Chapter 16 Anna
ANNA
It wasn’t until my brother spoke that I got ripped out of my trance.
“Eat up, we have to leave soon,” he said as he made a swift exit from my room.
I half expected another fight to break out, and I held my breath. But after my lungs screamed for air, I released it as I perched on the edge of my bed. I pulled the tray into my lap and stared down at it. A tray that was so obviously made for me.
He made me breakfast?
No, he makes everyone breakfast.
But he brought me breakfast.
Because you’re lazy as fuck. Eat.
I shook my head softly and gobbled it down, forkful by forkful. There was no time to waste, especially since someone had been taken from our territory. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Did the trafficking ring know we were all the way over here? Were they taunting us?
Was Brutus right about us not being safe here?
I shook my head and downed the orange juice before I set the tray off to the side.
I pulled on a long pair of my socks that came all the way up to my knees, then grabbed my riding boots from the floor of the closet.
Lacing them up was easily the most arduous part of getting ready for a ride, but I never rode without being fully covered and protected.
Even if it was still technically summertime.
I took one look at myself in the mirror and realized I chose all black clothing.
I tried not to think too much about it. Brutus looked good in black, though.
It was weird seeing him in other colors.
Any colors, really. But then again, if he patrolled businesses out in the open, then he had to be able to blend in.
And Brutus certainly didn’t blend in well.
After discarding my tray in the sink in the kitchen, I made my way out to my front yard. He held a helmet out for me while his second-in-command, Dozer, sat straddling his bike as well.
“Get on,” my brother said simply.
I took the helmet from him and slipped it on. “Yep.”
I threw my leg over the back of my brother’s bike and wrapped my arms around him.
We took off without a second thought, and as my thoughts wandered, I found myself wondering what it would be like to take a ride with Brutus.
Would I even be able to hold onto him properly?
Where would he take me? Did he have a special place that he went to whenever he rode by himself?
Did he ever ride by himself?
Maybe I’d ask him for a ride one of these days.
Maybe I won’t have to.
The thought of not having to ask for every single little thing from a man tugged a smile across my face.
I was used to begging. Well not begging.
But with men, I always had to speak up about things.
If we were going to eat somewhere, I had to pick.
If we were going out to do something, I had to choose what we were doing.
If we hung out and watched a movie, I had to pick the movie.
And if we went too long without speaking, I had to be the one to reach out first.
It was exhaustive.
Bee didn’t seem to be like that, though.
The bike coming to a halt pulled me out of my trance. The smile slid from my face as I dismounted off the bike and I quickly pulled the helmet off my head. I handed it to King, who in turn handed me the two totes of goodie bags that I had to give out to the homeless.
Hopefully someone saw something.
“Is this where she was taken from?” I asked.
“According to the Chief of Police, she was last seen here,” King said as he pointed to one of the cameras perched in the trees.
I looked up at the red dot in the trees and waved. “Do we have the video?”
“Yep,” my brother said as he thrusted his cell phone into my face.
I looked down while I held the two tote bags and watched the footage.
It wasn’t of the kidnapping, but it was of the young woman.
She looked up at the camera and waved like so many of the residents of our hometown did.
Our part of the state was covered in trees and foliage.
We had a lot of green, which meant we had a lot of hiding places for unsavory people and the like.
King and his crew had championed the installation of these cameras, not just at stoplights and stop signs, but also off the beaten pathway in trees and in places where people had a tendency to do things like run.
It was clearly what this woman was doing.
“She was just out on a run,” I whispered as I nodded at the phone. “Replay it again.”
“Of course,” my brother said as he restarted the video.
I watched it about half a dozen times, memorizing the woman’s every movement. And then, I handed him the two tote bags. I walked over to where she entered the camera’s view and took up her body positioning, trotting along through the frame and even going so far as to look up and wave to the camera.
I allowed everything to overwhelm me so that my senses could parse through the information.
I kept walking back to King, watching the video, and then replaying the woman’s movements through the frames we had of her on the camera.
“And she was gone by the time she got to the other cameras?” I asked.
King nodded, continuing to hold out his phone. “She pops up on none of the others. She doesn’t backtrack. She just disappears.”
“No one just disappears,” I muttered as I looked around. But then I turned and looked back up at my brother. “Do we know anything else? Anything at all?”
King, knowing my tactics, knew that was the cue to put his phone away. “We’ve already checked the surrounding woods for two miles in all directions. No footprints. Nothing discarded. Not so much as a fucking shoe left behind.”
“No cell phone recovery?”
“Nope.”
“No wallet? No purse? No ID?”
“Nope, nope, and nada.”
“But we do have her identified since she looked up at the camera?”
King nodded. “Yep. Kelley Arbock, 22. In her last semester at the community college.”
I scrubbed my hands down my face. “All right. And there aren’t any abandoned buildings you guys came—”
“No,” King said, interrupting me.
I shot him a look. I hated it when people did that, but when he just gave me a defeated shrug, I knew he and his guys already exhausted all of their avenues.
Which was why they called on me.
“Okay,” I said breathlessly as my hands fell away from my face. “So the fuckers that took her got creative. We just have to figure out what that was.”
King thumbed over his shoulder. “The only building in this vicinity at all is the abandoned building through the woods about half a mile that way.”
I looked in the direction he pointed. “Did you guys walk through it at all?”
“It’s not as abandoned as we thought when we talked up on it.”
I grabbed the two tote bags from him. I hated it when King sent me on these wild goose chases whenever he had all of the information at his disposal that I needed.
But I also knew how my brother’s mind worked.
He didn’t want to get ahead of himself. He wanted to make sure that someone else took the exact same logical steps that he had before jumping to conclusions.
“You’re on the right track, let’s go,” I said.
I heard him sigh with relief as he fell in step to my right with Dozer to my left.
If there was anyone who had eyes on everything around this town, it was the homeless population.
We didn’t have a robust population like that, but we had enough that it was a city-wide problem that the mayor was attempting to fix.
But in the meantime, they usually took up in some of the abandoned warehouse buildings that shuttered their doors long ago as manufacturing jobs and plants dried up in the area.
No wonder my brother needed me.
The instant the abandoned building came into view, I heard footsteps scuttling. King and his crew weren’t the greatest with these guys, mostly because their sizes and scowls were intimidating. But I saw a few heads peeking through smashed and chipped windows, and someone shouted out.
“It’s Anna! She’s got bags!”
I smiled and held up the two tote bags. “Who wants goodies!?”
One by one, the vagrant population that had taken up residence in the warehouse funneled out the door.
My heart broke for some of the kids who had aged out of a system that didn’t give a flying fuck about them.
They were the first to me, hugging me around the neck and asking if I had anything for them.
“Of course I do,” I said with a smile on my face. “Did you think I’d come empty-handed? Since when?”
Some of the older homeless population lumbered out after the younger ones.
They always let the kids have first dibs on things, which was why I did my best to make the baggies as even as possible across the board.
Hands shoved their way into the totes and I felt my brother’s presence at my back, but I just looked over my shoulder and shook my head at him.
The last thing I needed was these guys thinking that my brother and Dozer were here to rough someone up.
Not like they’d do that shit to homeless people, for fuck’s sake.
But sometimes they looked like they would.
“It’s all right, it’s okay, there’s enough for everyone,” I said as I did my best to keep and hold order while handing out the bags.
“Ooooh, there’s chocolate in this one!”
“Do all of them have chocolate?”
“Mine’s got a Twix!”
“I’ve got a Snickers!”
“Twizzlers! I love licorice.”
“Oh. My. God. Shampoo. Thank fuck.”
“Can we trade? I don’t like nuts.”
I looked around to see who said that. I always tried to keep a mental log of preferences. Allergies, even. Just because they were homeless didn’t mean they didn’t deserve the same care and attention as everyone else on the fucking planet.
I saw them casting glances behind me every once in a while, though.
“It’s okay, they’re just with me. We’ve got some weirdness happening in the woods around us. My brother wants to make sure I’m safe,” I said.
The people gathered around me slowly nodded, but I noticed how quiet it went.
“Do… any of you guys know what’s going on in the woods right now?” I asked.