Chapter 4
Chapter Four
VIOLET
I expect them to leap into action, go running off, even though, right now, Cade looks like he needs to see the inside of an emergency room.
But he’s standing there, talking. And his friend is there, too. As are the other men with guns.
And the place is littered with so many dead bodies.
For a moment, my legs wobble, and I think I’m going to be sick.
But I hold it together. I make myself stand firm as Cade comes up to me, the gun in his hand held like a man who doesn’t do IT for a living, or hacking.
I’d say he could be in law enforcement, but I’m not that na?ve. I’m stupid for a smart person, stupid like letting someone, a stranger, have rough sex with me. Stupid like I believed that Cade was nothing more than Cade.
But believing Cade is on the side of the law?
No, I wouldn’t believe that.
The conversation I’m not part of turns more intense and finally, Enzo shakes his head and moves off.
Cade heads to where I am.
“We’re checking the place. Stay with Tommy, here.” He nods at one of the armed men.
Without another word, without waiting for me to respond, they take off.
I sink down on a chair that’s sitting in the great room at the edge of the foyer and do what I’m told. I wait.
They must be looking for Jean. They have to be.
So, they didn’t spring into action immediately, they’re off doing it now. Meandering. Whatever.
I suck in a shaky breath of air because my humor has just run out, and I want to throw up all over again. I rub the heel of my hands against my itchy eyes.
Cade might not be a cop, but a criminal? A bad criminal?
I almost laugh.
Now I’m segmenting criminals… But I’m also aware the law isn’t perfect, that the government isn’t perfect, and the people who run things aren’t perfect either…Isaac, for instance.
Cade’s exposed other criminals by committing criminal acts and…
I stop.
I’m going in circles, and I don’t get what’s taking them so long.
The place is big, but we all came from down, not up, and keeping someone prisoner in a room with cement floors doesn’t make sense if it’s upstairs. That place wasn’t ever meant to be seen.
I start shaking.
What the hell happened? What is this place?
And who the actual fuck is Cade. The Ghost?
The last question is one that just keeps snowballing inside me along with the criminal aspect, but right now, I shove it away.
I can’t…
“Vi?”
I jump up as Cade and Enzo return.
There’s no girl with them.
“We didn’t see anyone else.”
“Not even staff,” Enzo adds. “Living.”
Cade shoots him a look. “We need to go. I don’t think there’s a girl here—”
“She exists…”
“I’m not doubting you,” he says gently. “But we went through the whole place and there was no one.”
Enzo is looking at the door. “Cade, man. We’re out of time.”
No. No, I’m not leaving.
“You didn’t look in the right place.” I take a step, tugging on Cade’s sleeve. “Come on.”
“No. Enzo’s right. We need to get out of here, Violet.”
But that’s not the right response. I don’t want to hear that. I shake my head and let go of him. “You go.”
“Violet…” A warning.
I ignore him, but Cade reaches out and grabs me.
I tug.
He doesn’t let me go. “We’re not going to look again.”
“Yes, we are. You didn’t look in the right place. There’s a girl down there, and I’m going to find her even if you won’t. You all go.” I pull, trying to free myself again, but he doesn’t let me go.
The two men exchange looks that hold whole books of words I don’t understand.
Shit, I don’t understand any of this.
There’s only one thing that’s crystal clear, and that’s I need to help Jean or whatever her name is.
I don’t think they thought about her when they ran…when that man with the gun and his thugs ran… I wouldn’t have been a thought except they wanted to use me as a motivator, to make Cade do his work. Whatever that was.
And if we leave, and they scrub this place clean they’ll kill her. Or if they just close it down and lock it up, she’ll die.
“Cade, please.” I search his face. “There’s another girl here, and she’s not in a good way at all. I think they were drugging her, they were hurting her, and they had her here for eight months.”
I don’t know where she’s from or her real name or anything about her, and I hate myself for that. I should have forced her to tell me something, anything, to help track down her family, to track down who she is.
And I should have done that from the start, when she was at her most coherent.
But I… I failed her.
So, I’m not going to fail her now. “They were probably going to sell her into slavery—”
Enzo shakes his head. “After eight months? That’s a long time. We need to go. We’ll get someone to come back.”
“He’s right. This is too dangerous,” Cade says, breaking something in me.
And I stare at him, shaking my head.
“You go.” I shake him off and stumble back, narrowly missing stepping on a dead man, and my stomach heaves. “Both of you, but I’m not leaving without her.”
I turn and start to run, but Cade’s there, jumping in front of me, and a flash of agony crosses his face as he does so. “This place is huge, it’s one of those mansions that really sprawl. Where were you?”
“Where you were. We didn’t go far—”
“Vi, you had a sack on your head. And you were scared. Time moves differently when you’re scared.” He tries to pull me into his arms, but I refuse to move.
I narrow my eyes, heart beating wildly. “I’m not leaving without her.”
He breathes out. “I was taken from a ground floor study to the basement, but it was a regular basement. And then up to what must have been meant to be a laundry room, one of those huge ones for a big household. Where we came from,” he says, gently, “Ivan had it set up for the computer shit.”
“Not very well,” Enzo mutters, earning a dark look from Cade. “We don’t know where the girl is. I’ll send someone—”
“No.” I stand my ground.
There’s a part me that knows I’m being stupid, but there’s no way I could live with myself if I didn’t go and try to help Jean. “There must be another basement. There were at least two cells. Stairs. I know there were stairs. I promised…I promised I’d help.”
It doesn’t matter if the words were silent or said aloud, I’m helping her. I have to.
I look at Cade, pleading. “There’s got to be a way down.”
And Cade crumbles, I see it. “Okay, we’ll look.”
“Are you fucking insane?” Enzo points at me. “She doesn’t remember, dude. And come on, I get it, you weren’t missing all that long, hours, not days.”
I glare at him.
He’s not unkind as he looks back. “But you could have been anywhere here, time does play tricks, and if you were blindfolded, then everything plays tricks. Bad dude’s either going to destroy the whole place or gather troops and destroy anyone in here.
Either way, this place is toast, and I’d rather not be the slice of bread waiting to get crisped and burned. ”
“We can’t leave a girl here.” I’m not moving, and if Cade’s siding with his friend, fine.
They can go.
I’ll find her, and then I’ll get out of here. I’m small. And while I don’t have money, there’ll be something expensive lying around here.
There’s got to be a way.
I’m female.
Someone outside this mansion, somewhere, will help. I know it.
I start trying to get free.
Cade holds me tighter. “You’re not going alone. We’re coming, too.”
One of the men who came with Enzo comes in, a big gun by his side, and he says something in a low murmur to Enzo.
I look at Cade. “We’re wasting time. If you two don’t want to be part of it, just go, but I’m not leaving without at least looking for her. And it was downstairs, below ground. It had a basement feel, cool and constant temperature, that smell they get…and the floor was cement.”
His mouth quirks a little. “Okay. We—”
“I think we go, Cade. Look, we don’t know how many more might be on their way or what kind of security measures Ivan has in here.
This seems to be his meeting place, lair, whatever the fuck you want to call it.
Point is, it’s away from his other residence, and his other life, so this is definitely not a safe place to be—”
“I know all that.” Cade doesn’t lift his gaze from me. “But if there’s a chance, then—”
Enzo throws me a dark and annoyed look, “I get it. But we go looking, and we all might end up dead.”
“Then you both go. Maybe I’ll have more of a chance, anyway, I’m not a big lug.”
He rolls his eyes. “Fuck it, fine.”
I try to pull Cade to the door that’s open, the one we came through. Down there, I figure. it’s a good place to start.
Enzo turns to the men in the room. “You lot stay up here and stand guard.”
Then he turns and points at the one closest to us. “You come with us.”
Huffing, he glares at Cade as we head to the door. “And your cock’s going to get us killed.”
Cade just raises a brow. “Much like yours almost did back in Cancun, huh?”
Enzo’s eyes flash fire as we hit the bottom step. I look around, point to another door at the end of the shadowy hall.
Cade laughs at Enzo as we start in that direction.
Enzo snorts. “You should remember that I’ve got stories of my own, dickwad. Stories pretty Violet here would probably be very interested to hear—”
I huff. “This is all great, but can you reminisce about your conquests and old times after we’ve got the girl and we’re out of here? Please?”
The basement is a warren of rooms. One of them has blood on the floor and nothing else in it, and the way Cade looks at the spot turns my stomach.
Is this the room they beat him in?
But this is a basement for storage. They didn’t want him near me, so…there must be a deeper layer. A sub-basement.
I ignore Enzo pushing us to get out of here, and I go to the other end.
There’s a door and a flight of steps.
I go down into the bare, cold light. And my heart starts to thump.
My palms sweat as I clench my hands, and I make myself move forward.
This is it.
I go down the hall and there are four cells next to each other. The one I was in and two others are open.
The final one is shut.
I put a hand on the wood. “Hello?”
No answer.
I try the lock. It won’t budge.
“This it?”
I almost scream at Cade’s voice, my mind back to the timeless minutes spent down here.
On the floor of my cell is the water bottle and if I pulled back the blanket, the horrible sandwich would be there.
I nod. “Yes.”
“We really need to go.” Enzo tries the handle. Then he thumps. “You in there? Answer!”
“Dude, that’s not…” Cade turns to the door. “Stand back if you’re in there, away from the door.”
He takes his gun and shoots the lock, putting a hole in the door.
It swings open.
I push and step in, my eyes scanning the space.
It’s empty.
The two men exchange looks.
Enzo frowns. “No one came up.”
“Ivan got away.”
“Ivan and a bunch of very trigger-happy men, man.” He shrugs. “Maybe your girl made up this girl to cope.”
I glare at him. “I didn’t. Apart from the fact I wasn’t even in there overnight…”
“You were in there a long ass time. Cade’s been missing now almost twenty-four hours.”
“Twenty-f…I’m tired, I haven’t slept. I’m in shock, but…she was here, we talked.”
Cade reaches for my hand. “I know this is hard, but we have to go. We’ll work it out. who the girl is. You said eight months…?”
“She asked the date, and she said eight months, that she remembered the day she was taken.”
“That’s something to go on. But Enzo’s right. He’s being a dick—”
“Hey!”
“—But he’s right. We have to go.”
I nod. I hate it, but he’s right.
We start out when something catches my eye.
I scoop it up. A hairclip. I shove it in my pocket.
It’s smooth, cool in my pocket, metal, I think, as it warms rapidly under my touch.
The clip is proof I didn’t make up the girl.
She was here.
For some reason, they took her from her cell just after they took me from mine. It’s the only thing I can think of, and maybe that’s why she got more incoherent after they gave us water and food. She got drugged for her change of scenery. I don’t know.
But yes, she really was here.
And I’m going to do everything in my power to find her.