Chapter 13 – ANNA
13
ANNA
“ T hese are exceptional,” Olivia said, gazing at the last of my photo prints.
I flushed with pride. “You really think so?”
“Absolutely. You have the makings of a real collection here, Anna.”
I bit my lip, so excited that I practically laughed out loud. My hunch was right—my photos were more than just candids of my friends. They were proof that I really did have talent. I’d brought her a portfolio of my favorite photos and didn’t tell her any details about the background.
“There’s a real sense of place in here, even without knowing where they come from. Where were these taken, by the way?” she asked.
“The Butterfly Room. It’s a St. Louis cocktail bar that’s usually full of wealthy businessmen. That’s why the women are all dressed in so little. For tips.” I took a deep breath, then told her the truth. “That’s where I’ve been. I worked there for a few years.”
Olivia’s brows rose, and I could tell she was surprised. “Weren’t you in college? You were on that track in high school.”
I looked away. “I never ended up going. My plans changed, I guess.”
Olivia laughed. “Plans will do that, won’t they?”
There was no judgment or contempt in her expression. My shoulders relaxed and relief washed over me. She was the first person from my old life who I chose to tell the truth, and it felt so good. I hadn’t even realized how much the lying weighed on me.
“Could you do me a favor?” I asked. “If anyone asks, could you not mention my job? My dad has this whole story he’s been telling people, and I don’t want to cause trouble.”
“Of course,” Olivia said. “It’s none of their business. But your background makes these photos even more interesting, Anna. The governor’s daughter, leaving her world of privilege to enter the serving class. Not a lot of people with your upbringing would be open to that.”
“It’s not like I’m better than these women,” I said defiantly.
Olivia raised her hands. “Never said you were. In fact, these pictures position them as your equals. It would make people like your father very uncomfortable, in the way that all good art does.”
“So you really think I should try and exhibit?” I asked, excited.
“I do. I’d offer to host it here, but, well, I doubt my clients in town would appreciate it. I’m still new to owning this place, and I couldn’t afford to offend people.”
“I understand,” I said. I knew the way rich people in this town held grudges better than anyone.
“But there is someone I know who could maybe help you.” Olivia grabbed a sheet of paper and scribbled down a phone number. “His name is Jaden Austen. I showed some of his work last year. I don’t know him very well, but he has a good eye and last I heard he was looking to take on someone to mentor. Would you be interested in meeting him?”
“Of course!” I said immediately. If I wanted to break into this world, I’d need all the help I could get.
Olivia reached over and squeezed my hand. “I think you should be really proud of these.”
The comment should have made me happy, but instead, I felt a prick of pain. I should be hearing those words from my parents, but that would never happen. The only version of me they wanted was the fake one, the one made up entirely of their lies. I was never going to hear Dad say he was proud of me.
No . I refused to let Hudson Vaughn bring me down. Because the truth was, even if I didn’t always believe in myself, I did believe in my photos. That was enough.
“Thank you,” I told Olivia. “I am proud of them.”
My meeting with Olivia left me feeling inspired. I yearned to get my camera out and play with it, but I’d run out of film a while ago. I looked up the closest photo shop in the area, which was just a ten minute walk away.
It took me almost that long to convince David not to come with me.
“It’s just a short walk,” I pleaded. “I’ll be there and back before you know it. You can still drive me home.”
“Your father wants me to stay with you,” he said stubbornly.
I sighed. “Please, David. I appreciate you driving me around, but I’m an adult. I just need a break from having my babysitter follow me everywhere.”
David’s lips twisted as he thought it through. Eventually, he sighed. “Fine. But if you’re not back in thirty minutes, I’m coming for you.”
The walk to the film store brought me through streets of old warehouses, with crumbling bricks and broken windows. There was an eerie kind of beauty to them. So many places like this were modernized and transformed into breweries or wedding venues. What happened to the places which were truly abandoned?
It was the wisp of an idea that had me aching to get my camera out.
The film store was small, mostly selling vintage cameras and outdated equipment. At least they had more than enough film in stock. I bought a dozen rolls and loaded up the camera in my backpack.
Hurrying back to the warehouses, I got out my camera and checked my watch. I had at least fifteen minutes before David freaked out. More than enough time to get back to those warehouses.
The overgrown bushes and empty sidewalks made it clear that nobody came here anymore. Not even any broken glass or graffiti to suggest teens explored at night.
I started with a few sample shots, playing around with framing. I moved close to the buildings, shooting upward to emphasize their size. Just after I took a round of photos, I felt a strange prickling on the back of my neck.
Someone was watching me.
Pretending to check my focus, I turned around and checked out the sidewalk from where I’d come.
A group of three men were walking directly toward me. They wore baseball caps that left their faces in shadow. Instinct told me these weren’t just casual pedestrians. They wanted something from me.
I wasn’t going to wait around to find out what.
My heartbeat pounded in my ears while I headed back to the sidewalk. I forced myself not to run. They’d just chase me, and I’d escalate things quicker than I had to.
I caught a flash of movement in my peripheral vision. A guy in a blue hat had run to the opposite side of the street, and was walking just ahead of me. It was like they were trying to herd me somewhere. Behind me, I heard rapid footsteps. The other two following me were moving faster.
Oh my god.
The one on the left, he looked the right height. The right build. It couldn’t have been…
He tipped his head up and I breathed a sigh of relief to see that it wasn’t Josh, but the look on his face—the piercing way he was looking at me—like predator watching prey told me Josh or not, these men weren’t here by accident.
Fuck, I had no choice. I broke into a run, adrenaline pumping through me, powering my muscles to spring as fast as I could.
It wasn’t enough.
The guy in the blue hat crossed in front of me, blocking me off, while the other two pushed forward and corralled me against the wall of a warehouse.
I was trapped and my heart sang like caged canary, my vision sharpening even as dark spots began to burst in my field of view.
One of them held a knife, while the other two didn’t have any weapons I could see. I forced myself to take a breath. They were probably just muggers, looking for a payday.
I clutched my camera to my chest.
No. Not my camera.
It was the same one I’d had since I was a teenager. The grips worn. The battery port door held on with a strip of duct tape.
“Here,” I said, reaching into my camera bag to pull out my wallet. I tossed it on the ground, but the men didn’t move to pick it up. “You can take whatever is in it,” I clarified. “Just take it and go.”
Blue hat laughed. It was cold and cruel.
“What we want is you, Annie.”
He lunged toward me, grabbing my arm while the other two pulled rope out of their pockets. My camera fell heavy against my chest as my arms were wrenched behind me.
I struggled, kicking and elbowing wherever I could, but it was too late. Rough rope tightened around my wrists, pulling tight. Blue hat pulled a hood over my head, and the entire world went black.
The sharp bite of panic nipped at my nerve endings, making me hyperventilate beneath the hood as I tripped over my feet, being pulled along by rough hands.
“No. No. Please, you can’t. Please stop . Let me go. ”
They were kidnapping me.
The horrifying thought echoed in my skull.
Kidnapping Annie.
I gasped for oxygen, desperate. I heard the squeal of tires on the street. A car they planned to force me into? Where would they take me?
Was my phone still in my bag? Could it be traced?
Would my father even come looking for me or would he just let his only problem vanish into this black bagged hell and say pretty words at my funeral. Use the pity of the people as a springboard for his campaign.
Oh god.
Oh god.
My throat felt thick with unshed tears and the need to scream.
I felt myself lifted off the ground—then, abruptly, dropped. My hip throbbed in protest and I shifted, trying to squirm away against the rough cracked pavement, feeling tiny stone bite into my elbows and knees.
Grunts and muttered curses filled the air. Nobody touched me. It was like I’d been totally forgotten. I stopped inching away and reached for the hood, yanking it off, blinking into the sunlight.
Six men fought on the sidewalk. The three new ones looked like random strangers. One in a crisp black suit, another in joggers and a loose fitted tank, and the third in jeans and band tee with biceps the size of my thighs.
They must’ve heard the commotion and come to help.
Fuck, I was the luckiest goddamned girl in the whole world.
I sobbed out a grateful cry, trying to get myself back to my feet without the use of my hands.
The random strangers were pummeling the baseball hat guys, kicking in their faces and slamming them against the hoods of two sleek black cars. Blue hat was already unconscious, and the suit guy loaded him into a car trunk.
“What the hell?”
I fumbled back a step, then another, seeing the chaos in a new light. Noticing details as the men finished subduing my kidnappers.
The one wearing the suit had a gun. I saw it inside his jacket as he threw the body of blue hat guy in the trunk of his car.
And the one that looked like he was just out for a run? He had a pair of brass knuckles on his fist as he landed blow after blow into the face of another blue hat, until blood sprayed from his cheek and little white bits dropped from his mouth.
Teeth.
Those were teeth.
I couldn’t move.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose and heat flooded my chest, swiftly replaced with an ice cold that left a clammy sweat in its wake.
The last guy—the one in jeans—he laughed as he held the remaining blue hat in a chokehold until he stopped moving. And at his waist, where his Radiohead tee shirt rode up enough to expose the deep adonis v of his lower abdomen, I saw a flash of silver.
He had a gun, too.
Who were these guys?
Move, Anna.
You need to move.
Blue hat guys might’ve kidnapped me, but something told me these three were going to do far worse than that.
A knife lay on the ground near my feet and I grabbed it, pressing it between my thighs for leverage, rubbing the rope around my wrists against the blade. It took too many precious seconds to saw through. By the time my hands were free, the clearly-not-random-strangers had already loaded the other unconscious blue hats into the trunk with their friend.
Or were they dead?
Holy shit.
My throat went utterly dry as I pushed back to my feet and made a break for it.
An arm like a tree trunk wrapped around my middle before I got more than five steps, hauling me back.
I clawed at it, screaming. “Let go of me!”
I didn’t know what I was expecting, but for the guy to immediately drop his arm was not it. I fell forward, scraping my palms on the pavement. Getting back up felt impossible. I wanted to curl up into a little ball and just fucking disappear.
The man who stopped me from running stepped around me and I peered up at him as I fell back onto my ass and clutched my aching palms to my chest.
He was exceptionally tall with smooth dark skin.
“Who the hell are you?” I croaked, keeping an eye on the others in my periphery.
Where the hell did I drop that knife?
Why had I dropped that knife.
Goddamnit, Anna.
“I’m Jack,” he said.
Jack?
He extended a hand to me and I recoiled back.
He gave me a hard look. “We aren’t going to hurt you. We’re here to protect you.”
The man, Jack, pointed toward the car parked a few yards away. “They’re all locked up and won’t be conscious for a while. You’re safe.”
“Here to protect me?” I repeated. “Then why the fuck do I have no idea who you are?”
This made Jack pause and he shared a look with the other two on the sidewalk. They shrugged at him and he sighed, clearing his throat.
“Look, our employer didn’t want to worry you. It’s best if you just pretend you never even saw us. It can be like this never happened.”
“But those men?—”
“Will be dealt with,” he finished, interrupting me. “I promise you that. You’ll never see them again.”
I shivered. Swallowed.
“W-who’s your employer?”
“Can’t give you a name, Miss Vaughn. But rest easy knowing you have someone looking out for you.”
Apparently done with the conversation, Jack turned on his heel and stalked to the driver’s side door of the nearest black. “Hopefully you won’t be seeing us again any time soon.”
He could fucking say that again.
“Want a lift back to the main drag?” the one in the suit asked, seeming completely unfazed with the fact that he had a river of blood staining the left side of his face from forehead to chin.
“Fuck no,” the words blurted from my lips and I sealed them shut, feeling the blood drain from my face.
But black suit guy only grinned at my response. “Smart girl. Best not to get into cars with strangers.”
“We’ll wait here until you’re safely back to where you belong, Miss Vaughn,” jean guy added, jerking his chin in the direction of the road that would lead me back to David. “Go on, now. It’s not safe over here.”
I couldn’t believe I was just going to walk out of here, but as I turned and left, walking as fast as I could without breaking into a full on sprint, the men didn’t come after me. But I could feel their nearness. As if they were following at a distance. Only a few blocks away.
Our employer didn’t want to worry you.
Who the hell hired them?
Dad wouldn’t be above hiring bodyguards to follow me around. But he’d also probably tell me to my face. Plus, they would have brought David with them. It can’t have been him.
There was only one other billionaire in my life who was that presumptuous.
Carter Cole paid to have me followed.