by Riley Ashby
“We thought we would go into the city today. I want to shop for some baby supplies.”
“I don’t understand why we can’t shop online,” Tori said. “Then I wouldn’t have to put on shoes.”
“I’d like to try to have a semi-normal pregnancy.” Sophie looked uncomfortable as she got to her feet and stretched her arms over her head. Her ankles already looked swollen. “The designer prenatal vitamins are already stressing me out, but Ellery is convinced drugstore vitamins aren’t good enough for his daughter. Plus, it’ll be nice to have a girls’ day.” She smiled at us hopefully. Tori agreed after some hedging, and Vail seemed just as excited as Sophie to go out. They turned to look at me.
“I don’t know,” I waffled. “I’ve never been much of a shopper.”
“But it’s baby stuff,” Sophie implored. “Cute little shoes! Tiny socks! Onesies with funny sayings on them!”
“It’ll be fun,” Vail chimed in. “Plus, Sophie’s right. It’s a normal thing to do, and we’re just four normal gals. Right?”
I snorted, and even Tori chuckled. “Sure, why not. But I have to check with Archer.”
There was a beat of silence as the three girls looked at each other. Tori rolled her eyes. “Don’t think I can’t take him out if he decides to go all custodial on you. Tell him it’s what you want to do. He should respect that.”
I nodded, thinking. He did say I ought to spend time with people other than him. “We’ll see.”
“Well, let’s get this out of the way then, so we can get showered and dressed.”
The practice pushed me further than I would have thought I could go before I started working out with Archer on a regular basis, but it also made me miss my time with him. I would have to find a way to get back in the weight room with him a few days a week if I could help it.
He came into the bedroom as I was dressing, already looking upset.
“Are you going into the city with them?”
I paused, pulling on shorts. “Is that okay?”
He sighed and sat on the bed facing me, eyes focused on my legs even as I pulled on my clothes. “I don’t like the idea of it.”
“But you’re not saying no.”
He pulled me between his thighs as I finished dressing, hands resting on my butt and his face level with my sternum. He had to tilt his head back to look at me. “I’d tie you to the bed if I thought that bodyguard of theirs wouldn’t come in here and snap my neck.”
“You could take her.”
“I could, but don’t tell her that. That girl has the personality of an annoying, yappy chihuahua.”
I giggled, and he planted a kiss on my chest. It was sweet, almost routine, as if he’d been doing it for ages.
“I don’t want you to go. But Tori barged into our meeting and told me she’d break my fingers if I kept you here.”
“She’ll look out for me,” I whispered, unsure if I believed my own words. Was anyone able to take care of me besides Archer? I didn’t like the idea of putting my well-being in someone else’s hands, even for a few hours.
He stood and picked me up as he did so, and I kicked my feet out behind me as my arms went around his neck.
“Be careful,” he whispered, before kissing me possessively. It was another one of those assertive ones; he pushed his tongue into my mouth and then pulled back before I could return the gesture.
“I’ll come back,” I promised over the hammering of my heart. I didn’t want to leave him behind, and I could tell by the way he held me that he didn’t want me to go. “It’ll just be a few hours.”
All that tough talk, but the man couldn’t keep his emotions off his face when we were alone. I ran my fingernails along his beard, and he shook his head free. When he stopped moving, his face was impassive once more.
“Be careful,” he instructed. “Pretend I’m there, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t let you do if I hadn’t checked it out first.”
He walked me out to where the other girls were waiting in a car that was about as spacious on the inside as some people’s bedrooms. He closed the door behind me and stood in one place until we turned out of the driveway of the house. My stomach twisted the moment he was out of sight, and I almost asked the driver to turn around. I even went so far as to open my mouth, but a look from Vail silenced me. She stared at me skeptically, one eyebrow raised, as though she expected me to cave any second. I curled up against the seat and pulled out my phone to text him instead.
“Oh, put that away.” Tori snatched it out of my hand before I could even unlock my home screen. “I’ll let him know what we’re doing, but you need to detach a little bit. Seriously, I thought Ellery and Sophie were joined at the hip, but you two take ‘exclusive’ to an entirely new level.”
My fingers itched. “Let me have my phone back.”
She shook her head. “You can have it when we’re on our way home.”
My vision blurred, but I wasn’t crying. I lunged across the seat at her, somehow managing to take her by surprise, and snatched it out of her hands.
“Don’t touch my things,” I nearly shouted. This was my phone, and I would text him if I wanted to. I was sick of people taking things away from me, telling me I wasn’t worthy of owning anything. Archer understood that, so why didn’t she?
Tori made a concerted effort to close her mouth as she stared at me. “Fine. Whatever.” She huffed and turned to look out the window, crossing her arms.
Sophie leaned forward, ever eager to defuse the situation. “Come on, let’s all have fun. I haven’t left the property since we got back from New York, so I’d like to enjoy this outing.”
I nodded reluctantly and slid the phone into my bra instead of my purse, more assured that I could feel it vibrate with a text there. I wouldn’t miss it if he texted me.
The afternoon was surprisingly fun. We stopped first for lunch at an all-vegan restaurant that Sophie insisted on, since it was her idea to go out, and then went shopping at a few boutiques. Vail didn’t even blink at the thousand-dollar strollers and gold-plated baby monitors, but I saw Sophie’s face pale when she looked at the price tags.
“It’s fine,” Tori emphasized. “Ellery won’t even notice. In fact, he’ll probably insist on getting the most expensive shit here.”
“I’m not used to spending money like this,” Sophie murmured as she drifted her fingers across a unicorn-themed mobile that somehow cost a hundred and fifty dollars. “Is there a secondhand shop we could go to?”
“Only because I know you won’t actually buy anything here,” Vail said, “but I’m getting you this mobile.”
We drove out of the higher-end part of the city to a more suburb-y area and found a store that sold gently used baby clothes as well as some new stuff. Sophie beamed as she sorted through the socks and onesies. She loaded up her cart with clothes and toys and didn’t flinch a bit when the total came up. It was still far more than I would have paid for a child, but then I couldn’t imagine why people wanted babies in the first place.
I gratefully skipped toward the car when we decided to go back to the house. I had been on edge all afternoon, jumping at shadows and searching every stranger’s face for hints of malice or suspicious intentions. But there was no one. Maybe Archer had managed to scare off the people who had been after me. Maybe they would leave me alone.
The girls stood chatting on the sidewalk, trying to decide if we would go back to the house for dinner or eat out. They didn’t seem to care we were standing in direct sun, but I was sick of the heat. I hadn’t had to be out in the open air for more than a few minutes at a time. Leaving them to discuss, I opened the side door and sank gratefully into the car. I’d been standing for far too long in unfamiliar shoes, and my feet ached. I pulled the car door shut to keep the late summer heat from invading the air-conditioned space as I leaned back and closed my eyes.
I was so tired I almost didn’t notice when the car started moving.
I leaned forward. “Don’t go anywhere yet. The
others aren’t in the car.”
The driver looked at me in the rearview mirror but said nothing. I reached for the car door, but he engaged the locks. Looking out the back window, I saw the girls looking after the car with confused expressions before Tori took off running toward us, and Vail pulled out her phone.
“Where are we going? Who are you?”
The man didn’t respond. He held up his hand. “Purse.”
I started as Tori’s hands slapped against the window, pulling fruitlessly at the door handle. The driver grabbed my arm and yanked me forward, swerving and nearly swiping an oncoming car as we turned out of the parking lot and into traffic. Still, Tori kept running after the car. She was on her phone too, screaming into it as she ran barefoot down the side of the road.
He wants your phone. That was why he was asking for my purse. But my phone was stashed safely against my chest, returned securely to my bra every time I’d finished texting Archer about where we were going. He hadn’t told me anything about what he was doing, but he read all my texts the moment they arrived and had replied immediately each time.
Be careful.
Keep your head on a swivel.
You need to come back soon.
My phone started buzzing against my skin now, the sound muffled by the commotion in the front seat and the roaring of the engine as we finally left Tori behind. I handed my purse over to the driver, and he rolled down his window long enough to toss it out.
“Why are you doing this?” I demanded, trying to keep the tears from my voice. Archer would find me. I had my phone, and he’d put tracking on it. He’d be able to get to me if I could keep it hidden long enough. But how far away would we get before he could catch up? What would happen when they found it? And who was this guy taking me to anyway?
“Because someone’s paying me a lot of money,” the driver responded. “Now be quiet. They gave me drugs but told me not to use them unless I have to.” His eyes flicked to me in the mirror. “Do I need to use them?”
I shook my head and sat back meekly in the chair. I slid my hands beneath my thighs to try to stop their shaking, but my knees started fidgeting the moment I did so.
“Please,” I begged. “Let me out here. I won’t say anything. Don’t take me away …” I stopped short of adding from him.
He shook his head. “I don’t get paid until I deliver you. Now be quiet.” He raised the partition most of the way, so I could barely see anything through the windshield, but he could see me in the mirror. There was no use trying to signal for help through the windows; I knew they were too dark for anyone to see me. I wrapped my arms around myself, unable to answer my phone as it buzzed against my skin again and again until it eventually stopped.
It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to let her go out into the open without me to watch out for her, especially with her history of running off. Ellery and Castel assured me with waning patience that she was in good hands. Still, Tori had multiple people to look after, not just Josie. It would be all too easy for something to go wrong and steal her attention away, allowing Josie to take off or someone to sneak her away.
It was irritating how easily I’d let myself slip into feeling this way about her. Maybe this was part of the reason I had always been so cold toward the women I tried to help, colder than I should have been when they were vulnerable and needed someone to be warm. Because if I had let myself be the comfort they needed, and if I had maybe let one of them slip past my guard, then maybe I could have turned into this monster for any of them. Taking what I wanted and falling too hard in the process, too tempted by their wide eyes and pouty lips. Charmed by the way they threw themselves at my feet, all too eager to please, willing to do what was necessary if it meant I’d give them a pat on the head and some food to eat.
Josie wasn’t like that, though. Not completely. It was true that some part of her flipped off when I took control of her, or she sensed she’d crossed a line, but damn if she didn’t push up against the boundary every chance she got. As much as I loved the way she leaned into my touch, I was equally fascinated with her mouthy comebacks, the way she stood up for herself, and the way she wasn’t afraid to let me know when I pissed her off. If I was being honest with myself, her flipping me off as she walked away pulled at my heart the same way it did when she twisted to look at me before turning the corner.
Ellery’d had the man in his basement pumped for some more information before shoving him into the trunk of a car and dropped off in the middle of LA with an ankle bracelet and plenty of threats to keep him out of trouble for the foreseeable future. Castel had put some bugs in his apartment, though we didn’t expect him to stay there for long. But we’d keep an eye on him to make sure he stayed away from his old business partners.
As part of his security role for Ellery’s company, Castel had brushed up even more on his already considerable computer skills to be able to hack even some of the more well-guarded websites. As a result, we had everything we could want to know about Alicia Tabor within a few hours. But it seemed like after Josie took off, Alicia did much the same in terms of disappearing. She’d held a few minimum wage jobs, but we suspected she had a lot more money coming in from somewhere else.
“She’s living way too comfortably, considering she was spending all her time as her mother’s caretaker,” Ellery commented as he browsed through the photos we found of the apartment she shared with her mother.
“Why didn’t she hire someone to do that for her, I wonder?”
Castel tapped his fingers against his lips. “Guaranteeing an inheritance?”
“That’s a rich people problem, Castel. Middle-class girls from the Midwest don’t expect much of anything from their parents when they die.”
“There is this,” Ellery said, spinning his laptop around for me to look. I frowned at the screen.
“You think that’s a good enough reason for a sister to kidnap her own sibling? Why wouldn’t she just talk to her?”
“No clue.” Ellery shrugged. “Things don’t exactly go the way we think they ought to in this household, at least not when it comes to our women.”
That wasn’t exactly reassuring.
Castel’s phone sounded, prompting him to cross the room to pick it up.
“It’s Tori,” he said with surprise.
“I’m glad you two are getting along,” Ellery said, sounding pleased. “I thought you were going to take each other out for a while there.”
Castel lifted the phone to his ear. “What is it?” He listened intently for a moment, his face quickly turning to a frown. He snapped his fingers and gestured for me to come over to him.
My stomach hardened into a rock.
He put Tori on speaker as I approached.
“Tell us what happened,” he commanded.
“The car took off north.” Tori sounded out of breath. “I chased them up the highway, but he wasn’t slowing.”
“Son of a bitch,” I cursed, ready to break something. She took off again? What more could I do to convince her to let me handle this? “How did she get away from you?”
“She didn’t, Archer. Someone took her. We were standing on the sidewalk talking, and she got into the car, and the car took off with her in it. The same car and driver we all took into the city.”
“Who the fuck was the driver?” Ellery bellowed.
“It was Brian, the new guy.”
“Fucking Brian.” He was already on his phone, levying threats at whoever was responsible for hiring this man.
I pulled my phone and dialed Josie immediately, but the line rang endlessly until going to voicemail.
I went absolutely mad, calling her phone over and over and growing more desperate each time it ended without her answering. If she wasn’t answering, it would mean they had gotten rid of her phone.
I could still find her, but it would take longer. That was unacceptable.
“Aren’t you tracking her, Archer?”
I walked back over to her while Castel conti
nued to grill Tori.
“I was, but she’s not picking up her phone.”
“Let’s check it just to see.”
“I don’t have time for this. I need to get after her.”
“Keep your head, Archer. Pull up the tracker.”
I did as he asked and threw the phone at him, too angry to even look at it. I was aching to get out of the door and get to the last place she was seen. I could figure something out from there.
“It’s still moving, Archer.” Ellery beckoned me back to his side, and I flew across the room to see. I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw the marker indicating Josie’s presence moving on the highway out of city and into the mountains.
“Good girl,” I whispered in relief. She’d found a way to hang on to it. There was no time to lose. I bolted out the door.
“I need a set of keys,” I growled as I ran down the hallway, stopping by our room only long enough to grab my weapons. I didn’t think I’d need them here. I thought we were safe. I promised her she would be protected, and instead, she was stolen from right under my nose. Christ, I would never forgive myself.
“I’m sorry, Archer.” Ellery spoke through his teeth, texting furiously, presumably making sure his own woman was safe and whole. “She should have been safe here. When I found out who sent that fucker into my house, I’m going to make sure they never work in the city again.”
“It’s not your fault. I should have been with her.” I never should have let her out of my sight. I should have checked out all the people here myself, rather than take a near stranger’s word on their honor. I had let her down in every sense of the word. “How’s Sophie?”
“All three other girls are fine. Tori has some scratches on her feet from running after the car, but she’s ready to go. I have a contact in the city going to get them now. Once she’s back, we’ll set out.”
I shook my head. “I’m not waiting for them. I’m going out now.”
I plunged into the dark garage, blinking as the lights flickered on and illuminated Ellery’s impressive car collection. I looked around until I spotted a wall of car keys, then stalked over and grabbed a set at random.
