Chapter 22 Lexi
TWENTY-TWO
LEXI
As the girls and I emerged into the media room, Natty went immediately to the couch. She curled up with her smoothie and a blanket she pulled up from the floor and tucked it around herself. I took a moment to pause, drinking in the fact that my daughter was safe.
But my best friend still wasn’t.
“Hey,” a woman said as she started rubbing my back.
I peeked over at her. “Hey there.”
She smiled softly. “I’m Ella.”
I nodded. “Lexi. It’s nice to meet you.”
She drew in a deep breath. “If you want my advice? Don’t push her to talk about it. Just let her know that you’re there in case she does, then let her come to you.”
I cleared my throat. “Easier said than done.”
Her hand fell away from my back. “That should be the slogan for motherhood.”
I giggled softly. “You’re telling me.”
This Ella girl seemed capable of reading my mind, too. “She’s strong. If they were attacked, that meant she had to run to get away from them. I know we don’t want to think about that kind of stuff, but she survived. She got away, and that makes her strong. You guys will get through this.”
“It sounds like you speak from experience.”
She shrugged. “It’s been a journey, that’s for certain. But, these men? They are men of their words, and if they say they’re going to do something, then they simply do it. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t bumps in the road from time to time. However, it’s nothing they can’t navigate.”
I blinked back tears. “Sorry, it’s just—Natty and I went from having no one but Chloe to having everyone but Chloe. It’s just taking some time.”
Ella stepped in front of me as the movie cued up on the flatscreen television mounted to the wall.
And when she took my hands, I felt the warmth of her comfort radiating through me.
“You’re family now, and family looks out for family.
We’re all here for you, no matter what you guys need.
All right? You take care of that little girl of yours, and we’ll take care of you. That’s how it works around here.”
I wanted to throw my arms around her. I wanted to hug her until I cried. I wanted to sob against her shoulder and have her soft sweater soak up all of my tears so that Natty didn’t have to see them dying upon my cheeks. But, the sound of something I never expected to hear caught my ear.
And when I heard it again, I ripped my phone back out of my bra.
“What?” Ella asked. “What is it?”
My eyes widened. “It’s a text.”
The girls gathered around me before Hayley spoke. “From who?”
I almost couldn’t believe my eyes as I opened it up. “It’s from… Chloe.”
Ella cupped my cheek. “Get it to the guys. We’ve got your daughter. We’ll make sure she’s okay and safe.”
“Thank you so much,” I said breathlessly.
“Go on,” Hayley said as the girls barricaded around me, “sneak out while she’s distracted. We’ll make sure it stays that way.”
And I couldn’t sprint back toward the living room quickly enough.
“What in the absolute hell is going on right now!?” I shrieked as I burst into the living room.
The guys jumped and turned toward me with widened eyes, and I knew something had happened. Something had to have happened if Chloe, of all people, was trying to find a way to text me.
“What’s that?” Dean asked as he nodded toward my phone.
I tossed it to him. “I just got a text from Chloe, and you’re never going to believe what the hell it is.”
And as he caught it midair, he motioned for me to come closer so that we could all watch the video together.
I just never expected to see what we were witnessing.
Unfolding right before my very eyes was the entire car accident from front to back.
Chloe had managed to get her phone out, and I could hear my daughter crying in the background.
She video-recorded the entire attack, from the time they rolled up to them on either side of the car all the way until they shoved the car onto the side of the road beneath an overpass.
“Auntie Chloe, what’s happening?” my daughter asked with tears in her voice.
Chloe’s voice was strong, and resounding. “On my count, I want you to run, okay? Run as quickly as you can.”
“B-b-but—but what about you?”
Chloe dried my daughter’s tears as the camera wiggled around. “You don’t worry about me, okay? I’ve got this. On my count, okay? On three.”
Natty sniffled. “O-o-okay.”
“How did she get you this?” Stone asked.
“Sh,” Dean and I said in unison.
“What do I do after I run?” Natty’s shaking voice asked.
Chloe cleared her throat as she set her phone down in what looked like the cup holder of the front seat. “Use your phone to call your mother. Tell her everything that’s happened, okay?”
“But, what about the guy? Wasn’t there a guy following us?”
“West,” Dean whispered.
And that’s when Chloe leaned down long enough for me to see her reddened face. “Just do as I’m saying, Natty. No more questions. You run, then you call your mother. Okay? On my count. One…”
“Auntie Chloe, please.”
“Two…”
“Ple-hee-hee-heeease.”
“Three! Go, go, go, Natty!”
I heard the door being thrown open before Chloe practically shoved my daughter out of the car, and that’s when all hell broke loose in the video.
Men started shouting and cursing while Natty screamed as she ran away.
One of the guys in the video yelled for Chloe to get out while another commanded someone to go after my daughter.
And as the terror in Natty’s screaming as her voice faded away, Chloe struggled before I heard her get wrenched from the car.
“Grab her phone and toss it,” a gruff voice said.
One of the men picked up the phone and I knew he didn’t understand that it had been recording. And when that fucker’s face clearly came to fruition in the camera lens, my jaw hit the floor.
“That’s him,” I whispered.
“Holy fuck,” Dean growled.
“What? What is it?” Stone asked.
Dean paused the video. “That man, right there. That’s the man that attacked Lexi at the hospital.”
“Un-pause the video. Let’s keep watching,” Notch said.
There wasn’t much left of the video. When Dean pressed the play button again, the man looked down at the phone, realized it had been recording, and called Chloe a “stupid bitch” before the video stopped and went blank.
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even wrap my mind around everything that had just happened.
“Can someone please fucking tell me how in the fucking fuck I got this video!?” I exclaimed.
West stepped to the forefront. “She’s probably using an app to do it.”
Stone blinked. “Explain.”
West started using his hands to speak. “There are tons of apps out there where the user can set shortcuts, controls, and conditions for how their cloud storage is used. I bet if I backtrack that video a bit, I’m going to find that she used one of those applications to not only record the video, but to send it directly to the person she set it to send to after a certain amount of time. ”
Texas furrowed his brow tightly. “Any way that we could possibly use this video to figure out where in the fuck they’ve got Chloe?”
West shrugged. “I can look into it, but I’m not sure what I’ll find.”
I stared through him like a fucking hawk. “Then, try. My best friend is out there, having saved my daughter as well as your fucking hide, so the very least you could do is what you can.”
“Lexi,” Dean said softly.
But I whipped around on him and shoved my finger into his face.
“Don’t you ‘Lexi’ me. You came swooping into my life and less than forty-eight hours later, my life is toppled onto its head and my best friend has been taken by some reckless crew of vacuum-nosed assholes.
So, you know what you can do for me instead of getting me to calm down?
You can fix what got me kicked up in the first place. Got it?”
Dean nodded. “Got it.”
I turned back around to face West. “Don’t you dare come back to these guys until you’ve got something to work with. And you better get it fast. Understood?”
He nodded. “Loud and clear.”
“Good,” I glowered as I stormed out of the room, “now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a daughter that needs some comfort.”