Hale (The Beckett Boys, Book Seven)

by Olivia Chase

  Whether she liked it or not.

  Chapter 2

  EMERY

  Fade in on me, on an early spring night during second semester, dragged to a frat party kicking and screaming (not literally kicking and screaming, obviously, although that might not have been a bad way to go, now that I’d had a chance to think about it) because my friends had somehow convinced me it would be a good idea.

  Come out with us, Emery, they said. You’ll have fun, they promised. You need to loosen up. You’re too uptight, too anal.

  I hated that word, anal. (It made me think of anal sex, and the story I’d written for the school paper last year about all those girls who were saving their virginities so they just had anal sex instead. As if that somehow didn’t count.)

  Anyway, I’d gone to the stupid party and now my friend Maddie and I were standing outside. We’d stepped out for a minute so Maddie could smoke. I thought smoking was a disgusting habit and I was always trying to get her to quit, but anything that minimized my time inside the party was okay by me. At least for tonight.

  “This is so fun,” Maddie said. She drained her plastic cup of beer, which she was trying to keep hidden in case campus security came by. “Isn’t this so fun?”

  “It’s really fun,” I said, because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Maddie and I had been friends since we were little kids. They called us M and M (Get it? Maddie and Emery? And by they, I mean our parents and no one else. But still.)

  “You’re not having fun,” she said, and puffed out her bottom lip in a fake pout.

  “No, I am!”

  A group of guys walked by us, all of them in baseball hats, all of them displaying varying degrees of hotness.

  “Hey, ladies,” one of them said. A swoop of shaggy dark hair drooped over his forehead. “You going inside?”

  “We just came from there,” I said helpfully, but Maddie elbowed me in the side.

  “Yes, we’re going in,” she said.

  “Now?” the boy asked. He dropped back from his friends a bit, the white Westvale University Lacrosse logo on his hat shimmering under the streetlights. “Come on, Maddie, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  One of his friends glanced at me with subdued interest, his eyes sliding over me, and I could already tell what he was thinking. The fat girl will be easy.

  I wasn’t fat.

  I knew that.

  But compared to the sea of long tanned legs and flat stomachs that surrounded me, I was. All of the girls here were wearing outfits that would look completely obscene on me. My chest was not made for halter tops or even tank tops. Built-in bras? Please. I might as well be wearing nothing for all the good they did me.

  Maddie grinned at the dark-haired guy. There was a certain familiarity there -- he was probably in one of her classes. “The drinks are free,” she shot back.

  I rolled my eyes. This is what passed for flirting and chivalry these days? Frat guys offering to buy drinks that were free anyway?

  But Maddie acted like he’d just offered to whisk her off to Paris for the weekend or something.

  “Then I’ll get you a free drink,” he said. “Isn’t my company worth something?”

  Maddie started following him down the sidewalk, turning around after a few steps. “You coming?” she asked me.

  “I’ll be there in second.”

  “Oh.” She hesitated, as the guy slipped his hand through hers and quickened his pace, obviously sensing he might be losing his chance to score.

  “Go,” I said honestly. “Seriously, I’m just going to get some more air for a second.”

  She bit her lip.

  “I’m serious,” I said “Go.”

  “I’ll see you in there?”

  “Yes.” Once she was out of sight I sighed and turned my face to the sky, wondering how much longer I could get away with staying out here.

  I checked my phone.

  It was almost midnight.

  I would probably have to stay at the party until at least one. But if I could spend some of that time out here, say, ten more minutes, then I would only have fifty more minutes inside.

  I took my jacket from where I’d tied it around my waist (much to Maddie’s horror) and put it on, zipping it up over my tight t-shirt.

  The sidewalk was empty. Most people were inside the party already, the guys who had just passed by probably the last stragglers of the night. There wouldn’t be any more people out on the street until after last call now, and that wasn’t until two am.

  The Alpha Chi house was at the end of campus, the last in a line of old brownstones that were designed to looked ornate and elegant in order to give off the impression of old money and stateliness, which was ironic when you considered that the only things that went on inside were drinking and sex.

  There was a full moon, and it was dark and cold out.

  I shivered again and pulled my jacket closer around me, but I wasn’t scared to be out here alone. Our campus had one of the greatest safety ratings in the nation, a fact that touted on every admissions brochure, along with “Only twenty minutes outside of New York City with the feel of a small town!” line they loved to repeat over and over.

  So no, I wasn’t scared.

  Later, I would look back and think I should have been scared. Or at least more aware.

  I would spend countless hours thinking about what would have happened if I’d gone inside with Maddie, how things would have been different, if they even would have been different, or if everything that night happened just as it was supposed to, setting in motion something that wouldn’t have been denied no matter what.

  Because one moment of letting my guard down, one moment of letting myself not pay attention, changed my life forever.

  A shiny black SUV pulled up to the curb, its windows tinted.

  It was probably a beer delivery, I thought, and so I turned on my heel and headed back toward the party. The last thing I needed was to get hit on by some sleazy grad students or worse, be asked to help them unload cases of beer that I wouldn’t even be drinking.

  I’d only taken a couple steps when someone called my name.

  “Emery.”

  It was a familiar voice.

  A very familiar voice.

  The sound of it sent the hairs on the back of my neck standing at attention.

  I turned around.

  My dad was standing there on the street, at the back of the SUV.

  “Emery,” he said, and he gave me a tentative smile. “Emery, it’s me.”

  I hadn’t seen him in over a year, ever since last Christmas, when he’d somehow found out I was spending the holiday with Maddie and her family, and he’d shown up at her house, totally unannounced and uninvited.

  Maddie’s mom had sprung into action, not making me feel upset or weird about it, even when it was obvious my dad had been drinking, even after he double dipped in the appetizer plate she’d put out. She’d gone upstairs and found a gift for him, wrapped up a Starbucks card and a DVD of The Godfather that someone had given to Maddie’s dad.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked now, taking a step toward him.

  “I came to see you.”

  My heart thrummed in my chest. “Why?” There was only one reason my dad would come to see me. He wanted money. My dad had a wicked gambling addiction, the kind of addiction that always kept him one step away from being homeless.

  “I just wanted to see you.” His voice sounded genuine, but something was off. His eyes were darting around nervously, and he was dressed in a rumpled suit, a strange choice for him. The last I’d heard he’d had a job driving a cab, but a cab driver wouldn’t have been wearing a suit like that. I wondered if he’d been drinking.

  “Dad,” I said. “I don’t have any money.”

  I took another step toward him, and his eyes darted quickly to the back of the SUV. It should have been a tip-off. It should have alerted me to the fact that something weird was going on, although the problem was that with my father, ther
e was always something weird going on.

  “I know you don’t, honey,” he said, and there was a sad, eerie tone in his voice.

  And then, suddenly, the sound of the driver’s side door opening echoed through the night, and heavy footsteps pounded on the pavement.

  I felt someone’s presence behind me and I turned to look, but before I could, the person pinned my arms to my back, and then my dad reached over and opened the back door of the SUV.

  “What the hell?” I yelled.

  The man who was holding me pulled me back toward him, and I felt a hard, broad chest against my back and the scent of woodsy cologne hit my nostrils.

  I pushed back against him, struggling, but his grip on my arms was like a vice.

  “Shh,” he said into my ear. “Shh, it’s easier if you don’t struggle, baby.” His voice was a low growl, and something about it was almost sexy. Goosebumps broke out on my arms and something inside of me, some base instinct, told me to submit to him, to obey him, to do what he said, that he was right that it would be easier if I didn’t struggle.

  But I railed against it as hard as I could and listened to the other side of me, the side of me that told me to fight.

  I screamed at the top of my lungs, louder than I’d ever screamed, my throat going instantly raw. I tried to push against my captor, but he dwarfed me – he must have been at least six-foot-two and close to two hundred pounds.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said, sounding exasperated that I would dare to do something as ridiculous as scream, and then he was picking me up, tossing me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes as I slammed my fists into his back as hard as I could. He was wearing a crisp white dress shirt, and I pummeled it as hard as I could, but nothing seemed to affect him.

  He set me down in the backseat of the SUV, then slid in next to me.

  “It’s going to be okay, Emery,” I could hear my dad calling. “Emery, it’s going to be okay. I promise, it’s going to be – ”

  The last part of what he was saying was cut off by the sound of the car door being slammed shut.

  And then I was plunged into darkness.

  The darkness only lasted a moment, and then the automatic lights in the back of the SUV came on, bathing the backseat in dim light.

  “Are you okay?” the man who’d shoved me into the SUV asked. He was sitting next to me on the seat. “Are you hurt?”

  I turned to look behind me, out the back window, but the street was empty. My father was gone.

  My heart was beating hard as my eyes locked back on my captor’s, my breath catching as I took him in, the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen. He had dark hair and eyes, his hair perfectly styled. His cheekbones and jaw could have cut glass, his lips full and lush.

  The shirtsleeves of his expensively tailored dress shirt were rolled up, and his wrist was adorned with a shiny gold watch, one that looked ridiculously expensive. I caught a glimpse of the bottom of a tattoo on his muscular forearm.

  My breath caught in my chest.

  “Are you okay?” he repeated.

  His words brought me back to life, and I lunged for the door.

  “It’s locked.” His voice was measured, controlled, no sign of nervousness or haste. I reached for the handle anyway, pulling on it, but of course he was right. It was locked.

  Desperation welled inside of me as tears filled my eyes.

  I turned around and he looked at me, his face softening.

  “Can I trust you to stay quiet back here?” he asked.

  I nodded, but it was a lie. Of course he couldn’t trust me to stay quiet.

  He studied my face for any sign that I was lying.

  He nodded as if he’d accepted I was telling the truth, but then he reached into his pocket and pulled out something shiny, something metal that glinted even under the muted overhead lights.

  Handcuffs.

  I opened my mouth and screamed again, twisting my body and kicking on the back door of the SUV, the one that was on the side closest to the street. But the street was empty, and I knew the windows of the car were tinted. The only chance I had was to scream loud enough to be heard, no easy feat when the bass from seven different frat parties drifted up and down the block.

  My captor grabbed my wrists and pinned them behind my back, sliding me back on the seat so that my feet couldn’t reach the door anymore. I realized too late I should have gone for the windows, should have tried to kick out the glass.

  I moaned, mourning my lost chance as he pulled me closer to him, my back pressed tight to his chest.

  “I’m going to handcuff you now,” he said into my ear.

  I shoved my hands under my ass on the seat. “Fuck you.”

  “Emery,” he said, sighing. He sounded almost resigned, like this was the last thing he wanted to be doing. “This will be a lot easier if you don’t fight.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” I said. “The first thing psychos do is tell you is not to fight. Then they take you to a remote location and kill you.”

  “I am not taking you to a remote location. And I’m not going to kill you.”

  “Like you’d tell me if you were.”

  He rolled his eyes and loosened his grip on my wrists just a tiny bit, and immediately I lunged my body toward the other side of the car and tried to kick him in the face. I knew the statistics – you had a much better chance of survival if you could stay at the place where you were abducted. Once you were taken somewhere else, you were toast.

  The man sighed, then grabbed my foot as I pulled back to kick him, his grip like a vice. I was a strong girl, and I was kicking with all my might, but he held me like it was nothing.

  The bottom of my jeans slid up, and his thumb touched my bare ankle. Warmth slid up my body and settled between my legs, just long enough to distract me, and then he was grabbing my hands and pulling me back upright, clipping the handcuffs around my wrists in one smooth movement, a movement that betrayed a certain familiarity with restraints.

  Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. It was crisp and white, just like his shirt, and embroidered with his initials.

  LR.

  I made a mental note of them, telling myself I needed to remember every detail so that later I could tell the police.

  LR. LR. LR.

  He placed the handkerchief inside my mouth and gagged me.

  I was shaking, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me upset. So I dug my hands into the leather seat underneath me and stared at him, refusing to look away.

  His dark eyes raked up my body, lingering on my breasts, my hips, my ass.

  My skin burned under his gaze. This was nothing like the way the guys at school looked at me, like they were wondering what, exactly, it would take to get me to sleep with them, what lies they could tell me, what drinks they should ply me with.

  No, this man was looking at me like he knew he could have me, and all he had to worry about was how and when. The side of his mouth twitched into a sly grin, his full lips revealing a sliver of his perfect white teeth.

  He put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me back until I was lying on the seat on my back. Then he pulled another handkerchief from his pocket and slid it through my handcuffs, tying me to the door handle so that I wouldn’t be able to get upright.

  And then he got out and left me in the back of the SUV, bound and gagged.

  The driver’s side door opened and he slid into the driver’s seat.

  A second later, the engine roared to life, and we began to move.

  Chapter 3

  EMERY

  Tears welled up in my eyes, but I told myself I needed to stay calm, that I couldn’t panic. If you panic, you’re finished.

  I tried to keep track of the left and right turns the SUV was taking, tried to orient myself and figure out where, exactly he was taking me, in case I had to remember it later.

  But after a few minutes, it became impossible.

  I felt us going up the onra
mp of a bridge, or at least, what I thought was a bridge.

  It was late at night and I couldn’t tell if the fact that I didn’t hear much traffic was because there just wasn’t any, or because we were on a road that was remote.

  The car was traveling at a high rate of speed, and when it began to slow down, I started to hear the unmistakable sounds of New York City. Taxis honking, the hum of voices, the beeping of trucks as they backed up, music tinkling out of bars and clubs, the beat of someone’s bass booming from their car.

  I bit down on the handkerchief in my mouth to keep from screaming in frustration at the thought of all those people out there, all of them a potential savior for me, none of them having any idea I was here, in the back of a black Lexus, being held against my will.

  A few moments later, the SUV began a descent, like it was being driven underground, and I imagined myself being taken to some basement lair, just like in a horror movie, some hole in the ground where I’d be left for weeks.

  But when the car stopped and the back door opened, all I could see was track lighting overhead and concrete on the ground. Real concrete. Not the kind of concrete that would have lined the bottom of some abandoned underground well.

  The man who’d abducted me stood there, illuminated in the light, and I was able to get my first good look at him.

  Liam Rutherford.

  LR.

  Billionaire CEO of Rutherford Enterprises, one of the biggest tech companies in the world.

  I was shocked I hadn’t recognized him right from the beginning.

  We’d done a whole study on him in my business administration class last year.

  I did a quick rundown in my head of what I knew about him.

  Twenty-eight-years old. Rumored to run his company with an iron fist. Rutherford Enterprises was not Facebook, where you could run around wearing hoodies and sneakers and still be considered a genius. And it wasn’t Google, where you could get free food in the cafeteria at any hour of the day and everyone worked in open workspaces like one big happy family.

  No, at Rutherford Enterprises, overtime was expected and rumor had it Liam Rutherford liked to keep the temperature at a cool 64 degrees, even in the winter, so that the employees would be on their toes at all times.