Angel is beside me in seconds, calling out to Ava, pleading for her to wake up. They’ve been drugged, possibly worse. I lift my phone, dialing for help, as Angel scoops Ava into his arms, hands roaming her face, trying to get her to wake up. I glance around in the darkness as I lift Jenny, my eyes scanning every inch of the ground, but she’s not here. She’s gone. Willow is gone.
“Someone did this,” I grind out. “Someone has her.”
“We don’t know that, boss,” Angel says, his voice gruff. “She could have run off, could be getting help.”
“It has been hours,” I growl, turning and striding towards the road where the paramedics will find us. “She isn’t here.”
Angel doesn’t answer, because he knows, deep down he fucking knows that I’m right. Someone has her. Someone took her and they’re going to fucking hurt her if I don’t find out who very soon. For right now, though, I need answers and the only people who can give me answers are the two unconscious girls we’re carrying to the road for help. When they wake up, they’ll give me what I need.
They have to give me what I need.
Paramedics arrive within minutes and load the girls into the ambulance, telling us to meet them at the hospital. Angel gets the truck while I call the guys, telling them what has happened. Rusty gets straight onto finding out as much information as he can while Ace and Bull get to work seeing if they can find out what the fuck went on here. Angel and I drive silently to the hospital, praying there are answers there, because without them, we’re fucked.
The second we arrive we’re whisked aside and asked questions. I answer them as briskly as I can, telling them we found the girls on the ground and have no idea what happened to them, that they walked to the store to get pizza and didn’t come back. It’s a lie, but it’s the only lie that will get us out of this place without any police interference. I don’t have the time or patience for police right now, I need to find my girl and I need to fucking fix this.
Hour’s pass, and it feels like an eternity as I pace up and down the halls, waiting for the moment they open their eyes and tell us who did this to them. That moment comes in the early hours of the morning. The doctor tells us they’re awake, and they had been hit with chloroform mixed with something else they’re trying to identify, something that had them out for a lot longer than they should have been, but he assures us they’re doing well and should make a full recovery.
The walk to the recovery room is slow, and my legs drag as I round the corner and see them sitting in a hospital bed, their eyes filled with unshed tears, their skin pale and their bodies weak. They look like death, and I know they feel like death, but when Ava’s eyes meet mine, her tears flow and she croaks out a name before I’ve even reached the bed. “Mick.”
I pause, the world spinning around me as I soak in what she’s just said. Angel rushes to her side, taking her hand, but her eyes don’t leave mine as she swallows and tries again, louder this time. “It was Mick and Sharleen.”
All the blood in my body rushes to my heart as it pounds angrily against my chest, making a sound in my ears that is nearly deafening as I process what I just heard. My father, my own fucking father, and my wife. All this time, I would have never thought he was who she was working for. I had my suspicions, I knew she was up to something, but never in my wildest fucking imaginings would I have come up with this.
Betrayal and something else, something deeper and darker, slam into me as I clench my fists and fight for calm.
He took the most important thing in my life.
He took the only thing that mattered to me, and I don’t know what he wants with her.
What he fails to understand is I’m not a broken little boy anymore.
I’m a fucking man, and he’s going to pay for ever laying his hands on my woman.
I’ll kill him, but not before I look him in the eyes and show him what fear truly is.
I’m coming for him.
But he won’t know what hit him.
I’ll make sure of it.
WILLOW
Time is not my friend.
Time seems as though it drags on as I sit in this room, locked up, wondering what the hell kind of situation I’ve gotten myself into this time. It’s terrifying, being back here, a prisoner, being held by a man that is using me to get something else. Only this man, he’s dangerous, he’s far worse than the man who started all of this. Why, he’s the man who created that person and his evil runs deep. Jagger would never compare to Mick when it comes to cruelty, and the fear of what he’s going to do to me is almost too much to handle.