Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 56651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
“We had some movement in the back hallway. But the lights went out,” Cain said, sounding worried. Cain never sounded worried. I felt a shiver go down my spine and settle in my gut. If someone got past us… but how?
“Motherfucker!” Vice cursed. “I think… I think he’s in!”
“What the fuck?” I screamed as I exited the vehicle at a run, leaving the door open behind me. I had never moved so fast in my entire fucking life. I wanted to ask them what the fuck happened but I couldn’t take the pause it would take to ask.
The walkie-talkie was on the street behind me, anyway.
I arrived at the door and slammed into it. Hard. It didn’t budge.
“Dana! Let me in!” I screamed. If she was in there alone and we spooked the guy, so be it. All that mattered was her safety.
Nothing.
I roared at the heavens.
I might not have my unit but I screamed anyway. I knew they could hear me. Everyone was on the move.
“How the fuck did he get in? Is someone at the back entrance?”
“On it,” I heard a voice say.
“If he is in there it is because he has a fucking key,” Cain growled, clearly furious. “Get in there.”
I heard someone mutter about having cleared the complex’s superintendent before wildly looking around and seeing something that could help.
Her patio furniture.
Without thought I lifted the table and threw it into the front window, with all the force I could muster. It shattered. Wickedly sharp glass shards hung haphazardly from the top and around the sides and bottom. I cleared the empty window frame, barely noticing that I cut my hand open in the process.
“Dana,” I howled.
“Drake!” I heard her scream. But the sound was muffled. “Help…”
The sounds of a tussle were obvious. If he so much as touched her, he was a dead man, I vowed as I ran towards the bedroom. I saw her with her fingertips clutching the edge 0f the closet door. Her legs were stretched out and a man was hunched over her, trying to drag her into the room.
“Not gonna hurt you. So pretty. So pretty,” he muttered over and over again as he tugged on her. She screamed and kicked at him just as I landed behind him, sending him straight into my arms.
Good girl.
My girl.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” I vowed calmly as I started to beat the ever loving shit out of the guy. He was wearing a jumpsuit with a ring of keys attached to the waist. I yanked it away and tossed it into the other room. I was dimly aware of other people coming into the apartment as I beat the motherfucker, hitting him again and again.
“We got this, Drake,” I heard from behind me. “Go tend to your woman.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. My head snapped up to look at her. She was gone. I stood up and stepped further into the room. Then I saw her. She was huddled up into a tiny ball, back inside the closet.
I bent down on my knees and took her hands, blocking the light. Shielding her from the scene behind me. The guys were pulling the creep out of the bedroom and into the hallway.
“You’re safe, baby girl. I promise.”
She peeked up at me from where she had her head buried in her folded knees. Her eyes were so big and luminous, full of fear and unshed tears.
“Can I hold you?” I asked, almost pleading.
She hesitated, then nodded. I lifted her onto her knees and pressed her against my chest. She fit in my arms so perfectly, it defied logic. It always amazed me.
“Don’t hurt him. I don’t think he actually meant me any harm,” she said.
I didn’t speak. I just squeezed her harder.
“We can’t let him do this to you or any other woman again.”
“Maybe he hasn’t. Wouldn’t Cain have found something?”
“Maybe he didn’t get caught those other times.”
“Maybe. But he doesn’t seem like he has the intellectual capacity to be subtle.”
She had a point there. He did seem touched, as my grannie used to say. But she was shaking in my arms. All my instincts were to protect her. To defend her. And if that meant ending that sorry sack of shit, so be it.
“I will be right back, okay?”
“Okay,” she said in a voice that sounded so much like a frightened little girl, it nearly broke my heart in tow.
I kissed her head and left her there, closing the bedroom door behind me.
My demeanor changed immediately. My eyes narrowed. I felt myself go into kill mode.
The guys were holding the guy in the jumpsuit down. He was whining to them. Cain was staring at me with a deep frown.
“I just wanna look. So pretty.”
It was clear that his brain wasn’t functioning in what I would call a normal manner. He was blubbering, his nose a bloody mess that was leaking into his mouth. But I didn’t give a damn. He had scared my woman. He had to pay.