Phoebe: Book One of Broken Girls Series

by J. A. Hornbuckle

  “So you’re sleeping with him?” Leave it to Tonya to cut to the chase.

  There was no way I was getting into all the details of my physical relationship with Ryker, so I just nodded as I scooped up another bite of cake I had absolutely no intention of eating.

  “How’d that happen in the scheme of your whole ‘master plan of life’?” Coco’s question was given gently, sweetly, but such was her way. Vonnie often called her a ‘Barbie doll’, which used to seem unusually harsh at just how nice and bubbly the girl always was, but I’d grown to love Coco’s brand of sweetness.

  In all honesty though, I didn’t have an answer for her. Couldn’t even answer myself when the question arose in my own mind. So I gave it to her straight. “I don’t know. All I can tell you is that he appeared, asked me out and I went.”

  “How long have you been seeing him?” It was Beta who brooked the next query.

  “A couple of months.”

  “And you like him, as in like-him, like-him.” Vonnie’s face held an expression I didn’t understand, couldn’t quite fathom as she questioned me. Almost as if she was looking inside herself for an answer she couldn’t quite trust.

  Carefully placing my filled, uneaten forkful to the edge of my dessert place, I put my hands in my lap. “Yeah, I do.”

  I swallowed and glanced around the table before saying the next, reaching for calm as I tried the words on for size. “I might even, I don’t know…love him.”

  Nobody said a word, didn’t even breathe into the stillness my statement created.

  One moment bled into the next, none of us speaking in the wake of the bomb I’d dropped, and that silence went on for a while.

  “So what’s the name of this paragon of sultry maleness?” Maizie drawled into the blank silence as she finished off the last of her cake.

  “Ryker Benjamin Guerrero Santiago-Adams,” I breathed, proud to give the name of my man and lover to all my sisters.

  And that was when all holy hell broke out around the table, catching me unaware in both its volume and fervency.

  Maizie was the first to shoot to her feet, although Beta and Coco weren’t far behind. “You’re fucking kidding me. Tell me you’re fucking kidding me, Pheebs!”

  Wait! What?

  “Seriously?” Beta yelped, going around her chair only to clutch the top of it in a two-handed, white-knuckled grip.

  “Ryker Santiago-Adams?” Coco cried, both arms held straight out from her sides, wearing a look of stricken despair plain for all of us to see.

  Why were they so upset?

  What did they know about my wonderful Ryker I obviously didn’t?

  I looked around at Vonnie and Tonya only to see them wearing the same look of confusion I knew, freaking more than knew my own face held. So I dragged my eyes to Maizie who was shaking her head as she stared off into a far corner.

  “Vente a la merida,” Maizie yelled, bringing her face back to mine and pointing a finger my way. “Of all of us, you’re sleeping with a fucking felon, Phoebe? You?”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. All I knew was my heart wanted to beat out of my chest and my palms were so slick with sweat I rubbed them against my jeans to dry them.

  “Never took you for a pinche idiota, girl, but you’ve proved me wrong this time.”

  “Don’t you remember, honey?” Beta started, her voice rough with emotion as she leaned toward me. “Every night when we’d gather round the TV just after dinner, the newscast had something about Ryker and his trial.”

  Uhm…no. I didn’t, because I’d always ignored the news, using that time instead to comprise my list for the next day, thinking of how I was another step closer to my goals. But I did remember something back in my early high-school years, a thing on the news that held Maizie, Beta and Coco enthralled because it was of a young, local man’s trial.

  One where he was convicted of doing some sort of major cyber-crime.

  And at how one or another of them claimed he was too cute to be sent to jail, even though the news never once showed his face because he was a minor.

  “I heard he only got seven years, but I never understood if he had to serve it in juvie or if it had been divided between juvie and prison,” Coco interjected before going back to sit in her chair.

  “How old was he?” I asked through frozen lips, their reactions and talk scoring through me, creating icy rivulets inside as I connected the dots. When no one answered, I raised my voice. “How old was he when this shit happened?”

  “Seven-freaking-teen,” Maizie provided. “Only seventeen, but he and his guys fucked up the welfare system so bad my cousins didn’t get their goddamn checks on time and went without food for almost two weeks.” She took in a long inhale before letting it explode from her lips that was done so forcefully I was surprised it wasn’t accompanied by fire. “The whole barrio shunned both him and his family. He was and still is someone none of us want to see or talk to.”

  I bent my head down and closed my eyes, trying to fit the images of my loving Ryker to the boy my girls were describing. But it accounted for the time he avoided mentioning, the years he wouldn’t talk about.

  “Phoebe is fucking a jail-bird?” I didn’t like Vonnie’s question. Hated it, especially when I felt the wet hit my eyes knowing, so freaking knowing her words were right even as my heart rejected them.

  God.

  God.

  It explained so much.

  Yet told so little.

  “A lot of us followed it, honey. You know, the trial and stuff,” Coco offered, on a sympathetic note. “He was cute and was one of our classmates. So we all rooted for him.”

  “Well, I freaking didn’t!” Maizie shot back. “I had to sneak food from Diana’s to my cousins for weeks so they didn’t freaking starve.”

  Beta was the only one to offer up a glimmer of hope my way. “Do you think he’s changed? Mended his ways after being released?”

  But I couldn’t give her an answer because I didn’t know, hadn’t known what Ryker was like when he was young. I only knew the man who I’d taken to my bed, a wonderful guy who always put me first, taking care to treat me with respect and who considered my needs before finding his own satisfaction.

  I’d wanted, no, craved to gain the secrets of Ryker’s missing years.

  But Rhonda was right.

  I shouldn’t’ve asked unless I really wanted to know and could deal with them.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ryker said he’d meet me at my place after I was done at Tonya’s but when all was said and done, I needed some time. Time to process what my girls told me about my man.

  About Ryker and his missing years.

  Before I could freaking face the guy I was beginning to know and love.

  So even though I’d planned to hit the grocery store the next day, I went there after Tonya’s as I tried to remember my list. But my head was so filled with other words, those of ‘felon’, ‘juvie’ and ‘prison’ I couldn’t concentrate on the simpler ones like ‘milk’, ‘eggs’ or ‘bread’.

  Did it matter? I asked myself, peering into the cold case of the rows of milk, standing so soldier-like and firmly in place.

  Was what Ryker’d done in his early years so bad, I couldn’t imagine being with him?

  Or rather, did the label of ‘felon’ affect my feelings for the man I’d come to know, in light of the way we were together, at the laughter we shared along with all the doings our bodies got up to?

  I didn’t know.

  Because I’d always been a good girl, even in the worst of things, always reaching for the shiniest side of a dark cloud. But to have a lover, the lover of my dreams uncovered as a man convicted of a felony messed with my head.

  And heart.

  So I stood there, at the chilly-doored cases of the milk and stared to the point a clerk came up to me and asked if I need assistance. “No, thanks,” I mumbled, never giving the kid a glance. “I’ll work this out all on my own.”

&n
bsp; And I would.

  Work it out, I mean.

  Maybe I was looking for a reason, a justification for being with Ryker, but it seemed to me that to make a decision as to whether to continue on with him, I needed to make a choice of what I was willing to do. One of the let-him-go type.

  And I absolutely didn’t want to do that, couldn’t even consider it.

  Which meant, I needed to either get more intel or put his past aside. What had Rhonda called it? Tit for tat.

  Can you really do that, expose your secrets in order to get the full of his? my brain asked my heart. And it was my heart who immediately answered with a firm and fervent, “You bet your ass, I can.”

  So I gathered my stuff resolutely. After paying for my goods, I took a moment to shoot my Ryker a text. ‘Going home now. C U when you get there.’

  It was enough words to convey my meaning, though not enough to describe the whole of my evening and what I’d learned about him.

  ‘Can’t wait, mi cariña. C U soon.’

  He’d told me he was going to work late, catch up on his files for Black Ice. And as the Head of Security and Investigations I knew he had a lot on his plate. So much so, his work took him into a lot of late night sessions which he told me he didn’t mind working because I never got off until later, unless I took another shift. Something I didn’t do as much as before, preferring instead to fill the hours with him.

  It was the whole of my Ryker, the parts I’d seen and those my ‘sisters’ told me of which consumed my thoughts, taking me out of the moment until I didn’t pay a bit of attention to my surroundings as I loaded up the trunk of my car with my purchases. And I remained that way even as I drove back to my place, barely remembering where to turn in order to get home.

  Using the fob on my key-ring, I popped the trunk after parking even as I checked my phone for any message from Ryker. Seeing none, I tidily tucked it back into the front pocket of my jeans and opened my car door, one hand on the console, the other gripping the armrest of the door as I stepped out.

  But as one foot hit the asphalt, my hair was pulled from behind so hard and deep, it made my scalp burn in protest. Before I even opened my mouth to scream, I was yanked out of my car, my attacker viciously turning me fully back to the opening of my car door before my feet even made purchase on the asphalt of the complex’s parking lot. Using the grip on my hair, my face was slammed into the doorframe so hard stars exploded before I was again yanked back.

  A chilling voice came over my shoulder while my right arm was twisted in a grip so strong, I couldn’t get loose as my attacker bent it into an unnatural angle, shoved up and high to the middle of my back.

  “Fucking bitch, lost a lot on account of you,” the communication started on a harsh whisper that was neither feminine or masculine, but somewhere in between. “Now it’s payback time!”

  Absolute terror filled me and I screamed as I frantically twisted and turned, clawing with my unfettered hand, kicking with my feet as I attempted to free myself, but my attacker was strong. Was holding me too tight for me to escape.

  “Shut it!” the harsh whisper came again. “Shut it now or I’ll shut it for you!”

  The hand holding my hair beat my head against the door again and again until black spots appeared on the edge of my vision. But I never stopped screeching out my pain and fear nor did I quit trying get away.

  Wet, hot thickness ran into my eyes as I reached up with my free hand to claw at their face or the hand ripping my hair out by the roots. But before I could score them with my short nails, I was given another hard shake, causing me to suck in a great lungful of air at the absolute agony of the move.

  “Thought you could fuck with me, huh? Thought you and the cops could prevent me from getting to you?” I squealed as I was lifted up onto my toes by my scalp, using the one hand to grip, instinctively clutching and straining up onto my toes provide a measure of respite to the pain in my head. “You’re so weak. Such a puny little shit compared to what I’ve become in that fucking place you and the others sent me!”

  Taking in another great lungful of air, I screamed again which only made the person behind me angrier as they whipped me around by my hair and the arm twisted behind me was tilted even higher in order to swing me to and fro’, shaking me like a ragdoll as I was lifted up and away my car, turning from the buildings and out into the dimly lit parking lot I could see from only one eye.

  “Shut it, bitch!” the whisper demanded. “Just shut the fuck up!”

  And I did, biting my lips to keep my whimpers as quiet as I could.

  Lights began to go on, although I couldn’t see them directly. I just saw their flicking in the chrome and metal of the other cars aligned in neat rows between carefully drawn white lines.

  My neighbors were stirring and my heart took hope from nothing but their porch lights. “Hey, what’s going on out there?” came a call.

  “Answer and you die,” the voice behind me advised even as the black spots multiplied on the perimeter of my widened, freaked out stare while I struggled for another lungful of air.

  “You! Yeah, you there!” Came the harsh challenge from a very male voice from behind and beyond where me and my attacker were moving. “Let go of her and I won’t fucking call the cops!”

  “Like they can help you, Phoebe Marquette.” My assailant sneered, yet sounded calm especially compared to all the careening panic shooting through me. “Fucking cops don’t know dick and can’t save you from me now.”

  For whatever reason, my body took hope in my neighbor’s threat and made it a part of my internal reality. One that included being saved from the lunatic holding me hostage. That was, until I heard the slam of their front door.

  “Guess he wasn’t in the mood to play the hero,” the person behind me muttered as I felt the body behind me, holding me as they twisted from side to side, as if looking to see what was happening behind us.

  But at the sound of sirens, my attacker began to swear, long and low into the chilly air, yanking at both my hair and on my twisted arm as the toes of my flats scraped the uneven surface of the parking lot. The next time I heard the voice it was in another long, low stream of cuss words and imprecations regarding me, before I was painfully maneuvered towards the opened, gaping maw of my trunk.

  A trunk I popped open before I’d been grabbed.

  “This’ll work for the moment,” the whisperer announced as the hand holding my twisted arm released and I was shoved face-first and without warning into the dark confines of the space at the rear of my car. “I was hoping for a closet, but this is the next best thing.”

  *.*.*.*.*

  Ryker was in his office when he received the call. A call that came just minutes after her text confirming she would see him, wanted to be with him after she’d been with her friends. So he began to shut down his computer, putting the completed files to the side and notating the log for the billable hours Daisybelle could include on her invoices.

  But the call that came after the text, the one where he could hear his girl screaming in the distance made his balls pull into his body, so hard and so firm that he could barely think over the fear taking over his heart. He heard another voice in the distance of the connection telling her to ‘shut it’, which is all he needed in order to race to Cruz’s office where his brother was also burning the midnight oil.

  Holding onto an edge of the doorframe, Ryker began speaking even before his body came to a full stop. “Phoebe’s in trouble. Dunno what the fuck is going down, but I need to find her.”

  Cruz wasted no time in turning his eyes from his younger brother as he clicked the keys of his computer. “What’s her cellphone number?”

  As Ryker gave it, he walked on jittery legs to drop himself into one of Cruz’s visitor chairs.

  “Okay, got triangulation from the towers,” his middle brother advised, before zeroing his studious gaze to the dual screens on a dark, pleading note. “Give it to me, give it to me…”

  Ryker waited, bar
ely breathing as his eyes watched Cruz’s eyes roam over the monitors again and again. “Don’t worry, bro’. This program is foolproof.”

  “What, Cruz?”

  “We’ve got her location,” Cruz stated harshly, standing and swiping up his cell phone from the desktop. “Gonna get ‘911’ on it as we roll, hombre. You with me?”

  Ryker didn’t answer, couldn’t as he ran for the exit. His imagination from what he’d overheard, did his head in as he tried to envision the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ behind Phoebe’s screams.

  The fucking elevator never seemed so slow, nor the hallway leading to the parking lot felt so long as when he and his brother ran from the building.

  And as Ryker fired up the SUV, all he knew was he needed was to get to his girl.

  As soon as fucking possible.

  *.*.*.*.*

  I was in my worst nightmare.

  Trapped in the dark.

  Alone.

  With no way to escape, no matter how loud I screamed or how my fingers clawed to find purchase on the inside of the small space I’d been shoved in.

  It was the fear I’d battled every damned day of my life. The muffled sounds of movements as I scrambled to free myself from the confines of the cold, dark closet I was shoved into—a sinister place of punishment and pain.

  But what had I done to earn it this time?

  My finger caught on something that cut into them, causing the warm, wet scent of blood to again fill the air of my involuntarily occupied area. The coppery-smell wafted as I continued on. Continued on screaming, raking my hand over the pieces of hard plastic that met my fingers, never realizing I was tearing the skin of them to shreds.

  The other one was hanging useless, my shoulder meeting my cheek in an unnatural position.

  “Ryker!” I yelled through my now raw throat, scratched due to my earlier efforts. And I dropped my head against the floor, finally considering he, my savior who I knew would protect me against anything, might not get there in time.