by Tia Siren
“Hello, Mrs. Lind. I’m—”
“Bastian Burke,” she said coolly. “Yes, I know who you are.”
I took a step back at the hostility in her eyes, but also to keep control of my patience. I knew from what Joanna had told me that Sid had convinced her I was the one causing trouble in Joanna’s life, not Sid.
“What do you want?” she asked. “If you’re wondering about my daughter’s whereabouts, I’d like to ask you the same question. I know she left with you last night. Do you have any respect for what I went through this morning as a mother wondering where my child went? Or where she has been for the past few weeks?”
“Your daughter needed some help escaping an abusive relationship that—”
“If that truly was the case, Mr. Burke,” she interrupted coldly, “then you would’ve done the right thing by taking her to a shelter. Even to her family. Instead, you took her to your place for your own needs. That is not respect for my daughter, who has already been through enough.”
I took a deep breath to calm myself. “I understand that you believe I’m the one who is causing this trouble, ma’am, but I can assure you that it isn’t me you should be worried about here.”
“I’m more confident in Sid than I am in you,” she spat at me, seizing ahold of the door. “I have no idea where Joanna is. I don’t even know why you’re here if you’re the one who has seen her last.”
She slammed the door in my face before I could say anything else. I walked back down the pathway to where Joe was waiting at our SUVs.
“No luck?”
“No fucking luck,” I said in aggravation. “She thinks I’m the one who has taken her daughter hostage. It’s the other way around.”
“Do you know for a fact that this guy took her?” Joe asked.
“That’s the only plausible thing I can think of,” I said. “She wouldn’t have left her purse or anything else behind.”
“It hasn’t been forty-eight hours, either,” Joe said, rifling through his pockets for his phone. “I’m going to call a few guys I know. You’ve got some resources to call?”
“Only one other person who knows a few people to call,” I said. “Do me a favor? Keep an eye on her while I make a couple of phone calls.”
I drove aimlessly for the next thirty minutes while I tried to keep control of my emotions. I finally pulled off at a gas station in order to call Ashton.
“Joe’s right,” he said after I told him everything. “There isn’t anything else you can do until it’s been forty-eight hours. No one saw her take off from the hotel?”
“No one saw a damn thing,” I said, sagging against the steering wheel. “I don’t know what to do, Ashton. Keep looking?”
“That’s all you can do for now,” he said. “I’ll have a few friends of mine in law enforcement pull a couple strings without directly involving the police here. They can track Sid’s phone number without alerting the other officers that we are looking for him. They can also hear radio static as well if Sid’s on the channel talking to them.”
“Thank you, Ashton. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome. Keep your chin up. We’ll find her safely.”
“I hope so,” I said, tears stinging the backs of my eyes. “Fuck, I really hope so.”
Chapter 36
Joanna
“What the fuck do you mean that prick has other officers trying to track me?”
The sound of Sid’s voice cut through the fuzz clinging to my head. That fuzz eventually gave away to a full-blown, throbbing headache. Every inch of my body felt grimy and battered from whatever the hell Sid had just put me through. The back of my neck ached from where Sid had punched and pinched the sensitive skin there. My right cheek felt swollen and bruised, and the taste of blood lingered on the tip of my tongue.
I let out a soft groan from the pain. The smell of unwashed sheets and moldy carpet filled my nose. I tried to move about on the springy mattress I was lying on, but my arms were extended above my head. Metal handcuffs cut into the skin on my wrists when I tugged at them. Panic rose in me as I forced my eyes open to gaze up at the dark ceiling of what appeared to be a rundown hotel room.
Memories of Sid shoving a rag full of some sort of liquid into my face flashed across my mind. I scrambled up on my backside, ignoring the jolt of pain that went right up my spine at the movement. Adrenaline shot through my veins as I took in the moldy walls and broken television screen mounted on the hotel wall above a dresser. Sid’s gun sat on top of the dresser in his holster, but there was no possible way I could reach it. Not with Sid sitting at the small table near the window with a cigarette held between his fingers. The entire tabletop was littered with cigarette butts.
He glanced over to where I was sitting up on the small bed with my hands twisted behind me at an awkward angle.
“Take care of it, man,” he said into the phone. “I lied to protect your ass before when the chief came sniffing up our tree because you didn’t want your wife to leave you. I’m trusting you to shut that prick up when you can. I’ll pay whatever fee you want.”
Sid hung the phone back up on the receiver. He took a deep puff before letting the smoke stream out in front of him.
“Glad to see you awake,” he drawled, flicking the ash carelessly to the ground. “I didn’t mean to drug you for that long by the way.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I’m pretty sure you did what you did for a reason.”
“You’re right,” he said, chuckling. “I do everything for a reason. Very observant of you.”
“Where are we?” I asked, glancing around the hotel room with a grimace. “Why did you bring me here?”
“This is the one place that I knew your precious boss wouldn’t look.”
Sid flicked away the cigarette after snuffing the end of it out with his fingertips. He rose from the table to approach me with a smirk tugging at his lips. I gripped the chain of the handcuffs while I tried to decipher the look in his eyes.
My stomach churned queasily at the sight of lust spreading across Sid’s face. He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it onto a dusty chair before reaching up to loosen the tie at his neck.
“Sid,” I started, shaking my head at him pleadingly. “Please, no. I can’t do it.”
He arched an eyebrow at me. “Can’t do what?”
“Please don’t make me do this,” I whispered as he loosened his cuff links. It was clear that he had grabbed me right off his shift. He was dressed in his detective clothes—a nice shirt and pants. It didn’t draw any unusual attention to him. “Sid, don’t. You can’t force me to do something I don’t want to do.”
“Is that so?” Sid asked, chuckling. “Well, my dear, you happen to be wrong. You aren’t the one in charge here.”
He placed his badge on the dresser next to his gun. I held my breath while he ran a finger along the butt of his service gun.
“There’s a bullet with your boss’s name on it in this gun,” he said softly. “You know you won’t ever see that fucker again, right?”
“Sid—”
“It’s been eight hours since I escorted you out of that hotel.” He continued on, coming to stand at the edge of the bed. I flinched back when he raised his hand at me. “And within a matter of eight hours, he has caused enough headaches for me to last a lifetime. He’s called Internal Affairs. I have Flannagan prying at my ass over everything. Now I have other police officers from outside Salt Lake City tracking my cell phone pings. Very clever of him. Very clever.”
“He knows that you took me,” I said as my heart raced frantically. “He knows that I wouldn’t have walked out of that hotel suite without any of my things.”
“A minor slip up,” he said, shrugging his shoulders while loosening his belt. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Neither one of us will be in Utah for much longer.”
The mattress dipped down as Sid crawled along the bed to force my legs apart. Hot tears were streaming down my cheeks as I scooted as far away as
I possibly could.
“None of this is going to go away,” I said, desperation in my voice now. “You can’t just expect everyone to accept the fact that we both disappeared without explanation.”
Sid paused at that while he chewed over my words. “You’re right. That’s why I plan on having you speak to this boss of yours. You’re going to tell him that you’re leaving him and coming back to me. End of the damn story.”
“Not the end of the story,” I said with more bravery than I felt. “I won’t ever be okay with this, Sid. I am not going to let you keep abusing me. What you’re doing is a crime. You can’t take me somewhere that I don’t want to go.”
“Is that so?”
I felt uneasy with the smile spreading across Sid’s face as he practically swelled with amusement. He leaned over to hover above me with just a few inches of air between our faces. The smell of cigarettes and alcohol clung to his breath. I jerked back in response to being so close. Pain burst through my head when the back of it collided with the bed frame.
“This is what is going to happen starting within the next hour,” he whispered, his eyes threatening to burn holes into mine. “You are going to call this boss of yours. You are going to tell him that you’ve thought about it and you haven’t been able to get past your feelings for me. You are going to ask him to leave you alone, to let you go. Then—”
“I’m not going to do it!” I cried out, bucking wildly up against him. “I am not going to do anything that I don’t want to do, you fucking bastard!”
A part me was partially surprised that Sid didn’t instantly strike out to silence me. Instead, he seemed thrilled with the fight, his hands smoothing along my thighs as he let out a lustful sigh.
“You are going to call your mother,” he continued, unfazed by my struggle. “You are going to tell her that we are both leaving Utah together to get away from Bastian Burke. You know how much your mother hates him, right?”
“Because you made her hate him!”
“It’s funny how things like that work,” Sid said. He sat back with a disappointed sigh when the hotel phone rang. “Don’t move, darling. I’ll be right back.”
He slapped me hard on the thigh. Pain shot up my leg. I stared down at the welt forming on my upper thigh while Sid hopped off the bed with a cheerful whistle. He picked up the phone while he fished out a pack of smokes from his front shirt pocket.
“What do you got for me?” he asked, sitting down in the chair. “Someone take care of that other guy calling in his resources on me?”
I tugged at the metal handcuffs in vain. They were looped through a firm wooden bar in the bed frame. No matter how hard I tugged, the wood remained intact. I sank back against the bed in resignation.
I’m going to die.
Those four words settled in my brain with surprising peace. I knew Sid wouldn’t go out without a fight. He had every intention of taking me with him no matter where he went—in life or in death.
My eyes slipped closed as I half-listened to Sid talk on the phone. Bastian was looking for me. I knew it from the conversation on the phone. He was looking for me, and he knew Sid had taken me. That was my only glimmer of hope in the darkness that wanted to spread throughout me.
I didn’t care if it took everything inside me or if it killed me in the process. I needed to get away from Sid. I had to escape somehow when the opportunity arose. It was only a matter of trying to survive whatever Sid had planned for the two of us.
“Still searching for you,” Sid said, hanging the phone back up. He folded his hands neatly in his lap while regarding me through narrowed eyes. “Tell me, Joanna. Do you love this boss of yours?”
It was a trick question, a ploy to give him an excuse to hurt me. I tilted my chin bravely to gaze at him.
“Yes,” I said. “I love him. He loves me, too.”
Sid burst out laughing at that. It was a full-bellied type of laugh that instantly brought chills over me despite the hot, damp air of the hotel room.
“You think that a self-made billionaire really loves you?” he questioned, shaking his head at me. “You’re not worth that type of love, Joanna. He can have any woman in the world. Why would he settle on a pathetic person like you?”
“Speak for yourself,” I spat out, anger rising inside me. “I didn’t attack him, throw a rag over his face, and then kidnap him and take him to some seedy fucking hotel. That makes you the most pathetic person in the room here.”
“Feisty,” Sid observed, rising to his feet. “Well, I can tell you a list of women that man has slept with over the years. Too many to even count on both my hands.”
“Is that any different than you?”
“Not really,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “He can do better. That’s all I’m saying.”
He reached down to tug at his pants. Vomit burned in the back of my throat.
“So you can too by that theory,” I pointed out with desperation again. “You can do much better than me, Sid. You know you can have any woman you want.”
“I already know that,” he said impatiently. “No more stalling, Joanna. You owe me.”
“I don’t owe you anything! Not a damn thing, Sid. Not after what you did to me.”
“I admire this new backbone of yours,” he said as he slipped between my kicking legs with ease. “I really do, baby. It’s time to put you back in your place, though, back to where you used to be. The good girlfriend I had trained so well.”
Sid shoved a hand underneath my robe to grab the elastic band of my underwear. He tugged them down with a chuckle while I tried to kick him away.
“This will go a lot faster if you just take it,” he pointed out. “Just saying, sweetheart. Try to keep quiet, too.”
I screamed as he climbed on top of me.
Chapter 37
Bastian
Two days of no sleep. I couldn’t stop pacing my penthouse while I listened to Ashton and Joe both make various phone calls to their contacts. Nothing to the Salt Lake City Police Department, though. Not until the private investigator Ashton had hired figured out who the cops were that we could trust.
If that bastard harmed Joanna, or worse, I knew without a doubt I wouldn’t hesitate to let my fists do all the talking. The rest of my life wouldn’t be worth a damn thing if Joanna wasn’t a part of it. I knew without a doubt that Sid wouldn’t let Joanna go without some sort of confrontation.
I rubbed at my aching eyes. For the past two hours, I had sat in the privacy of my bedroom to let every emotion I felt spill out into the bottle of alcohol that now sat empty alongside my bed. No one knew where the two could’ve gone. Not even the hotel staff knew how Sid had managed to get in and out without alerting their security.
The man was a shitty worm that knew how to get through everyone to get what he wanted. We had something in common, though: neither one of us were willing to let go of Joanna. The only difference was that I knew I could take care of her without using my fists to make my point.
“Bastian?”
I looked up when the door to my bedroom opened. Ashton stepped in with his phone clutched tightly in his hand. Hope shot through me as I rose from where I had been seated on the edge of my bed.
“Do you have something?” I asked desperately. “Please tell me that investigator of yours has something that we can use.”
“Partially,” he said. “He’s working a lead right now. It has to deal with Sid’s former partner, who asked for a transfer over the past two weeks.”
“Transfer?” I repeated, frowning. “Is it the same partner that tried to arrest my driver?”
“I’m not sure,” Ashton said. “Just give him an hour to work this guy for information. Sid has had a few partners who requested transfers over the years. It seems like they can’t keep up with his crazy-ass behavior.”
“Who the fuck would want to sit in a cop car with a guy acting like a complete nutcase?” I ran a hand through my hair in aggravation. “One equipped with police training and
a gun to kill you if you double-crossed him.”
“It’s going to be okay, Bastian. Listen to me.” Ashton grasped my shoulder to keep me from pacing in front of him anxiously. “It’s going to be fine. We are going to find out where Joanna is. I doubt anything drastic has happened.”
“How are you so confident about that?” I asked bitterly. “I let my guard down for one fucking second. For one fucking second and that bastard swooped in and grabbed her.”
“The reason I believe that is because I know men like Sid. They are scared shitless when they realize that everyone is catching up to their actions. All they care about is how you perceive them.”
“This is an awful amount of work for someone who cares about their reputation,” I said, shaking my head in despair. “I have to go out there to find her. I’ll check every fucking hotel around here if I need to.”
“We don’t even know if they are still in Salt Lake,” Ashton said soothingly. “I know this is hard, man, but you’ve got wait until we hear word from my investigator. He’ll get the truth.”
“Right. I hope so.”
I swayed on my feet as the bottle of whiskey finally caught up with the lack of sleep. Ashton helped me sit back down on the bed. He nudged me back to lay down on the mattress. I couldn’t protest, even though a part of me clung stubbornly to being awake.
“I can’t sleep,” I muttered, shoving away Ashton’s hand. “What if—”
“If the PI calls, I’ll wake you up,” Ashton said. “You aren’t going to be useful if you’re drunk and unable to keep yourself upright. Get some sleep, even if it is only for an hour.”
I fell into a dark sleep full of Joanna’s screams for help echoing in my ear. I was running down a long hallway in the direction of those screams while desperation rose in me. I was close to the closed door, one hand on the brassy, cold knob when someone jerked me awake suddenly.
