The masked head turns in my direction, and in that muffled voice he says, "Walk."
I glance at Taylor, and she's biting her lip so hard I can see blood pooling to the surface. She's terrified, probably trying to talk herself out of doing something stupid. I know how she feels, but with our ankles and hands cuffed, we can't even make a run for it. We can only shuffle, little bits at a time. There is no way we could escape him right now, even if we wanted to.
"Towards the house. Make one wrong move, I start shooting your friend in different places until you get to watch her bleed to death."
"Please don't," I croak, and even I believe the weak tone to my voice. "She hasn't done anything wrong."
"Walk," he growls again, pointing the gun in Taylor's direction.
My heart hammers, but I do as he says, I walk. For a second, it feels like two big hands curl around my heart and squeeze, because what if we don't get out alive? How many people actually get out of these situations? I haven't read many stories where they escape from them. No.
We shuffle up the steps with great difficulty, falling more than once and having a gun shoved into the back of our heads to hurry us up. We get to the top and shuffle across the dusty, wooden porch until we reach the front door. With the gun pointed on us, Black opens it and hisses "Inside' in our general direction. We both enter. The house is old and all of the furniture is covered in white sheets, as if nobody has lived here for a long time.
We're shoved down a dusty hall, and I cough more than once as we stir up the dust that has settled on the floor. There is a faint track worn down the middle of the hallway, showing someone's been here before, probably him. We reach a room and he kicks the door open. Once we're both inside, I see that it's fully secured-barred windows, no furniture to use for weapons, and a keypad locked door have my heart sinking.
This isn't good.
"I'll be back to start with you soon," Black says to me, and even though I can't see anything, I'm sure his eyes are zeroed in on me. I can feel them burning a hole into mine.
I hold back my shiver.
He steps out, slamming the door. The beep beep of it locking lets us know we are fully alone with no way out. I turn to Taylor and she finally lets the tears flow freely, rolling down her cheeks. She smothers a sob with her bound hands, and I want to hug her. I want to go over and tell her it's going to be okay, to give her something, anything that'll make her feel better.
But I don't even know if I believe it myself.
Are we going to get out of this? Will Ace have even figured out I'm gone? What if he hasn't? Even if he does, what if he can't find us? He hasn't managed to crack the Bowtie Killer case yet, how is he supposed to do it in a matter of days, or less?
My heart sinks and a feeling of dread washes over me.
What if we don't get out of here?
TWENTY-THREE
Ace
"What do you mean you didn't go and check Taylor's apartment?" I roar at Bill, pacing the room.
"She was in the window, she waved. I walked Hartley into the building, I even took the elevator up with her, I just didn't actually go into the apartment. I didn't know anyone was there, Ace. If I did, I wouldn't have let her in."
"It was your job to check!" I bellow.
Bill glances down at the floor, and I know I'm being too hard on him. I know it. He was doing his job. The bastard who took Hartley and Taylor did a good job of making it look like everything was safe and well at Taylor's house. When no one could get ahold of either of them, we went straight there and found them gone. There was nothing there but their phones, and Hartley's purse.
Hartley was gone.
Both girls were gone.
That fucker has both of them.
"Ace," my boss, Craig, says, putting a hand on my shoulder, "calm down. We're going to find them."
"We haven't been able to find any of the others!" I growl, running a hand down my face.
"We also didn't know back then what we know now. We're going to find them. We have every detective working on all the information as we speak."
"I've been over all of it. Fuck, I must have missed something. There has to be some clue, somewhere."
///
"If there is, we'll find it."
My shoulders tense up as I try to go over everything that's happened, racking my brain to figure out what I might have missed. There has to be something. Fuck. My mind goes to Hartley and Taylor. How long will he hold them before he kills them? Will he kill Taylor, because she is of no use to him? What would that do to Hartley? My chest tightens at the thought. She'd go to the ends of the earth for her best friend. If he hurts Taylor, it'll destroy Hart.