Chapter 7
Concrete pressed against her cheek and shoulder, hard and unforgiving. Cold dampness seeped into her bones, numbing her until she couldn’t tell where her body ended and the floor began. The air held the metallic tang of iron, and, under it, a sour note lingered.
Grit scraped under her eyelids. Salt from her tears? Dust? Maybe both. Every blink was raw, like the drag of sandpaper.
Darkness pressed inward. Not black but a murky gray, hazy overhead as if moonlight fought to penetrate a dingy window. Maybe her mind was inventing light where it didn’t exist.
Fear had been her constant companion. How many days? Three? Five? A week? Time didn’t behave here. It stretched, folded in on itself, and dissolved.
She inhaled, ragged and loud. The sound echoed through the cavernous space. She couldn’t see it, only feel it.
A sudden bang shattered the stillness. She heard the scrape of wood against concrete like a chair being dragged.
Voices followed, clipped, fast, and foreign.
One word repeated. “Kedrov.”
Heavy boots scuffed closer. Too close.
“Time to go, malenkaya.”
Pain exploded across her scalp when he twisted a hand in her hair and yanked. Then he tied a cloth over her eyes, and the murky light vanished. Her bound feet scraped the floor without warning. She was moving now, dragged like the chair, her body jarring and bumping.
Helpless to do anything else, a scream tore loose.
It sounded too thin and too young as it bounced off the walls.
Her wrists burned as plastic ties cut deeper with every jerk. Her ankles throbbed, also bound, and her cheek stung where it had scraped the rough floor.
She tried to resist. To fight. To do anything to stop the pain.
A barked command in words she couldn’t comprehend. Then the crack of a slap. White detonated inside her head, blinding and hot. Her cheek ignited. The tang of blood stung her tongue.
Pain layered over pain—wrists, ankles, cheeks, scalp—each screaming for attention until her mind couldn’t separate one from the next. She needed it to end and closed her streaming eyes, exhausted, ready to give in.
A door slammed open, the sound ricocheting through what seemed to be a cavernous space.
The hand released, and she fell hard onto the floor. The impact jarred her bones. Every violent inch of it.
More voices erupted, faster now, arguing, agitated.
She picked out a few words: shipment… Saturday… docks.
Needing to get her bearings, she forced herself to look. His vicious slap had shifted the blindfold. A thin slit of light filtered in at the bottom. By angling her head, she caught a sliver of stacked crates, and beyond them, near what had to be a loading bay, the side of a van.
Bold dark-green block letters: Lone Star something. A crate blocked the rest. Below it, half of a five-point star with wheat stalks bending in the wind. She ground her cheek against the concrete, trying to shift the cloth a fraction more, but the blindfold held, and the rest remained a mystery.
A forklift whined somewhere distant. Engines idled. The air smelled of diesel and bread. Somewhere close, a man sneezed three times in rapid succession.
Another voice cut through, controlled and deadly calm. “The boss doesn’t like delinquent accounts.”
A man pleaded, his voice thin and desperate. “I’ll get the money, but I need more time—”
His cries were met with merciless laughter. “You’ve had more than enough. Tick tock. Time’s up, Daddy.”
Comprehension, along with dread, slammed through her. “No… Don’t!” she screamed, hoarse and strained.
The gunshot cracked, sharp and final, but the echo went on forever.
Sobs followed. Small and broken.
Wait…
They weren’t hers.
The concrete burned colder. The air thinned. Laughter surrounded her, as did the sense of pure evil. But she wasn’t alone in this body. She was trapped inside someone else’s terror.
Erica jerked upright in bed, a scream tearing out of her before she could stop it.
For a moment, she didn’t recognize the room.
The dark felt too open, too quiet, distinctly wrong.
The smell was still in her nose. Her hands still registered the hard, cold floor.
She pressed her palms into the mattress, needing the give, the warmth, the softness that had no place in the world she’d just come from.
The sheets were twisted beneath her, damp with sweat. Real. Hers.
Her cheek throbbed. She lifted trembling fingers to it, ready for heat, swelling, something to confirm what she’d felt. There was nothing. No welt. No blood. Only the lingering sting.
Her throat was scratchy and raw when she swallowed. Her pulse hammered in her ears, chasing the echo of the gunshot.
“Coop,” she whispered. She had to tell him. Had to get help for Cheyenne before time ran out.
The clock on her nightstand glowed 2:57 a.m.
She threw the covers off and reached for her phone. Her fingers wouldn’t stop shaking, but she managed to pull up his number.
It rang too long. Enough for doubt to creep in. Enough for her to almost hang up.
A click. The rustle of sheets. Then his voice came, thick with sleep and edged with irritation. “Cooper. This better be important.”
She closed her eyes briefly, steadying herself.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” she said, breath still uneven. “I wouldn’t call at this hour if it wasn’t important.”
“Erica?” A beat of silence followed. “It’s three in the morning.”
“I know.”
“What happened?”
Her voice wavered, despite her effort to control it. “She was in my dreams again,” she whispered. “Cheyenne.”
She could hear the shift in his breathing. He was awake now.
“Start from the beginning.”
“She’s in a warehouse.” Erica pressed her fingers to her temple, trying to hold the vision steady. “I heard a forklift running somewhere and smelled diesel. There were shipping crates everywhere.”
“Was anyone with her? Did you see anything you could identify?”
“There was a van covered in dust,” she paused, remembering the bread she smelled. “Grain dust, maybe. That would explain the sneezing. The name on the side was Lone Star—something. She could only see part of it.”
She heard rustling on his end and pictured him sitting up at the side of his bed. His fingers furrowing in his hair as he brushed it back, both tired and frustrated.
“Unfortunately, Lone Star is slapped on half the businesses in this state.” It wasn’t unkind, simply Coop being Coop, stripping it down to what was useful. “What else can you give me?”
She closed her eyes, bringing up the image. “The logo. With only half, I could still tell it was a Texas star with a field of wheat at the bottom.”
Reaching in, past the sounds and the smells, and Cheyenne’s rising sense of hopelessness, she looked for something she might have missed.
“I know it isn’t much,” she said at last. “But they had her blindfolded.”
Something came through the line, uttered low, under his breath. Whatever it was, it was probably best she couldn’t make it out.
“This helps,” he said, quieter now. “It gives me something to go on.”
She exhaled. “There’s more. They referred to a ‘boss’ and kept repeating a name. Kedrov.”
A heavy silence followed. The name meant something to him.
“Coop?”
“I’m still here.”
“I think…” She had to force the words out. “I think they shot Thomas Wilson.”
“You only think?” he asked.
“Cheyenne didn’t actually see it. Thank goodness. But she heard a man begging for more time to pay. Then… a gunshot.”
“How do you know it was Wilson?” he pressed.
She had to swallow to continue. “Right before, one of them called him daddy. Find her, Coop.”
“I’m on it,” he said, Ranger-steady, already moving. “Keep your phone nearby.”
Without another word, the line went dead.
Her cheek still burned as she stared at the screen, waiting for it to tell her he’d get there in time. And for the echo of the gunshot, and the word daddy, to leave her head.