She nods and takes a deep breath.
I roll my hips, undulating them as if I were sitting upon Eli then swing my leg up and over where his head would be and stand back up. I let the music take me over, letting the beat take the wheel as my body responds to the tempo. I feel my muscles burn and my skin start to slicken as I trail my hands over my breasts, down my stomach to my inner thighs, before dropping into the splits.
“Holy shit.”
I freeze and look up to see that Jackson guy from before, but he isn’t looking at me. His eyes are all for the equally sweaty, half-naked redhead beside me. Gracie’s head shoots up from where she’s straddling her chair.
“Jackson Reid, what are you doing in here?”
Jackson doesn’t answer. He prowls towards the stage with such a look of intensity on his face that I have to look away as I feel like I’m intruding. He hops effortlessly up onto the stage before snagging Gracie around the waist and throwing her over his shoulder. She screeches like a banshee but stops when Jackson slaps her ass. He heads backstage with her over his shoulder as he makes his way behind the curtain.
“We’ll be back in ten, Eden. Grab yourself a drink,” he yells, before disappearing from sight.
“Jackson put me down right now. We can’t abandon Eden just because you want to…” Her voice trails off before I hear her moan.
“And that’s my cue to leave.” I laugh to myself.
I tug my sweatshirt back on and slip my feet into my shoes. I contemplate putting the chairs away when I hear a masculine groan this time. Fuck it, the chairs can wait. I jump down from the stage and grab my bag from the table beside it and head out, closing the door softly behind me. Not that they would have heard it. I fish my phone out of my bag to text Mason and see he has already texted me a couple of minutes ago.
Mason: Hey baby, can you run to the car and grab my ID? I’ve left it in the dash and need it for tonight.
Ah, crap. I forgot I had the car keys in my bag.
Eden: On it. I’ll grab it and bring it up.
Mason: Thanks.
I take the lift down and rummage through my bag until I find the keys and head out into the thankfully dry afternoon. The forecasters have predicted heavy rain but so far it has held off. I run around to the private parking area thinking about Mason’s text. It feels weird having him calling me baby. I’m so used to him calling me pretty girl. I spot the car and run over, popping the locks and pulling the door open. I’m just leaning in when something is pressed over my nose and mouth. I instinctively try to pull away but a strong arm bands itself around my waist, holding me immobile as my head gets fuzzy and my fight begins to wane. My last thought as the darkness drags me under is where the fuck is Mason?
Chapter Eighteen
ELI
Noah and I make it home later than I anticipated but we had a lot to go over. Part of that was laying down some ground rules with Malcolm about the kind of jobs we will and won’t be taking in the future. With Eden at home, neither of us wants to be spending months and months on the road like we did in our search for her.
The place is empty when we get back. After taking showers, we grab a couple of beers and watch some comedy show as we wait for Eden and Mason to return. It’s funny how quickly we’ve adjusted to having them with us. It seems so quiet here without them. It’s maybe half an hour later when we hear the door open downstairs.
“Hi honey, I’m home,” Mason shouts up the stairs.
I look at my watch and see it’s ten o’clock already. This day feels like it’s been never-ending.
Mason appears in the doorway with a smile on his face. He seems much happier being able to work. “Hey, guys. Sorry I didn’t text you. I think I left my phone here.”
“Don’t worry about it. We haven’t been home that long ourselves. How was the fight?” Noah asks from beside me.
“It was over before it really began. One of the fighters, an American kid called Liam, ended up with a black eye but just annihilated the other guy. Knocked him out in the third round. The kid is a machine.” He sits in the chair by the patio doors and looks around the room. “Where’s Eden?”
Every ounce of oxygen gets sucked out of the room with those two words.
“What do you mean, where’s Eden? I thought she was with you.” Noah states from beside me.
“She texted Gracie to say she couldn’t get hold of me and to let me know that Eli picked her up—something to do with finalising the details for the old theatre.”
“Fuck!” I jump to my feet and grab my phone off the coffee table and try calling her. It goes straight to voicemail.
“You didn’t pick her up?” The horror in Mason’s voice threatens to push me over the edge.
“No. I haven’t spoken to anyone outside the office all day.”
“I’m calling the police.” Noah makes the call as I slide on my shoes and snag my keys.
Mason follows me into the kitchen. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to look for her.” I head for the door but Mason’s hand on my arm stops me.
“She could be anywhere. We need to put our heads together and think about this logically instead of going off half-cocked. Call Malcolm and get him and Sam on this.”
I want to tell him to fuck off. To shove him out of the way so that I can go out there and find our girl but I don’t because he’s right. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack. I call Mal and fill him in, hanging up on him when Noah comes storming into the kitchen.
“Raymond Fellows was released on bail this afternoon.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Mason roars.
“And they didn’t think to let us know?” I ask incredulously.
“Apparently not. I’m heading down to the police station now. I have a friend there who’s on duty tonight, but I don’t want to sit around waiting to be fobbed off. We need to find this guy. Eli, do you still have Eden’s file here or did you take it into the office with you?”
“I have it here still. To be honest, I completely forgot it this morning.”
“Good, you two go through it. See if you can find something we missed. Call me if you do.”
He heads out the door leaving me and Mason to charge up the stairs and go through everything we’ve collected during this investigation. We both head into my room. I open my bedside drawer and snag the file before opening it and spreading the contents across the bed.
“There has to be something here that we just aren’t seeing. I’ve always felt like something was off but what?”
I sit in the chair by the bed with the laptop in my hands and manage to pull up some information on Raymond, just as my phone alerts me to an incoming message. My heart hammers in my chest, praying for good news.
Noah: The police went to Raymond’s apartment. There were signs of a struggle, but nobody was there.
I read the text out loud to Mason who stares at me with fear in his eyes. He’s not the only one feeling it. I watch as he turns away from me, his eyes skimming the bed before coming to a halt and frowning.
“Why do you have a picture of that police officer and none of the others that interviewed us?” Mason asks, pointing at a photo amongst the evidence strewn across the bed.
“Huh?” I look at the picture he’s talking about. “Because that’s Karl.”
“What?” he whispers. I turn and look at him. He looks as if he has seen a ghost. “That’s the cop that interviewed me in the hospital when Eden was injured.”
“Fuck! Mason, how sure are you about this?”
If Karl was in the hospital, then he couldn’t have made that flight out to Germany, the one the pilot claimed he was on.
“That’s the guy. Jesus, he was right there in the room with her. Oh, fuck and I told him my address because he was meant to come round to take Eden’s statement after she woke up. I didn’t think any more about it. Shit.” He grabs his hair in frustration but I try to keep my own emotions on lockdown so we can figure th
is shit out.
I call Noah and let him know what’s going on and then text Sam who says he’s on it and will get back to me. I stand up and start pacing, trying to look at this from another angle.
“Okay, let’s see if we can figure out a timeline. Noah and I approach you and Eden at the club. Afterwards, we call Karl. The next day Eden is run off the road. We discounted Karl after we learned he was in Germany so let’s ignore that and pull him back in. If he was there at the hospital, then he had to have been the one who ran her off the road, otherwise why was he there and how would he have known she was in the hospital at all?”
Mason nods and I watch as he puts together the next piece. “He had to have paid the pilot off. So he goes back to mine and strings up the cat, but why? Just to scare her? Is this all part of his game, to terrify her until he decides to strike?”
“To get her here,” I whisper as it dawns on me. He researched us, probably using his police contacts, and chose us for a reason. “He knew we would bring her back here. We may as well have just wrapped her up in a bow and handed her over to him.”
“Eli, it wasn’t like that and this isn’t your fault so leave the pity party for later and get your head in the game. What next?”
He’s right. I take a deep breath and think. The chocolates. “The chocolates came next, then the roses.”
I think back to Eden’s reactions each time. She had been so sure it was Karl, but we convinced her she was wrong. And that might just kill her.
“We had proof, though, that Karl was out of the country, at least on that day and night, as we have over one hundred witnesses and photos in the local newspapers.” Mason looks at me expectantly, but I’ve got nothing to counter his argument.
“Then it was the tires and finally the break-in.”
This is where it all falls apart. It was definitely Raymond’s DNA sample on the underwear and he was utterly convinced that he and Eden were in a relationship. And just who was this woman slashing tyres unless—I grab my phone and dial Noah.
“Tell me you have something I can use,” he answers.
“The group photo that Raymond was shown and asked to ID Eden with, can you get access to it and speak to the officer who interviewed him?”
“He’s right here now. Let me ask about the photo and call you back.” He hangs up without any further questions.
“Tell me what you’re thinking, Eli,” Mason demands but my phone rings in my hand.
I look down and see it’s Sam so I ignore Mason and answer it.
“Eli, we have a problem. We don’t know where Karl is and from the equipment in his hotel room—which he hasn’t checked out of yet, by the way—it seems he has somehow hacked into the hotel’s surveillance feed and made a loop.” He sounds livid.
“Explain.”
“The footage of him with the random woman and the night at the gala are all real but everything else is prerecorded and looped to repeat itself over and over. It appears as if he leaves his room late each morning and returns early each evening when in actual fact, I suspect he hasn’t set foot in that hotel since the night of the gala.”
Fuck, it’s as we suspected. I hear a beep on my phone and know it’s Noah. “Sam, I have to go. I have Noah on the other line.” I don’t wait for a reply before switching calls.
“Noah, you got the photo?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it. Want to let me in on what this is all about?” he asks.
“Hold on. I’m putting you on speaker so Mase can hear you.” I adjust the phone and place it on the bed. “Can you ask the officer who Raymond picked when he identified Eden?”
“What are you talking about? He didn’t identify Eden.” Noah states.
“I know that. I want to know who Raymond thought was Eden.”
I hear him quietly talking to the officer before coming back.
“I’ve texted it to you. She looks vaguely familiar but nothing like Eden. I don’t see how he could have mixed those two up.”
My phone beeps so I turn it as the picture Noah sent us pops up.
“He didn’t confuse the two. I think he was telling the truth but his Eden was actually someone pretending to be her.”
“What? Why? To what end?”
“To get that semen sample and set him up, making us loosen the reins around Eden, which is exactly what we did.
“Guys, that’s Jackie,” Mason tells us.
Jackie? Then it clicks. The bartender from Midas.
“Sonofabitch,” he shouts out.
“So, Jackie delivered the chocolates, the flowers and slashed the tires. She was also wearing the underwear set when she fucked Raymond to set him up.”
“So, we think Jackie has her?” Noah questions.
“No, I think Karl has her. I think Jackie is somehow working with him. Noah, get the police to go to his address. Karl is missing and the last confirmed sighting is the night of the gala.”
“What? But I thought—you know what, never mind. I’m on it. I’ll call you back when we have her.”
I hang up the phone for what seems like the one hundredth time tonight and toss it back on the bed.
“What can you tell me about Jackie?” I sit on the edge of the bed and watch as Mason folds himself into the chair.
“Not much. She started about eighteen months or so after Eden did. She was friendly toward her, always trying to strike up conversation but Eden, like I said before, kept to herself. I can’t say I really remember anything that stands out about her, to be honest. A lot of the girls thrive on the drama but Jackie was more of what I would call a lurker. She was always around, taking everything in but never really got involved herself.”
“I’m just trying to figure out how far back this goes. I can’t shake off the feeling that Karl knew where Eden was all along. If that’s the case, then why did he drag me and Noah into it and why wait so long before taking her?”
“The inheritance. She wasn’t eligible until she was twenty-one.”
“Shit. I forgot about the fucking money.” It’s easy when she doesn’t seem interested in it herself.
“What do we do now?” Mason asks. I know he wants to keep busy but there’s nothing much else we can do.
“Now we wait.”
Chapter Nineteen
EDEN
I wake up because my arms hurt. Why do my arms hurt? I try to move them but they're stuck. I peel my eyes open, the bright, harsh fluorescent lighting making me snap them shut again quickly. What the fuck? I open them again but more slowly this time, giving them time to adjust. I take a look at the room around me and wish I had never opened my eyes in the first place. I look up and see I’m suspended from a hook by a piece of coarse rope that binds my wrists together and abrades my skin. I try to free myself but it’s no good and with all my body weight hanging from them, I tire quickly. I drop my head in defeat and then I realise I’m completely naked and vulnerable.
I lift my head and recognise the room itself. It’s the basement of my childhood home but it has never looked like this. Gone is the gym equipment and the Christmas decorations gathering dust. In their place is something out of my nightmares. Two large dressers stand side by side, one with its doors open on purpose, I’m sure, to reveal a line of whips and paddles. On the wall to my right is a large cross with a series of cuffs and buckles attached to it. The other wall is dominated by a king-size bed with black satin sheets—not sinister by itself but the items lined up on it are enough to make my blood run cold. I might not have a vast knowledge of all things sex-related but I’ve read enough from books and watched enough porn during my self-imposed celibacy to know what each and every item is. A ball gag, an anal plug, a dildo that was in no way shape or form based on a man’s dick size. That thing would rip me apart and I’m pretty sure that’s the point. I spot a pair of nipple clamps that look like crocodile clips and fuck… the last item, almost hidden by the others, is a large hunting knife.
I renew my struggle, ignoring the wetness I feel running down my
arms. It’s no use as my shoulders scream out in protest. I hear the lock click on the door and I freeze as loud footsteps make their way down the steps towards me. I can’t help the whimper that escapes as I come face-to-face with the man from my nightmares. He doesn’t appear to have aged, with the exception of his hair now having more grey in it. He trails his eyes over my body, his expression showing his carnal hunger for something that is not his to have. He licks his lips, steps off the bottom step and stalks toward me like a lion teasing its prey.
“Well if it isn’t Eden, my long-lost stepdaughter. I have been so frightfully afraid for you. Or should I call you Eve Temptation now that you have embraced your inner slut?”
I don’t answer him. I concentrate on trying to regulate my breathing. If I answer him, I might antagonise him further. I just need to hang on for my guys to get here. I know they’ll come for me. I have to believe that, otherwise I will never make it through whatever Karl has planned.
He reaches up and checks the knot in the rope, not caring about me bleeding everywhere, and smiles when he finds it still secure. He drags his finger down my arm, over my shoulder and down to Eli’s medallion. The feel of the medallion around my neck gives me a small measure of comfort, at least until he runs his finger down my chest, circling my nipple and flicking and teasing it until it responds. I turn my head away from him, not bothering to fight back the tears. God, I want to be strong and not give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he’s scaring me, but I can’t. I know deep down I’m not going to survive this. His hand leaves my breast. My relief is short-lived when he trails his fingers down to my stomach and across the area that would normally be covered in hair, making me swallow hard to keep from vomiting everywhere.
“Smooth, I see, just the way I like it.” He walks over to the bed and picks up the nipple clamps before walking back over to me.”
“Please, don’t,” I whisper, hating myself in this moment for begging.
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