for the device to finish its startup sequence. I held my breath, prayed I had enough battery power to send a message. I was in the same room, so that meant they already knew where to find me. I just had to let someone know where I was.
I felt the water try to slide back up my throat as I looked at the time and date stamp in the upper corner of the phone. Two days. I’d only been here two days and already one girl was dead.
I bit my lip to hold in the scream as the phone started buzzing in my hand. An almost constant stream of buzz buzz buzz as message after message, missed call after missed call came through. I kept an ear out for the sound of a key in the door.
By the time the phone was silent in my hand, I had over 120 missed calls and