Catch My Fall

1

Present

Another sleepless night has my eyes bloodshot and heavy as I stare at my reflection into mirror above the bathroom sink. I barely recognise myself. My eyes are red with lack of sleep, my skin pale and my hair a greasy unkempt mess. The unshaven scruff along my jaw and the fact I can’t remember the last time I showered is the least of my worries right now. All night, just like almost every night for a fortnight, I tossed and turned, unable to shut off my racing mind as I lie awake, staring at the moon out the window, wondering if wherever she is, she can see it too.

Sierra.

On the rare occasion I do manage to fall asleep, albeit only for a few hours at a time, all I see is her. She fills my dreams. Most of the time, she’s as she was, smiling and happy, a fun carefree young woman with her whole life ahead of her. But then sometimes she’s alone, lying on a mattress shrouded by darkness while she cries, the walls that hold her captive cold and grey. And all the while, she calls out my name. Pleading for me to save her. It’s that sound that keeps me awake, because how the hell am I supposed to sleep while she’s out there and she needs me?

Two weeks.

It’s been two long, gruelling weeks since she was taken, ripped away from her family and her friends, caught up in a war raging between her brothers and a monster hell-bent on revenge. Two weeks of working tirelessly alongside her brothers, Gage and Rafe, spending every waking minute trying to find her, only to turn up with nothing.

No leads.

No clues to point us in the right direction.

No idea where she is or if she’s even alive, but what use would she be to him if she were? As much as I hate to think it, maybe it would be better if she weren’t. I can only imagine the things she’s being subjected to, things that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Things far worse than death.

I take a seat at the desk in the corner of my bedroom and pull open my laptop, bringing up the video footage from the night she disappeared.

I do this religiously every day, it’s a way of torturing myself because I’m the reason she’s out there somewhere.

On the screen, I watch as her car rolls up to the curb not far from the house, her hands fisting the steering wheel as her head tips forward onto it, almost like she’s crying. She sits like that for a few minutes, the engine idling as she builds up the courage to come back home and face her brothers.

Just as she’s about to pull away, a dark van swerves to a stop directly in front of her car, blocking her in just as two masked men jump out, pulling open her car door and dragging her out.

She kicks out at them, but she’s no match for them, and they throw her into the back of the van as though she weighed nothing. Within a matter of seconds, she’s gone, the van peeling away like it was never there.

I slam the laptop closed and bury my head in my hands, the sick feeling in my stomach the same as that night when I found her car empty, still idling where she left it, the driver’s door flung wide open.

I will never forget the wave of dread that slammed into me when I returned to the house to tell her family she’d gone, but they already knew. The bastard that took her called them, delighting in how easy it was to steal her away and loving every single second of it. My stomach clenches as the memory of her screams echoed through the speaker, a sound that has plagued my dreams ever since. The guilt of failing to protect her twists in my gut and until we get her back, that guilt is going to eat me alive from the inside out.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s a text from Gage.

Gage: Need you in my office. Now.

My heart lurches in my chest as I head out.

Does he have a lead? Has he found her?

For a year, I’ve been living in the building adjacent to the Hudson mansion. When Gage hired me to be the head of his security, he had me move onto his property to be closer to his family.

That was the day I met her for the first time.

Fuck, did she knock me off my feet… Regardless of our age difference, I remember thinking she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Her hazel eyes wide and bright, her smile alone enough to have even the most stone-hearted of men falling to their knees before her.

I march through the house towards the study, and when I get there, Gage’s younger brother, Rafe, and Derek, one of Gage’s guys are sat opposite him. Derek is good at digging up dirt, hacking into accounts and CCTV systems which makes him invaluable to us right now.

He spent hours scouring the camera footage of every street for miles the night she was taken in the hope of getting a lead. He managed to track the van that took her away, but lost sight of it through a blind spot in the city’s camera network.

“What’ve you got? Any leads?” I ask Gage, my tone hopeful.

He shakes his head solemnly. “I just received another text. This time it’s a video.”

My stomach bottoms out. “Have you watched it?”

He gives me a sharp nod, sliding his phone across his desk towards me. We’ve received photos of Sierra before, pictures of her naked and bruised, barely even conscious. Some of her being burned by a lit cigarette, whipped by belts and other things that slice her perfect skin, but never a video.

My heart pounds as I pick it up, my finger shaking as I press play.

Before anything even comes onto the screen, the unmistakable sound of male grunts fill my ears, I don’t even need a visual to know what’s happening and it’s already making me nauseous. The camera then shifts and everything comes into focus. Sierra’s face down, her wrists tied to a thick metal pipe above her head as a man straddles her, forcing himself inside her from behind as her body lies motionless beneath him, the only indication she’s alive are the faint whimpers that escape her lips every time he pushes inside.

His fist is in her hair as he holds her down, his thrusts hard and punishing as he violates her in the worst way possible.

Bile crawls up my throat and I have to swallow it down to keep my composure.

The person filming brings the camera in closer to Sierra’s face. Her eyes are empty, void of any emotion at all as her tears stain the already dirty mattress she’s lying on that’s soiled in God knows what.

There’s a cut to her face that stretches from her brow to just below her cheekbone. It’s not fresh, and judging by the dried blood and how it’s began healing, it’s at least a week old.

The thrusts of the sick bastard on top of her get faster, and a second later, he roars as he comes.

“Shift over, it’s my turn with the bitch now,” a deeper male voice says, the camera shaking as it’s passed to a different person.

“Better take her cunt this time, I just destroyed her ass,” the other guy gloats.

A man laughs just before the video cuts off and I have to stop myself from hurling the phone across the room, remembering that it’s not mine.

I slam it down onto the desk and tug at my hair, the burn in my scalp strangely soothing.

I want to hit something, anything to suppress the rage coursing through my veins. I feel so useless, so powerless to stop this from happening to her and it only adds to the anger inside me. Anger at the sick bastards who are hurting her, but also I’m angry at myself.

I move for the door.

“Alec, where are you going?” Gage asks.

“I have no idea, but I can’t stand here doing nothing knowing she’s out there somewhere while they fucking ra—” I can’t bring myself to say the word as my stomach churns with nausea.

“You think Rafe and I don’t feel the same? She’s our little sister and she’s with those sick cunts because of us and the shit we got ourselves into.”

“Is the video traceable? Can we find the location of who sent it?” I ask.

“I’m on it, but it might take some time,” Derek replies, not bothering to look over his shoulder as he taps away on his laptop.

I take a deep breath to calm my racing heart. “We need to find her.”

Gage rounds his desk and comes to a stop beside me, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I know, man. We will. Don’t give up yet.”

“I’ll never give up. If I have to spend the next twenty years searching for her, I will.”

He nods slowly, giving me a tight-lipped smile. Sometimes I wonder if he knows just how much I care for his sister but chooses to ignore it, I can’t imagine him being blind enough not to see it, my face alone must give my feelings for her away.

As much as I’ve always wanted her, I never made a move because I didn’t want to put my job on the line, not to mention my friendship with Gage. Despite him being my employer, he’s more of a friend than anything else and he’s a man I carry a deep respect for, as I do for Rafe.

“You’re wearing yourself thin, man. You’re a mess. I know you’re worried, we all are, but you need to start taking care of yourself. That’s an order, okay?”

A small laugh slips free. “Okay.”

“And take a shower, you smell like shit.” He claps me on the back and I leave the room.

I do as he says. I head back to my house and take a much needed shower, letting the scolding hot spray seer into my skin in an attempt to rid the images of Sierra in pain from my mind.

It cascades like burning lava onto my back and I hiss from the sting, but it’s nothing like the pain Sierra’s going through right now.

I feel so fucking guilty. I should’ve gone after her that day when she fought with her brothers. She’d overheard a conversation about how Randall March, Gage’s wife’s father had their mother killed, thinking it was their dad driving and not her. Gage and Rafe had kept the truth from her for months, and despite me knowing myself, it wasn’t anybody’s place to tell her but her own brothers. I shouldn’t have listen when she told me to back off and leave her alone. She might be here now if I’d gone after her.

My skin is bright red when I step out of the shower, securing the towel around my waist.

I swipe my phone off the counter and dial a number I’ve used more times in two weeks than I have since I met the guy nine years ago.

“Alec, what can I do for you today?”

“We got a video. A video of her being raped, Max. Have you got anything? Anything at all? It’s been two weeks. You’re the FBI for fuck sake, surely you have something!”

“I know you’re frustrated, but we’re exhausting all our resources and all of our manpower to find her.”

“Really? Well you could’ve fooled me.”

“Alec. We’re trying. We’re not just sat on our asses playing I—fucking—spy in our office. We have to be careful. Austin Sloane and his organisation have been on our radar for some time and you start poking too hard, they’ll get spooked and it’ll blow the whole thing.”

“So you do have something?”

There’s a pause. “We have a lead, yes. It’s not solid, but it’s something. And as I said, we have to tread carefully. When I know more, you’ll be the first to know, alright?”

A little over a year ago, we had an altercation with a guy called Bryce Tanner, an altercation that ended up with Rafe killing him after the abduction of Gage’s wife, Della. Little did we know, he had a half-brother, Austin Sloane, who has made it his mission to bring the Hudson family down in retaliation for his brother’s death.

Just as Tanner had, Sloane has his fingers in every pie going; Money laundering, corruption, prostitution, pornography and human trafficking. The authorities have been after him for years, but he’s a slippery bastard so I’m told, and getting to him is as hard as trying to break into Fort Knox.

“I appreciate it, Max. Sorry for being a dick.”

He chuckles. “It’s not a problem, man. You’re lucky I’m your friend or you’d have my size twelve boot up your ass.” Max and I met during our time on tour in the Marines and we’ve been friends ever since. While I went into private security, he took a job in the FBI. And I guess it helps to have friends in high places.

“Oh yeah? If I remember right you tried that in Iraq and let’s not forget how that ended.”

“You speak a word of that to anyone, or even think it and they’ll never find your body.”

I laugh out loud, a feeling that feels so foreign to me of late.

“Alec? I promise you, we’ll find your girl.”

“Thank you, man.” I hang up and toss my phone back down onto the counter.

I hope he’s right, because I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. Knowing Sierra’s out there somewhere and there’s nothing I can do to help her cuts me up inside.

But one thing is absolutely certain, I won’t rest until Sierra is home safe, reunited with her brothers, with her friends…

With me.