“I’m cutting in,” Beau’s voice shouted in my ear.
Dammit. That was the last thing I wanted. But I did need to find out what had made Drew look so put out, and I knew Paige would be safe with Beau.
I put a finger under Paige’s chin and lifted it so she’d be looking at me.
“Do you want to dance with Beau for a minute?” I asked her, leaning in closer so she could hear me. “I need to check in with Drew.”
I thought I saw her wobble slightly, but with the sea of people dancing around us I thought I might have imagined it. She seemed fine when she smiled back at me.
The grateful look in her eyes let me know she was glad I was being reasonable about Beau. She shooed me away with a flick of her hands, and turned her gaze to Beau, who was standing next to me.
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” I warned him forcefully. He just grinned at me and raised his hands in the air.
I kissed Paige’s lips again, putting on a little show for him before I left. She closed her eyes and smiled dreamily. I stared at her for a second, my head cocked to the side.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Drew cocking his fist back; he hit the guy standing next to him squarely in the face.
I yelled at Beau to catch Paige as I gently pushed her in his direction, and I took off toward my best friend.
I reached Drew just as he was pulling back for another punch, and I grabbed his arms and pulled them up behind his back, looping my arms through his and locking them together.
“What happened?” I shouted.
Rob reached us then, too. He looked into Drew’s face and asked the same question.
“This asshole,” Drew yelled, glaring at the guy standing in front of us cradling his jaw in his hand. “Threw a drink on Gill!”
My mouth dropped and I snarled at the guy who was now taking a step toward Drew. Rob stepped In front of him.
Gillian was in hysterics next to us, the front of her completely soaked. Tima was there next to her, trying to calm her down.
“I did not!” the guy said angrily. “I spilled it. The bitch just got in my way!”
That did it for Drew. He wrenched his arms free and hurtled forward, shoving the guy in the chest so hard he smashed against the bar. The guy’s friends surged forward and the girls screamed. The bartenders were rushing toward us, and chaos was breaking loose all around the bar.
Without thinking, I grabbed Drew and towed him toward the stairs. I nodded to Rob, jerking my chin toward the girls and he grabbed both their elbows and followed behind me at a run. We entered the stairwell, shutting the door behind us just before the guy’s friends reached us.
I normally would never run from a fight, but everything in that room was about to fly off the handle. I needed to get Drew out before he lost his mind.
What the hell was going on with Drew, anyway? I respected Gillian as Paige’s friend just as much as he did, but throwing punches for her? I wasn’t even sure the guy did throw a drink on her on purpose. It was a crowded bar. It could easily have been an accident.
We reached the bottom of the stairwell, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I released Drew’s arms, and opened the door at the bottom.
Then the fire alarm bells blared in my ears, and a wave of panic unlike anything I’d ever known rolled through me as I thought of my girlfriend still upstairs.
Seventeen
Paige
My head was fuzzy. I was dancing with Beau, and I heard myself laughing and having a good time. But around the edges of my happiness lay a strange unease. I felt…off. My toes and fingers were tingling, and the music hit my ears through a long, far-off tunnel of sound.
I didn’t even know I was wobbling until Beau caught me in his arms. He held me against him, crouching slightly so our eyes were level.
“Paige, sweetheart,” he said, his voice filled with an urgency I couldn’t comprehend. “What’s wrong? Have you been drinking?”
I shook my head. “Yes. I mean, no.” Giggling, I pushed my hair off of my hot forehead.
He eyed me carefully, and steadied my face with his hands. “Yes? No? Which is it?”
I found the right motion for my head this time and nodded.
“Okay,” Beau said, smiling. “You’re a little tipsy, huh? Not like you, but okay.”
“I had one whole drink all to myself,” I slurred proudly.
Then the floor beneath me rolled, and I was thrown off course once more.
Beau caught me again. “Whoa. One drink? Paige, are you sure?”
I was tired of talking. So I began dancing some more, only I couldn’t hear the beat of the music properly. Or my body wouldn’t move correctly according to that beat. Suddenly, a blazing pain shot through my forehead, and I slapped a palm to it in agony.
“Ow,” I moaned. “My head hurts, Beau.”
His brow wrinkled in concern. “Okay, baby. Let’s get you out of here.”
He reached for me, and just as he did, someone in the crowd bumped him hard, causing him to stumble back.
And then the fire alarm began to screech.
I knew I was in trouble then, because the sound of a fire alarm should have sent a wave of panic coursing through my body that made it impossible to do anything but run for the exit.
Instead, I stared around me in a foggy haze.
“Beau?” I called, looking to the spot where he had been. But the crowd was pushing me forward as it surged toward the exit. And then I was lifted off my feet and there was a funny-smelling cloth over my nose and mouth.
Then…darkness.
~**~
I awoke somewhere dark.
So dark, and damp with the sounds of a dripping pipe emanating all around me. I was staring at a ceiling beamed with wood, and there was a single light bulb hanging from the center of the beams.
My vision went fuzzy, and then I passed out again.
~**~
The second time I awoke, it was with a startled gasp. I had no idea where I was or how I’d gotten there. I tried to sit up, struggling through the dull ache in my head, and looked around me. The surroundings hadn’t changed since the first time I woke, but now I was more alert.
Immediately, I knew what had happened. They’d taken me. The people who wanted me dead…they had me. So why wasn’t I dead yet?
My forehead wrinkled in concentration. I had been at Matchstick’s, dancing with Beau. Then the fire alarm had gone off and chaos had ensued. But before that…before that I’d been feeling sluggish and foggy.
They’d drugged my drink! I’d only had one drink tonight…was it still tonight? How much time had passed since I’d been here?
I looked around my prison again. Dark, dank, and damp…a basement? A cellar?
The floor was earthen. I could feel the texture of it when I swung my feet down. They’d taken my shoes; I was barefoot, but still wearing my red corset dress.
The softness underneath me was an air mattress, pushed up against a cinderblock wall. The cellar was chilly, but not as cold as it may have been if it weren’t for the kerosene heater situated across the room near a set of wooden stairs.
That was all there was…except for a lone toilet a few feet away from the bed. Gross.
Bile rose up in my throat, and my breath came fast and hard. I had been kidnapped. And someone wanted me dead. This was the worst possible thing that could have happened.
And I was all alone.
Hot tears blurred my vision, and I lay back down on the mattress and tried to count backwards from ten, slowly. It did nothing to calm the mounting fear that was quickly threatening to take over my consciousness completely.
What had I learned about situations like this? I always remembered seeing segments on talk shows where they invited someone in the criminology field to tell the audience what to do if they were taken. The first thing I was supposed to do was not allow myself to be taken to the second location.
I’d already blown that one.
I was also supposed to
observe as many details about my surroundings as possible. I’d done that. The cellar was pretty bare; there wasn’t anything else to catalogue.
I was supposed to try and talk to my captor. Tell them anything and everything personal about myself in order to make myself a person to them, and not just a possession. I would try that, when I met my captor.
If I met my captor. They could just leave me to die down here. With that thought, my nausea came to fruition, and I knelt in the dirt and vomited into the toilet. I heaved, and heaved, and heaved some more, until exhaustion became the only expression my body could possibly display and I passed out again on the air mattress.
~**~
The third time I woke, I began to wonder more intensely how much time had passed since I’d been taken from the club. I sat up, realizing for the first time that there were no windows, no way for me to know what time of day or night it was. I stood up and walked around the perimeter of the room, searching the brick walls for cracks or small panels or grates leading to the outside. I found a small grate in the wall near the floor, but it didn’t tell me anything about what time of day it was. Then I began to creep up the wooden steps, wondering what I’d find at the top.
At the top was a hatch instead of a door. This was definitely a storm cellar, and it was locked from the outside, so there was no way out.
I snuck dejectedly back down the stairs and sat once more on my bed, just staring around the room. I wasn’t sure how long I sat that way, because I had no way to pass the time. Hopelessness began to settle over me as I thought about my friends. About Clay.
They’d know by now what had happened. They’d k now that I was gone and they’d most likely assume I was dead, since that was all the person who took me had tried to do before now. They wouldn’t be looking for me. Unless they were looking for my body.
As I thought about how such a search would be affecting Clay, Beau, and Gillian, my heart cracked into pieces and I crumpled onto the bed in heaving sobs of devastation.
I lay there like that for a long time. Maybe hours, maybe more.
Until I heard a sound from the door at the top of the stairs.
A metallic-sounding lock slid back and the door was lifted open from the outside.
I sat bolt upright in the bed and stared at the stairs as light footsteps descended. Two legs cloaked in black pants came into view, and then a torso also sheathed in black, complete with black-gloved hands. And then a blond head emerged, with a stylish, perky haircut.
“Oh, hey Paige,” she said. “I’m glad to see you’re awake. We can have a little chat before I have to dispose of you.”
I couldn’t keep the shock off of my face, but somehow I was able to keep my voice flat and calm so she wouldn’t hear the tremble that resulted from my immense surprise.
“Krista,” I said. “What did I ever do to you?”
Eighteen
Clay
It was impossible to climb back up the stairs inside Matchstick’s after the stampede began. When the fire alarm bells started to ring, the massive crowd trying to escape the top floor had shoved me as I fought against them to move in the opposite direction. In the end, they won, and I was forced to ride the wave of panicking people out onto the sidewalk below.
I didn’t say a word to Gillian, Drew, Tima, or Rob, I just stood there and stared at the doors. My body was completely numb. I managed to tamp down the boiling bubble of fear rolling low in my gut long enough to keep my eyes glued to the building, willing Beau to walk out of those doors with my girl.
“Clay,” Drew murmured, placing both of his hands on my shoulders, a calming gesture.
When Drew took the time to call me by my name and not “dude” or “man,” I knew something was seriously wrong.
“Don’t,” I snapped. I shook his hands off my shoulders.
He didn’t try to touch me again, just sidled up to stand next to me. I felt Rob flank my other side. But I could still hear Gillian and Tima’s sniffles from behind me, and the sound steeled my nerves. They shouldn’t be crying. Paige was going to walk out of those doors at any minute.
Then we saw tendrils of smoke begin to billow out a window near the top of the building, and my resolve cracked. I ran for the front doors.
The sound of Gillian screaming behind me—“Get him! Get him!”—didn’t slow me down at all. But the big, burly fireman standing in front of the door certainly did.
“No, son,” he said gently. “You aren’t going in there. We’ve got this.”
I backed away in horror. The building was actually on fire. Another fire. Paige was stuck inside a burning building. Again.
I fell to my knees on the sidewalk. Where was she? The doors continued to swing open; people still straggled out. I watched as a couple, a boy and a girl from the university, walked out holding on to each other tightly, coughing from the thickening smoke inside.
“He didn’t leave her,” I said quietly as I watched them.
Rob knelt next to me. “You didn’t leave Paige. You couldn’t have known this was going to happen Clay. You left her in good hands. Beau will get her out. You’ll see her in a minute.”
The knot in my stomach was growing, creeping up like vines into my chest, but I still stared at the doors.
“Not a fire,” I heard as a fireman rushed past. I rocketed to my feet and grabbed his arm.
“What?” I said urgently. “What’d you just say?”
He glanced at me, and paused in his steps. “It’s not a fire. Someone set off a bunch of smoke bombs inside the building, in the bathrooms upstairs. They were nasty, and thick, but the smoke is dissipating now. Everyone will get out safely.”
He walked away, and I sagged in relief on the sidewalk. We all watched the doors more closely as the last people were escorted out of the building by firefighters, or straggled out on their own.
When I saw them I was going to squeeze Paige and never let her go.
And then I was going to ask her to be my wife.
Beau finally exited, looking disheveled and exhausted. When his eyes met mine, I faltered. The mixture of torment and shame in his eyes nearly stopped my heart.
And Paige wasn’t with him.
I stared at him in disbelief as he walked over to us alone, his eyes searching the crowd as he did so.
“She’s not out here?” he asked loudly. “Paige? She’s not with you?”
The knot of emotion in my stomach exploded, and fury rolled out of me.
“What?” I roared. “What the hell are you talking about? Paige was supposed to be with you! Of course she’s not out here! I left her in there with you!”
I reached him and shoved his chest, sending him to flying backward.
“We’ve been waiting to see you and Paige walk out together! Where the fuck is she?”
Beau stared at me in shock. “I don’t know. I don’t know! We got separated!”
He sank to his knees on the sidewalk as I had, but I didn’t have the time or the patience for his breakdown.
I stalked back up to the doors, where two policemen were now manning the door. They eyed me warily as I approached.
“Mr. Forbes,” one greeted me. “Can we help you?”
I was a familiar face around the police station.
“Yeah,” I snapped. “My girlfriend is still inside. I need to go in and look for her.”
They glanced at each other, and one of them shook his head slowly. “She’s not in there, Mr. Forbes. The firefighters just gave the all-clear. Everyone is out.”
I stared at them in disbelief, gearing up to argue. But a sharp tug on my shirt stopped me and I turned to see Gillian standing there.
“Come here,” she said urgently. “Listen to what Beau has to say.”
Beau’s eyes were bloodshot and he was still on his knees on the concrete, so I crouched down next to him.
“I’m confused,” I said slowly and carefully, like I was speaking to a child. “I left Paige inside with you. The fire alarm goes off, and you…l
ose her? Leave her? What happened up there?”
He stared miserably at me, but there was a hint of anger in his eyes, too.
“I would. Never. Leave. Her.” He spit the words like something disgusting from his mouth. “Never. You know that about me, even if you know nothing else.”
He stared at me, daring me to disagree with him.
I didn’t. I just waited.
“You need to know something. I noticed that Paige was wasted right before the place went crazy. Like, she was totally drunk off her ass.”
I shook my head, not comprehending. “No, she wasn’t. She only had one drink.”
“That’s what she told me, but from the way she was acting, that’s impossible. Unless…”
We stared at each other, coming to the realization at the same time.
“Gill!” I said quickly, and she kneeled down next to me.
“What?”
“Where did Paige get that pink drink?”
“Um,” Gillian scrunched up her lips to one side. “I’m not sure.”
“Think, Gillian! Did she get it from the bar?” I reached out and gripped Gillian’s shoulders with my hands firmly.
Drew grunted behind me, but I ignored him. Gillian’s brown eyes stared into mine, wide with confusion.
“N-no,” she stammered. “Not from the bar. Someone gave it to her. They were handing out samples or something.”
I groaned. “No, no, no. Oh, God.”
“What are you thinking?” Rob asked quickly.
“I’m thinking that someone drugged Paige right under our noses, and then they executed a really convenient distraction, and now she’s gone!”
I stood up, tilted my head back until I was staring at the stars, and I roared.
~**~
I stood on the sidewalk, still outside of Matchstick’s now being questioned by the police.
“Again, Mr. Forbes,” a uniformed officer was saying. “Tell us how you know your girlfriend was drugged?”
I sighed, frustration getting close to boiling over inside of me.
“I have told you this a million times. Are we going to be done soon, so I can get out of here and start looking for her?”
Settling Ashes: A New Adult/College Romance (The Ashes Series Book 2) Page 15
