“Let me go,” I told him. “Seriously, Stephen, you’re going to be so fucked if you don’t let me go.”
But that’s one thing about the girl who always lies . . . nobody ever believes her when she tells the truth.
Another sneer. I’d pushed him too far. I’d pushed him hard enough that he was losing his shit rough enough to hurt me. He slammed me harder into the wall, and this time it hurt. It hurt enough that I should’ve liked it.
“Shut the fuck up,” he snarled at me. “Believe me, baby, you’ve cost me enough time already. You’d better buckle up. I’ll be claiming the whole damn lot of it back.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want it. I don’t want you.”
He didn’t listen. He didn’t want to listen.
“It’s gonna be a long, dirty, slow fucking ride, baby girl,” he said. “Just as well the drummer ain’t back until morning.”19LucianI was pacing like a madman when the cab finally showed up on the street outside Spirit Club. I was a charging bull when I leapt forward in my seat and told the driver who I was.
“You get me to that fucking venue,” I snapped at him, and he was already nodding, crapping himself in the driver’s seat.
Every second felt like a year on that journey. The tracker was in some house down on the west side. Another hovel on top of a hovel.
The tracker didn’t move a meter the whole journey.
“Come on,” I snarled at the driver. “Faster.”
He couldn’t go any faster. There were drunken assholes in the street singing bullshit songs and swaying across the road when we tried to pass them. So, I did it. I used the Morelli title to get me what I wanted, regardless of the cost. I ordered the cab driver to run the assholes down, but he was a statue in his damn seat until I barked at him.
“Run the drunken cunts down! Now! Or I’ll get you the fuck run down next time you step out in this place!”
He listened. Good call, asshole. The cab screeched forward, and the morons bailed out of the way. Just the one of them was slow enough to smash off the front bumper and collapse to the floor. I didn’t even glance behind to see if he was moving.
“Faster!” I snapped again, and the driver was nodding, screeching that cab around the street corners.
He pulled up outside the house so fast that the brakes slammed on and sent me lurching forward. I didn’t care. I was already scrambling out of there. The cab pulled away from me at full acceleration without waiting for the fare, and I didn’t care about that either. It was a house party, and I was straight up to the front door of the shithole, elbowing my way past fools and storming my way towards my Elaine.
Because that’s what she was.
She was my Elaine. My Elaine Constantine.
I barged my way through the final few partiers, plowing into a mess of a kitchen space, but she wasn’t there. There was a green-haired slut standing where the tracker was pointing me, and one shove of her aside told me all I needed to know.
Elaine’s clutch bag was on the sideboard amongst the beer bottles.
My blood froze in my veins.
I grabbed it and looked inside. Everything was still in there – cell, keys, and cash. Her stash of coke was in the lining, untouched.
No. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t be fucking gone.
But she was.
My Elaine was gone.
I gripped that clutch tight and charged around that place like a maniac, looking in every single damn space and shadow on the ground floor. I grabbed people and barked out the questions, where is she? Where the fuck is she? until the whole place was on edge, looking at me. I didn’t fucking care. All I cared about was that pretty little bitch.
I climbed the stairs, leaping over people fondling each other on the landing, shoving some of them aside. If she was up there . . . if she was up there and taking his dick . . . my blood boiled at the thought.
The first bedroom I burst into had girls giggling on the bed with a wine bottle being slugged between them. The second had couples littered all over it, grunting and fucking. The third bedroom was in darkness, and I pawed for the light. No sign of my pretty bitch, but her pussy boy bestie was in there with his mouth around his loverboy’s dick.
He recognized me.
Pussy boy recognized me.
The Blue Hawk freak rocker let out a groan of a fuck you, fuck off out of here, but I was already on him, shoving him down onto the floor.
I was on pussy boy in a heartbeat, my face right up to his as I held her clutch up high.