“Hello?”
“Blake.” Donovan says my name like it pains him to do so and my guts drop and my head becomes fuzzy.
“Just tell me,” I command, scared to hear what he’s going to say but needing for him to put the words out there. If someone has hurt my baby girl, a reckoning like nothing they had ever seen was about to come down on them.
“It’s, Melody, man. We got a call from Ryan’s place. She’s been stabbed.” Bile races up my throat; my soul tries to escape to go to its mate. My body vibrates with anger, fear, and grief. “Is she dead?” I manage to ask without falling to the floor and emptying my stomach and every ounce of water I possess in tears of agony. “Her pulse was weak when we got there, Blake. They’re rushing her to surgery.”
“I’m on my way, Donovan. I need you to go to my house and collect Cereus and bring her to me.” I end the call before he has a chance to say anything else. I turn around, raising my gun but he’s gone.
I don’t have time to follow him; I’m on autopilot to get to my wife. She can’t die, I won’t allow it. I’ll go inside her chest and pump for her if that’s what it takes. Sometimes it only takes that one person to die and the world will feel empty, pointless. She is my one person. I need her to survive this.
I push my way through people to get to the reception in the E.R. A few of my detectives are littering the hallway. I rush though, ignoring the shout from a nurse. I flash my badge at a security guard coming at me; he’s lucky it wasn’t my gun. Nothing is stopping me from getting to my wife. Donovan shoos everyone away from me and grabs my shoulders.
“What happened? Where was she? Have you got Cereus?”
“You need to calm down and sit for a minute.”
I shrug his hands off me and grab him by the collar pinning him to the wall. “Don’t tell me to calm down! I will tear through this fucking place if someone doesn’t tell me where she is and if she’s okay, and get my fucking daughter here now!”
Donovan puts his hands up in a stop gesture, the surrounding officers confused and moving in to restrain me. Let them fucking try it.
“Blake, it was Cereus who called it in.” The people around us disappear and everything appears to be muted. Donovan’s lips are moving but I can’t hear him.
“Blake.” Ruth’s voice penetrates the haze clouding my senses and she pulls me into her. “What are you doing here?”
“I came over after I saw on the news about Sean and there were police at your house. They told me Mel’s here. What’s going on? I haven’t seen or heard from you, and Mel has been avoiding my calls. We’re all worried sick.”
I turn to Donovan. “Tell me,” I beg.
“We don’t know where she is or who took her but it was a female. I have officers going to pick up Dr. Jarvis for questioning. “
“Someone took Cereus?”
“From what we can gather from the call, and the fact she was missing when we got there.”
“Belinda Ruth.” I push past him and run to my car. Jenna said she would be at her grandparents’ house if she weren’t at Ryan’s or her apartment.
MY PLACE IS SWARMING WITH police and there’s no way I’m going to get to Belinda’s apartment. If she’s there they will have her anyway. I pull my cell from my jeans, hoping I can find information on where Danielle’s grandparents live, and an unknown number flashes up as an incoming call. I stare at it for a few seconds before deciding to answer it.
“Who this?”
“Ry. .an,” Cereus whispers, and it’s broken up. She’s sniffling and the reception is bad. I can’t believe she’s calling me after what I did.
“Cereus, where are you?”
“Ryan . . . help me.” My hairs lift on the back of my neck at her words and the distress in her voice.
“Where are you, Cereus? I’ll come get you.”
“I’m inside a trunk. That woman hit me and I woke up in a trunk, it’s moving. I thought she must have killed you. My Mom.” Her broken sobs pour down the line. “Why is she doing this? Is she going to kill me, Ryan?”
I’m completely helpless and people will say its karma, but fuck them, fuck karma and fuck this motherfucking bitch thinking she can do this to me.
“There’s air coming in through a hole where the lights are. It’s dented in there and the light is broken but it’s too small to see through.”
She’s in her Ford and I bashed those lights in with my car when I moved in.
“Listen to me, Cereus, if you’re in Belinda’s car it’s an old model and those lights will come out if you put enough pressure on them. Hit it hard,”