CAPTURED: 9 Alpha Bad-Boys(120)

If she was telling the truth, and he used his angry and hateful feelings  to cloud his judgment before sending her off with the collectors, then  he was still the biggest idiot in the history of time.

Trusting her once had cost him his family. Trusting her a second time  would have to be out of the question. Nobody got the benefit of the  doubt anymore and everyone was a suspect. He'd learned that the hard way  and he was going to stick it. Christ, he'd only started dating Jessica  because she and Ethan saved his life by yanking his ass out of a nest of  wild vampires.

Cindy stopped pounding her fist against the door. She must've thought  that he left by now. The absolute worst part, however, was the fact that  he could hear her crying on the other side of the door.

Would someone who was trying to be manipulative make herself cry even when she believed no one was there?

He had to go. Jack went into his kitchen and grabbed a beer from the  fridge. He looked around for a snack, but nothing looked appetizing, and  he didn't feel like cooking. He only drank to the neck of his beer  before he had to put it back in the fridge.

He could still hear Cindy crying.

Jack went into his living room and turned on the TV. He flipped through  the movie choices on Netflix, but it was getting late and he didn't want  to fall asleep to anything. Nothing looked good anyway.

Jack turned the TV off and went to the closet for a spare blanket. He  stretched himself out on the couch and tried to make himself  comfortable. He could still hear Cindy softly crying.

When he fell into that in between place between asleep and awake, he  started dreaming about the things he could tell the collectors when they  arrived and she wasn't there for pick up, because the deeper he fell  into sleep, the more he started to dream about just turning her loose  and being done with this whole thing.





Chapter Fourteen

Cindy had just barely managed to pick herself up from the floor in  Jack's room after she finished crying. She was almost embarrassed by it.  It had been years since she'd cried like that, not counting when she'd  thought Jack was dead. Those tears had gone on for weeks.

Jamie had always said she was an emotional person. Cindy denied it, but  this was proof, at least to herself, about how true that statement was.

After searching the room, looking for spare keys to her shackles, and  finding only Jack's old art books, which made her cry all over again,  she gave up. Cindy found a clean plaid shirt and a pair of shorts, both  of which smelled like Jack's Old Spice body wash. She got into the bed,  pulled the covers over her head, and hugged one of his pillows to her  body.

Somehow, despite her misery, she eventually dozed off.

She woke up what felt only like minutes later to someone shaking her shoulders.

Cindy jumped a bit as she came out of her twilight state, but when she realized it was Jack and not a collector, she relaxed.

She was too miserable to be angry with him, but he looked frantic.

"Cindy! Wake up already!" he snapped. Jack was putting a lot of force  into how he shook her awake, and just like that, Cindy was completely up  and aware. It was morning, and she'd slept for several hours at least.

"Are the collectors here?" she asked, terrified of what the answer would be, and if Jack would actually hand her over.

"No, a case worker. She's not here yet but she's gonna be. You need to get up now. You can't be in my room."

So he was just worried about his career as a hunter? Ouch.

Regardless, Cindy did as she was told, and she did it quickly. Jack  didn't say anything about her wearing his clothes as she got back into  her dress, but that could've been because of the hurry they were in.  There was no time for her stockings, and she had no idea where her shoes  were.

There wasn't even any time to splash some cold water on her face or make  an attempt to clean her teeth before Jack was yanking her out of the  bedroom and down the hall. He was clearly serious when he said that  someone was coming. Whoever this case worker was, she was probably only  minutes away, and Cindy found herself back in the basement before she  knew it. That was when she started to struggle.

"Don't put me in the box!"

"I won't. I promise," Jack said as he brought her to the bolts and  chains on the wall and attached her shackles to them. He brushed several  stray locks of red hair behind her ear, and then touched her cheek  before pulling away. "I'll be back soon."

Cindy opened her mouth to say something, though she wasn't sure what she  would even say. Jack was gone anyway, having locked her up and rushing  back upstairs to get ready for whoever was coming to the house. She was  all alone.

For the second time since Cindy had been in Jack's home, she found herself chained up and needing to use the bathroom.

She realized that she probably wouldn't have to wait long when the doorbell rang two minutes later.

Cindy had never heard of case workers in the hunting business before,  but probably because she'd always been taught to only fear the hunters,  the collectors and the labs, nothing else.

Maybe the case workers were part of the life that only hunters and  collectors had to deal with. Maybe whoever was coming was just here to  check up on Jack and make sure that his permits and licenses weren't  expired.

Cindy told herself that over and over as she listened to Jack's  footsteps above her, moving to answer the door, and then stepping aside  as another person entered. More than one, actually. Cindy wasn't very  good at counting people based on their footsteps, but there had to be at  least three extra people up there.

Jack's voice was muffled as he spoke to his case worker, but Cindy could still make out the tone he used.

He wasn't happy.

Cindy had a hard time catching her breath all of a sudden. Something was  wrong. Something was definitely wrong, and she started pulling against  the chains that held her to the wall even before she heard the footsteps  walking toward the basement door.

The damned things were as strong as ever, and the bolts wouldn't be  moved from their place. The door opened at the top of the stairs, but  she still couldn't make out what Jack was saying.

"I was told I had three days with her. You can't just show up here with a piece of paper and think you can take her."

"I listened to the recording of your call, Mr. Marilla. You were eager  to be rid of her then so what does it matter if we came earlier than you  expected?"

"It matters because she's a pyro, and you are a pair of pencil pushers  with only one collector behind you. I thought there was going to be a  team coming here."

Cindy's heart rate spiked when she heard them on the other side of the  door. She was being taken today. The collectors had come and there was  one on the other side of that door who was going to take her away.

She groaned and pulled at her chains some more. She tried to summon the  fire inside of her but she could barely feel anything at all. There was  only the tiniest spark instead of the wild inferno she once had trouble  controlling. She couldn't escape these chains with only a spark. She  couldn't defend herself or even have a fighting chance.

She was going to be taken away from Jack. Again.

The door opened while she was still furiously yanking on her chains. The  shackles bit into her skin, and the frustration was enough to bring a  few angry tears to her eyes.

"Why isn't she in the box?" asked the woman who was probably Jack's case  worker. Cindy didn't give the bitch the time of day. She didn't want to  even look at her.

"It was scaring her," Jack said, and Cindy jumped a little when she  realized Jack was standing above her, then he knelt down and took hold  of her forearms, stopping her from pulling on the chains and tearing her  skin. "Cindy, stop, you're hurting yourself."

"Don't do this, Jack, it wasn't me. I swear to God it wasn't me."

Now she was full on crying. Probably ugly crying, too. That was just great.

"You're both on a first name basis? Not something I would have expected,  considering what you accuse her of," the bitch case worker said.

That seemed to stun him. "You know about that? I didn't write it in her file."

"We're not idiots, of course we know you hunted her for the fire  incident. Our records show she was living in the same area as you at the  time."

"Jack," Cindy said, unable to stop her sniffling. She couldn't catch her  breath and her chest was starting to physically hurt from the pain and  pressure of not being able to take a proper breath.         

     



 

"You need to calm down, okay? Cindy, look at me," Jack said, and he  squeezed her forearms a bit, staring at her hard like he could get her  to just magically get control of raging emotions that were running amok  and making her body shake.

"We have a sedative for that," the bitch case worker said, and Cindy  finally looked up at the three other people who were in this basement  with her.

The second case worker, a man wearing grey pants and a white button down  with a pocket protector for his many pens and a clipboard in hand, was  studiously taking notes, and then there was the collector.