Eluded (23 page)

I lay in bed for hours, waiting
for Abbot to fall asleep, but he was like a soldier on a stakeout.
Quiet and resolved, but I knew he wasn't asleep by the way he
breathed, so I stayed calm and waited.

Abbot had earned control over me,
deserved it almost, without even asking, and what I would do was
completely out of character. Once he was asleep, I hurried to the
table and grabbed the keys to the Range Rover. On the refrigerator
was a dry-erase board where I wrote, "I'm sorry," before I
left.

As I backed out of the hangar I
left the lights off, then hauled ass down the gravel road. There
was a plastic box clipped to the top of the visor with a button
that opened the metal gate. He had made escaping too
easy.

My adrenaline spiked, knowing that
when Abbot awoke, I wouldn't be there, and neither would his
vehicle. Fear and dread of what I was about to do made me want to
turn around and go back to the warehouse, but I couldn't. For the
sake of Lindsey and Sophie.

Before I turned onto the main
road, I programmed in Portland Street and headed for the giant
thirteen painted on the wall. Abbot should have never told me the
street name.

Thirty minutes later, I was
cruising down the dark streets of Oxford, and then turning onto
Portland. My insides crushed upon themselves knowing that I would
be walking straight to the man who would kill me. If today were the
last day I were alive, I'd die with so many regrets, and that alone
saddened me. I'd die without really finding love, or myself, but it
would be for the greater good, and risking myself to save others
was worth it. My hands hurt from grabbing the steering wheel with a
firm grasp as I searched the side of the buildings.

The red tagged thirteen stood out
like an omen, along with the limo parked in front. I sat in the
Range Rover, a block or so away, with my head on the steering wheel
for almost an hour, contemplating what I would do. But the choice
had already been made. I would go inside, tell Derrick that I loved
him, and that I needed to be with him.

I sucked in a deep breath and
opened the door. Before I could step out, a firm grasp wrapped
around my arm.

"What the fuck do you think you're
doing?" a calm, deep voice said from behind me. I tried to turn
around, but the stranger kept me in place with his
strength.

"Let me go."

"Abbot didn't say you could go
anywhere. Are you mad? Have you lost your damn mind? Did you really
think he would let you leave so easily?" Liam laughed, then
tightened his grasp and pulled my arms further behind my back until
his mouth was inches from my ear. Hot breath touched my skin and
caused little shivers to course over me.

"If you want to die so badly, we
can make that happen for you."

I struggled. I tried to get out of
his grip, but he was too strong. He was too skilled.

"I want to go back to Derrick," I
lied. "I need him," I said.

Liam whipped me around and forced
me to look into his eyes. "You're lying."

"No I'm not. If you don't let me
go, I'll scream and wake everyone up. He fucks me when I ask,
unlike Abbot. He pleases me. He makes me feel like a woman. I.
Need. Him." With every word, I died inside.

Liam grabbed my cheeks hard; his
fingers were rough on my skin. "You want to go to him? Go to your
deathbed then."

Water filled my eyes. I thought
Abbot sent Liam to stop me from myself, but he didn't. If Liam was
trying to call my bluff, when I walked away, he knew I wasn't
kidding. I threw the keys to him as he leaned against the Range
Rover with his arms crossed. Then I turned my head, knowing there
was no turning back, and walked to the front door of the building.
For a moment, I thought I would break down on the doorsteps,
knowing what I was willingly walking into, but I kept
strong.

Liam cranked the Range Rover,
reversed, and then took off down the street. The rumbling engine
echoed through the empty streets. As I rang the doorbell,
everything that I was broke into a million pieces on the doorstep.
It took minutes, but when the door opened, I was greeted with an
evil smile. I swallowed and ran into Derrick's arms. "I've missed
you so much." I started to cry, not tears of joy, but those of
sadness. "I thought I would never be able to get away from
him."

Derrick smiled and wiped away the
tears. "Don't worry. Abbot will never touch or see you again." But
there was more in his voice than protection, and it worried me.
With a firm grip, he wrapped his hand around my wrist and walked me
up the stairs to the third floor. Tall ceilings, beige walls, and
oversized La-Z-Boy furniture surrounded me.

Flames in the fireplace flickered
as the wood popped and cracked. He had been sitting on the couch
watching the fire. A folded newspaper lay next to the imprint of
his body. I glanced at the title in bold,
THREE BODIES
FOUND
. I pretended I didn't see it.

"I knew you'd be back," he said.
"I never doubted you, Lauren." Then he led me to a hallway with
several doors along the wall. A key ring full of keys jingled as he
removed them from his pocket and unlocked one of the
doors.

"Welcome home," Derrick said and
let go of my wrist. The rotten taste of strawberries and menthol
filled my nose, and I swallowed down bile as he pushed me inside
the room and locked the door. Plain walls, plain furniture, plain
carpet . . . there was nothing special about the bare room that
surrounded me. This was as good as it would get.

With the lights on, I lay back on
the bed and tried to sleep, but I couldn't stop thinking about
Abbot and how angry he would be with me. Surely, Liam had told him
by now. Would he rush in here like a knight in shining armor and
try to rescue me again? He needed to stay away. He needed to let me
do what I came here to do—save my cousin and save
Sophie.

The heaviness in my eyes must have
won the fight, because I bolted awake at the sound of the door
slamming closed. Once I focused and pulled myself up, I noticed
Sophie standing with her arms crossed on her chest. Dark circles
camped under her eyes, and she looked frail and fragile. I had only
been gone for a few days, a week at the most, and in that time her
body had completely dilapidated.

I gasped at her demeanor. "Sophie?
Are you alright?" I said softly. At the sound of my voice, tears
streamed down her face. I stood and walked to her. "What's
wrong?"

I grabbed her wrists and shook her
just a little. Her legs went weak, but I caught her before she fell
to the floor. I gently walked her to the bed and we sat on the
edge. "What happened? Please tell me. What did he do to
you?"

She sucked in air through her nose
and exhaled through her mouth. When she spoke, tears ran more
frequently, as if someone had turned on the faucet to her feelings.
"I'm pregnant."

Time seemed to stand still at the
sound of the thick, heavy, smothering words. A million bricks
slammed into my chest, and I couldn't breathe, my heart stopped
beating, and shock overcame me. I couldn't imagine what she was
feeling, and all I wanted to do was comfort her and tell her it
would be okay. But I knew that it wouldn't, so I didn't fill her
with lies, because it would be a disservice to both of us. When I
looked over, I saw the body and face of the saddest girl in the
world.

"Are you sure? Maybe he is
poisoning you or you have a virus?"

"No," her hollow voice said. "No.
At first I thought it was stress that caused me to not have a
cycle. Smells make me sick, and I can't keep any food down. I
know."

"Sophie."

She turned and looked at me, and I
felt so much pity for her at that moment, that it broke me inside
to see her like this. The strong woman that I left a week ago had
been destroyed from the inside out.

"I've never wanted to die as much
as I do right now," she said through tears. "I cannot give birth to
his child. I can't."

I opened my arms and she cried
into my shoulder. "We will figure something out. I promise. We will
get out of here. I had to come back and save you and my
cousin."

Sophie pulled away from me and
shook her head slowly. Something had happened. Something wasn't
right. "I'm sorry, Lauren. I'm so sorry. You didn't come earlier,
so Derrick . . . "

"No. No. No," I said.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that I
couldn't save her."

Panic rushed through me, and all
the bad thoughts I kept bottled away engulfed me. I covered my
mouth with my hands as I screamed out in horror at what had
happened. My best friend, my family, had been murdered because of
me, because I didn't come back sooner. No words could explain the
way I felt. Maybe sadness, anger, hopelessness, but even they
seemed insufficient to the complexity of the situation. The screams
continued to escape me without any sort of relief in sight. I
wanted to crawl from my own skin as guilt burned through me. An
internal shift happened as the dark, cold sorrow engulfed
me.

Everything that made up who I was
slowly began to melt away and reconstruct itself into something
else. Hate spread so rapidly that I was afraid my heart would grow
cold, freeze over, then shatter as all the happiness I'd ever felt
withered away to nothingness. I couldn't imagine the horrible death
Lindsey had suffered at the hands of Derrick, and thinking back to
earlier, I had heard it all. I had heard her scream out for me.
Before it was all over, I'd seek revenge on him. I'd play his
games, I'd do whatever he wanted, but in the end, I would give him
every ounce of violence that he deserved, then send him straight to
hell where he belonged.

Sophie and I finished crying, then
lay back on the bed and didn't speak. My eyes burned from the salty
tears. The light from the window cast a warm glow, and in any other
setting, it might have been comforting. In this one, however, it
was far from that. The metal bars on the window held a deep
message, and I knew we weren't leaving without his permission.
There was no escape in sight.

A jingle of keys rang outside of
the door, and we looked at one another, wiped our faces, then sat
upright and waited. Derrick entered wearing a suit with a black
tie. His eyes were as wild as his hair, and I wondered if he had
done a line of cocaine before coming to us. As much as I wanted to
strangle the emptiness from him, I swallowed it down and smiled.
When he smiled back, I cringed inside.

"Ladies. Tears of joy?" He looked
at our swollen faces and red-rimmed eyes as if he cared, but I knew
better. Caring didn't exist in his world, only hate, murder, and
abuse. I stood and wrapped my arms around his waist. "We were
catching up and I told her how horrible it was being away from you.
I missed you so much."

He moved my hair from my face as
he ate my bittersweet lies like they were delicious chocolate cake.
Deep down inside, I hoped he’d choke on them, and eventually he
would.

ABBOT

Thirty-three

"W
hat do you mean she
fucking went to him?" I said between gritted teeth as Liam stood in
front of me, dangling the keys of the Range Rover.

"As soon as that Rover goes
anywhere, I know. Can you imagine the shock on my face when I saw
her and not you? The way she looked at me, there was no doubt she
wanted to go to that monster."

I closed my eyes and counted to
ten. It took everything inside of my being not to go ballistic. How
did she fucking slip out without me waking? Had she planned the
whole scenario, only waiting for me to be at my weakest? Did she
want to make me vulnerable so she could easily slip out?

Trust.
I had put too much
trust in her and that pissed me off. I was angrier with myself than
I was with Liam, but I couldn't admit it. I wanted my men to follow
me to the ends of the earth to destroy those who destroyed others,
not follow me to find a woman who I felt something for. How
pathetic was that?

"She played you, Liam."

"Maybe she was playing you,
Abbot
."

"She played us both. Goddamn it.
Now I don't have time to go with the original plan. Everything has
to change."

Liam slammed the keys down on the
counter and crossed his arms. We were at a standstill, neither one
of us spoke for quite some time, and honestly, I didn't know what
to say. The goal was to find Derrick and make him pay for the
horrible things he’d done years ago, and the horrible things he
continued to do now, but with Lauren back in the mix, I was torn.
If I went after him and found him, there was no guarantee that she
would be alive or safe. I knew I shouldn't care, that I should just
stick with the original plan, but I couldn't, and I fucking
wouldn't. The truth was, I did care about her.

"Fuck." I grabbed the keys to the
Range Rover and headed downstairs. Liam slammed the door behind him
and followed me like he was my shadow. Any other woman, I would
have fucked and felt nothing more than just a physical release, but
I couldn't do that to Lauren. I wasn't a man who could be
controlled, but with her, it was like her invisible talons had
pierced my skin and pulled me closer. It wasn't love, but rather
the precursor. It was those little moments that I spent with her
and actually felt something that scared the shit out of
me.