Chapter Sixteen
Lia crouched down on the side of the motionless woman at the same time Gard did.
“She’s breathing,” Lia said, since she could hear the labored rise and fall of the woman’s breath. “Gard, she’s breathing.” But she wasn’t sure he heard her. Or anything.
Dani clearly wasn’t conscious, and Gard was clearly dealing with his own version of panic, hidden under a stillness that worried Lia.
In the dim beam of Lia’s phone’s flashlight, she saw Gard’s hands shake as he gently took the woman’s shoulder and rolled her over on to her back. She lolled lifelessly, but Gard put a hand to her neck, checking her pulse.
Lia couldn’t take her gaze away from the deep gash across her forehead though. It was oozing blood. She was not in good shape. Lia couldn’t tell for sure from the dim light, but it looked like there were bruises on her face and neck too.
“Breathing. A pulse,” Gard said, his whisper as shaky as his hands. “Come on, Dani. Wake up for me.” He put a hand to her cheek with a gentleness that had Lia’s throat tightening.
Because if Dani was here, so hurt, where was Sammy?
A little moan escaped Dani’s mouth, but she didn’t open her eyes. She needed medical attention.
How were they going to manage that? They could hardly leave until they found Sammy, but…
“We’ll carry her out of here,” Gard said, his voice tight. He exhaled and it was shaky too. “I’ll carry her to my truck.”
“I’ll call 911. I’ll…”
“No. Dispatch will have to go by the book. We can’t risk an ambulance coming down here. Not until we find Sammy. I’ll carry her.”
Lia happened to agree, but looking down at the incredibly injured Dani, she was torn. The woman needed a hospital, and if she didn’t get help, Gard would blame himself if something terrible happened. But Sammy…
“Sammy.” Dani’s voice was kind of slurred and her eyes fluttered opened. They landed on Gard, though they were pained and unfocused. “Gard. Where’s Sammy?” she asked, sounding less slurred, but more panicked.
“You saw her last, Dani. You tell us,” Gard said. His voice was hard, but Lia knew that was to keep out the turmoil of emotion no doubt swamping him. That hard was the only armor keeping him together.
Dani shook her head, then moaned, lifting a hand to her head. Lia stopped her by grasping the woman’s wrist, because the gash was nasty and touching it would only introduce more problems.
Dani’s gaze turned to her. “Who are you? A cop?”
“I’m going to carry you back to my truck,” Gard said, ignoring Dani’s question to Lia. “I know it’s probably going to hurt, but we’re going to get you to a doctor. Don’t touch your head and just hold on to me if you can.”
He carefully pulled her into his arms and gingerly got to his feet. Dani didn’t really hold on to him. She was limp in his arms. Had she lost consciousness again? That wouldn’t be good. She needed to stay with it.
“Dani, where are they keeping you?” Lia asked. Both to keep Dani engaged and because… Gard might have to take Dani to safety, but that didn’t mean Lia had to. If Dani could tell her the holding place, Lia could go and… Find Sammy.
They had to find Sammy.
Dani groaned, her head lolling as Gard began to walk. But after a few moments, she spoke. “It’s a…cellar thing. Under the barn. The barn’s falling down, but the cellar is intact. They lock us up in there when they’re not…” She trailed off.
Lia wasn’t sure if she’d lost consciousness or didn’t want to say. Particularly in front of her brother. Who was carrying her gingerly back the way he and Lia had come. Lia looked back out into the dark night. Where was the barn? Where was Sammy?
“Gard, I tried to stop them,” Dani said, her voice going squeaky. “I tried so hard. They have her. In the house. You have to get her. You have to.”
Sammy. Lia looked toward the house, her brain already working through options. Sammy was in the house. In the party. Lia and Gard wouldn’t be able to sneak her out, but…
But Lia might be able to. If she walked into a situation she’d been in before, knew how to work.
“We’ll get her. First, you need some help.” Gard was walking forward, but he paused and looked over his shoulder at Lia when she didn’t follow. “Come on. We’ll get her to the truck and then you can drive her to the hospital. It’ll be faster than waiting for an ambulance to get out this way.”
But that wasn’t the right plan. Lia couldn’t tell if Gard knew that and was in denial or he really hadn’t thought it through.
“Gard, I need you to let me do this. You take Dani to the hospital. I’ll handle this.”
“I’m not leaving you here, Lia.” He said it so quickly she knew he wasn’t in denial. He just didn’t want her doing this.
But she had to. She understood his reticence. He was the trained professional. But she had done this before. She knew how to handle this. “I promise. I know what I’m doing.”
“So do I, Lia. I have a gun. I have the training. Now, come on.” He started walking again, but Lia couldn’t follow.
“No. Because I know how to walk into a group like this without putting up one red flag. I can walk in there and walk out with Sammy. I know I can. You can’t go in, guns blazing. I can go in and…do what I did all those years ago. Infiltrate.”
“Lia, you can’t—”
“Listen to me. We don’t have time to argue. I just go up to the door. I’ll say Dani gave me the address. That we worked together at the diner. I’ll make up a sob story and say I need a job too.”
“Lia.”
He sounded so absolutely wrecked, but if she thought about that, about what they were all putting him through, she might crumble. And she couldn’t. Not when Sammy was in there.
“If Sammy is in there like Dani said, I get her out. I know I can do it. I’ll sneak her out, then Royal can pick us up.
He’s on his way, you said. And if Sammy’s not in there, I get information and walk out just fine.
I know how. If you go in there, even if you take down a few guys, you get shot before you accomplish anything. You have to let me do this. For Sammy.”
“Gard. They took Sammy in there. You have to get her out,” Dani said, her voice sounding thready. Then she let out a little sob. “I tried so hard to keep her out of it.”
“And if everything goes to hell? If it isn’t like what you knew before? What then, Lia?”
She couldn’t acknowledge any of those possibilities. She had to only focus on one thing. “I can do this,” Lia said earnestly. “I have to do this.”
Gard inhaled loudly in the quiet, freezing night. She could feel the way this was tearing him in two. It was tearing her in two as well, since she didn’t want to hurt him any more than he was already hurting.
But they didn’t have a choice.
“You will stay right here while I get Dani to the hospital. Do not go inside, not until Royal texts you that he’s here. Then you can go in, and he can step in if something goes wrong. But you have to wait until he gets here.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Promise?” he demanded.
Lia hesitated. Then did something that broke her heart but had to be done. She lied. “I promise.”
He hesitated, but only for another few seconds. “Be safe, Lia,” he said gruffly, then was walking away.
“You too,” she whispered, staying where she was. His shadow disappeared quickly because of how dark it was. She wanted to rush to the house, but she waited longer than she wanted to. She didn’t want him to even suspect she wouldn’t wait for backup.
If this was anything like her experience, Sammy was…okay. For now. Maybe whoever had taken her inside had convinced her to take some drugs or get drunk. Maybe they’d…
No, she wouldn’t go down the route of all those maybes.
In her experiences, groups like this eased into these things, because they didn’t want problems. They wanted people beholden, so they wouldn’t run away and cause complications for the group.
They wanted and preyed on desperation. Especially these fringe type groups that were more stopping points than the big guns.
Sammy wasn’t the kind to be scared into behaving the way they wanted, but they’d no doubt use Dani against her, just as they’d no doubt used Dani to get to her.
They’d probably told Sammy she had to do things to keep her mom safe.
Just like they’d probably told Dani she had to do things to keep Sammy safe.
But no one was safe. Clearly. Dani was hurt—and she hadn’t done those injuries to herself. Someone had hurt her and left her there. Maybe to die.
So Lia had to act. Once she was convinced Gard was far enough away, she crept back toward the house. She couldn’t possibly wait for Royal to get here, but she wasn’t going to be reckless.
Not unless she saw a way to get Sammy out via recklessness.
She took her time, picking her way through the front yard, around piles of junk, and up to the porch.
She carefully climbed over the broken and splintered porch stairs to leverage herself onto the warped porch boards.
Light came from the house, but Lia stuck to the shadows as best she could.
Sometimes the boards creaked under her feet, but there was so much noise going on inside, she didn’t think anyone could possibly hear it.
She moved around broken and warped boards and shards of glass on the porch and toward one of the windows. If she got an idea of what was going on inside before she went inside, she might have a better plan.
The big front window was broken, but she could see through some of the spiderweb cracks. Inside, people were visible. Drinking. Shooting up. Laughing. Not one of them was paying any mind to what was going on outside the house.
Then everything inside Lia stopped, because she saw Sammy’s dark hair with the blond roots.
Lia could just make out her profile. Her face was red and puffy from crying, but she wasn’t actively crying.
Her arms were at an odd angle behind her, which lead Lia to believe she was tied up even though Lia couldn’t see for sure from her vantage point.