Worn Me Down (Playing With Fire, #3) (22 page)

“You just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you? We were supposed to be a family and you ruined it all.”

A fist connects with my cheek and for a moment, I close my eyes to ward off the pain. I don’t have time to wallow in my own self-pity though. I quickly blink my eyes back into focus and my gaze immediately goes to my little one across the room, staring at me wide-eyed. My pain means nothing right now; the only thing that matters to me is making sure Emma is okay. It’s been just the two of us against the world for months now. I had my brother, and I had Austin, but it’s not the same. Their love doesn’t even hold a candle to the love between a mother and daughter. There’s a piece of my heart living and breathing outside of my body and for six years it’s been the most amazing miracle to watch her grow and change. Now, I realize just how fragile that piece of my heart is; I can’t protect her and I can’t save her. I don’t want her to see how scared I am, but I can do nothing to stop the sobs from escaping.

The fear and sadness I see on my daughter’s beautiful, perfect little face makes my stomach cramp and hurts worse than any blow I’ve ever taken to my body. I’m accustomed to the agony and humiliation of abuse. I’ve learned how to shut down my mind and my heart and pretend like it wasn’t really happening to me, but Emma was never supposed to witness this horror. She was never supposed to know how weak I really am. I did everything I could to shield her from this awfulness – I fled in the middle of the night with nothing but the clothes on our backs, I made a new life for us and I showered my girl with enough love to make up for the missing parent in her life.

I should have realized you could never outrun your past. It always has a way of catching up with you. My past and my present have collided and nothing will be able to heal the wounds from this devastation.

For a brief moment, I wish Austin was here. I tried so hard not to love him, not to trust him, but it was impossible. He was full of life and made me want things I knew I could never have. He made me promises I should have known he wouldn’t keep and he made me want in things I had no business dreaming of. I should have known he’d run the first chance he got. I always trusted the wrong people and it always came back to bite me in the ass.

“You took everything from me. I had a plan. It was going to be perfect.”

I look at the person standing in front of me and can’t believe this is really happening. When I was so frantically trying to get Emma to wake up earlier, I assumed Ellie had finally had enough and left to go back to New York without telling me. I didn’t even notice that we weren’t alone in the apartment. I didn’t anticipate that someone I’ve trusted my entire life would turn on me.

When I came to a little while ago, my head hurt so bad I thought I would throw up. I could feel blood dripping down the side of my face and knew from experience that I had a concussion. When I tried to reach up to wipe the blood off of my face, I realized I was tied to a chair. A whimper from across the room made my heart clench in fear and when I looked up, I saw Emma tied to a chair much like I was.

Soon after, the nightmare grew increasingly worse with each word that was spoken and each punch I took to my face and body when my answers weren’t the ones expected. I don’t know what to do; I don’t know what to say to make this nightmare end. My heart shatters as I think about how we got here.

My eyes flew open and I ignored the pain in my head and the person standing in front of me with a gun aimed in my direction as I quickly scanned the apartment in search of Emma.

“Where’s Emma? She’s hurt. What did you do with her?” I asked angrily, pressing a hand to my aching head.

I had to push aside the shock and confusion that filled my mind. I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t care what happened to me. All that mattered was making sure Emma was okay. I am not the same weak, defenseless woman this person used to know. I am a fighter and I will fight to the death for my child.

“Emma is tied up in the back of my car so don’t think about doing anything stupid or I’ll just shoot you now without letting you say good-bye,” I was told as my arm was suddenly grabbed and I was pulled roughly up from the couch.

Maybe it was a lie. I couldn’t believe this person would ever hurt Emma.

My head throbbed and my vision swam as I was dragged through the apartment and out the front door, the gun shoved roughly against my side.

“Why are you doing this?” I demanded as I was pushed down the stairs and out the door into the parking lot.

Everything in me told me to run and scream for help. As soon as we got to the car though and I saw Emma with tape over her mouth and rope around her wrists and ankles, slumped against the door in the backseat, thoughts of causing a scene escaped from my mind and all I could think about was getting to my baby.

I flung open the back door and scrambled inside, sobbing as I pulled Emma onto my lap and started to remove her bindings.

The feel of hard metal against the back of my skull halted my movements and my hands froze.

“Put her down and get in the front seat or I’ll shoot you both right now.”

If I were alone, I would have turned around and knocked the gun away. I would have put all of those self-defense videos Brady made me watch over and over after I moved here to good use and fought. But I’m not alone. If something went wrong, my daughter could be caught in the crossfire. I had no choice but to do what was asked.

With a tearful kiss to the top of Emma’s head, I gently laid her down on the seat and backed out of the car, moving to the front as the gun remained on me.

The entire drive to downtown was quiet. No matter how many questions I asked, they were refused an answer. When we pulled into the back parking lot behind Brady’s office and I was forced towards the stairs of the walk-in basement to the abandoned restaurant next door, I tried to fight since Emma was still in the backseat of the car and out of harms way. I punched, I hit, I kicked – whatever I could do to try and change the outcome of this nightmare. I didn’t care that there was a gun aimed at me, I didn’t care if I was too weak to do any real damage, I had to try. In the middle of the scuffle, right when I thought I might get the upper hand, I lost my footing and was shoved down the hard, concrete steps. I landed at the bottom right on top of my bad arm. As soon as I heard the snap of bones breaking in my already fragile arm and the pain shot through me, I lost my battle with consciousness.

I don’t know how long we’ve been down here in this wine cellar, but I hope to God it’s long enough for someone to be looking for us. I hate that my blind trust has put my daughter in harm’s way. If anything else happens to her I’ll never be able to forgive myself. She is the one perfect thing in my life and I can’t stand the thought of what she must be thinking and feeling right now. She trusted me to keep her safe and I couldn’t do it.

Austin would tell me to stop being such a damn martyr and suck it up. I hate that my thoughts immediately go to him when he walked away without a backwards glance. I wish he would have trusted me as much as I did him; I wish he would have known that I would take any part of him he could spare, just as long as he promised to come back to us when his job was finished.

My whole body aches and my spirit deflates as I stare across the room at my baby and come to the realization that we might not get out of this basement alive. The damage done to my arm when I was pushed down the stairs has left it completely useless. I can’t even wiggle my fingers and any type of movement in my body, no matter how slight, is enough to have me seeing stars and swallowing down bile. The pain of having it pulled behind me and tied to a chair is so acute that I don’t know how much more I can take before I pass out again. I force myself to smile at my girl and give her hope, even though I’ve lost all of mine.

Austin

“Y
ou son of a bitch!
You had one fucking job. One job and that was to keep them safe!”

I look up as the door to the apartment crashes open and Brady charges across the room at me. His fist slams into my cheek and I don’t even bother fighting back when he punches me again. I’m perfectly fine with letting him beat the shit out of me, but the police officers that fill the room have other ideas. They pull him off of me and drag him back over by the door as I cradle my jaw in my hand.

“God dammit, let me go! Let me fucking go!” Brady shouts as he fights against their hold, his eyes wild and full of anger.

Dylan steps over to Brady and grabs onto the front of his shirt, yanking him close. “Dude, reel it the fuck in. I know you’re pissed, but beating the hell out of one of your best friends isn’t going to help Gwen and Emma. Calm your ass down right now.”

Brady takes a couple of deep breaths and his shoulders sag, the fight finally leaving him. The three men holding onto him finally let go and step away when they realize he’s calmed down. As they head into the kitchen with the rest of the team that have set up a make-shift command center at the table, Brady looks across the room at me, the disappointment on his face crystal clear and I completely lose it.

“I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry,” I tell him brokenly, my legs giving out as I slide down the wall into a heap on the floor.

I let my best friend down and I let Gwen and Emma down. They weren’t a job; they were
more
than a job. For the first time in my life, I don’t know what the fuck to do. I don’t know how to fix this. I’m crawling out of my skin with fear and worry and now that Brady’s here it makes everything worse. He trusted me to keep his family safe and I failed him.

Brady walks across the room to me and I’m more than a little shocked that he slides down the wall to sit next to me instead of kicking my ass some more. Closing my eyes, I let my head thump back against the wall and we sit there in silence for a few minutes.

“Next to Layla, they’re my whole life, man,” Brady says quietly. I keep my eyes closed as he talks, knowing if I look at him I’m going to start crying like a fucking baby. “I was the shittiest brother in the world. As soon as I turned eighteen I got the fuck out of dodge and left her alone there with our parents. I had no idea that asshole she married would turn out to be a monster. I had no idea what he’d been doing to her all those years because I chose to shut her out. It was easier that way. It made me feel less guilty for leaving. And then one night she showed up on my doorstep with her arm in a cast, broken ribs and a black and blue face looking so small and helpless with Emma by her side and I knew right then and there that I would never let her down again.”

I don’t want to hear this, but I have to. It’s my fault that Gwen was let down again. It’s my fault that she’s in danger.

“I’m sorry. Jesus Christ I’m so sorry,” I mutter.

“Will you stop saying you’re fucking sorry? It’s not your fault.”

I finally open my eyes and look at Brady in confusion.

He just rolls his head at me. “I’m scared out of my mind and I lost my temper, that’s all. It would have happened even if I’d been here. There’s nothing you could have done to keep that fucker away from them. There’s nothing either of us could have done.”

I shake my head in denial. “I left them, man. I just walked away. I got a call from Risner and I bolted. I thought it was best, I didn’t want her to have any more baggage than she already did and we both know I’ve got enough to fill a thousand suitcases.”

Brady studies my face and after a few seconds he curses. “God dammit. You slept with her didn’t you?”

At this point it’s probably best not to answer him. My jaw still hurts from his punches and even though I deserve more, I’m not in the mood for them right now.

“You’re lucky I didn’t know that when I first walked in here or your face would be a pile of ground meat right now,” Brady mutters. “What do the police know so far?”

I fill him in what I found when I got here and how once the police arrived and they bagged up the needle and the dish, we started going over all of the information I’d been collecting the past few weeks. Right before Brady got here, Mark called to tell me that Stratford’s lawyer wasn’t answering his phone so the two men were still MIA and another BOLO was issued for both of them.

“What about Ellie?” Brady asks when I finish.

“Same. Calls to her phone are going unanswered so they’re assuming Stratford has all three of them. Her car isn’t in the parking lot so he must have taken them in it. The cops have her license plate and the description of her car and they’re on the lookout for it now. They also put a call in to her parents back in New York and they haven’t heard from her in a couple of days. They were surprised to hear she was in Nashville, she never told them she was going out of town,” I explain to him.

“Speaking of calls, sorry for not returning the messages you left me right away. Living on a tour bus is fucking insane and who knows what city I lost my phone in,” Brady tells me in irritation.

One of the officers comes into the living room from the hall with a cell phone in his hand. “Hey, we found this cell phone in the back bedroom. Anybody know who it belongs to?”

Brady and I look up and Brady is the first to speak. “Yeah, that’s Gwen’s. Guess we know why it hasn’t been answered all day.”

Brady reaches for it, but I quickly push myself up from the ground and grab it out of the officer’s hand. Something Gwen said to me the day Emma got hurt and I took her to the hospital nags at the back of my mind.

“That’s weird, I didn’t have any missed calls from you. Something must be wrong with my phone.”

Brady stands up next to me as I quickly scan through all of her missed calls from that day. Not finding any from my phone to Gwen’s from the time I was busy driving like a maniac to get Emma to the hospital, I pull out my own phone from my back pocket and search the outgoing call log. My heart fills with dread when I don’t see one call made to Gwen’s phone that day.