Little Girl Lost [Book 2] Read online

  “Looks like you need the hospital too,” he grumbled as another set of paramedics started layering blankets on top of me. “Let’s get that head wound checked out.”

  I started to argue, but there was no point. The ambulance doors closed behind Officer Scott, the siren started up, and we pulled away from the curb. The world blurred around me as I succumbed to the delirium of the concussion. Everything went black.

  “Holly Dubois, the seventeen-year-old softball star that went missing from Belle Dame, North Carolina nearly two weeks ago has been found, only to be lost again.” The newscaster’s voice was annoyingly perky as it woke me up from a dreamless sleep, blaring from the television perched high in the corner of the hospital room. “Police say that Dubois’s older sister, Bridget, located Holly in the basement of a local residence that belonged to a family friend, Emmett Marks. Officers arrived on the scene too late. Marks had already left the scene with the young girl in tow. Several hours later, Marks’s truck was found in the parking lot of a gas station in the next town over—”

  I shot upward from the hospital bed and trained my eyes on the brunette newscaster on the screen as she continued her story.

  “—but Marks and the girl were not in it.”

  My shoulders slumped. So Emmett had managed to ditch his truck and make off with Holly anyway. Someone snored in the corner of the hospital room. Officer Scott was asleep in the extra armchair by the window.

  “Scott,” I called, ignoring the subtle throb on the side of my head. The effects of the concussion had faded. It must’ve been a minor one. I no longer felt nauseous or unsteady. “Scott!”

  The large officer startled awake, reached for his gun involuntarily, and relaxed when he noticed me sitting up in bed. “Oh, Dubois. You’re awake.”

  I pointed to the television. “Tell me you have better news for me than this garbage.”

  Officer Scott pushed himself into a more professional position as he watched the news for a minute. “I’m afraid not. Those updates are all we have. We found Emmett’s truck about an hour ago. Holly’s blood is all over the seats. We thought we might get lucky and have a trail to follow, but it looks like Emmett patched her up before he moved her. We haven’t managed to track either of them down yet.”

  A phone on the bedside table rang. I stared at it. It was Emmett’s, the one that he had dropped on the ground before driving away with Holly.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?” Officer Scott asked.

  He thought it was mine. No wonder it hadn’t been packed away with the rest of the evidence from the crime scene. I reached for it, my fingers trembling, and swiped across the screen to accept the call.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Bridget.”

  It was the voice again. The one that chilled me to the bone.

  “What do you w—?”

  “Don’t speak,” Fox cut in. “You know I like my girls quiet. Besides, I assume one of your officer friends might be listening in. Am I right?”

  I didn’t reply, trying not to lift my eyes to Officer Scott.

  “I thought so,” Fox went on. “Listen to me, Bridget. All of this has become quite tiresome. I should’ve known better than to allow Christian to recruit that oaf you called a high school sweetheart. I suppose he paid for it in the end.”

  He already knew that Christian was dead. That meant he’d been in contact with Emmett. What was going on between the two of them?

  “I regret to inform you that your dear Emmett has gone rogue,” Fox said in a tone of voice that suggested he was not all that concerned about the matter at hand. “I laid out an escape route for him, from which he has strayed. He is convinced that if he keeps the girl, he may be able to persuade you to fall in love with him. Silly fool. He should know better. Bridget Dubois only cares about herself.”

  I remained silent, angling my body away from Officer Scott so that he couldn’t read the rage emerging in my expression.

  “I have a proposition for you,” Fox continued. “One that you might consider less unsavory than all of this running about. Find your sister, get rid of the blundering idiot, and return to me. If you can do that in three days, I’ll spare you the horror of watching me torture your precious sibling. I’ll even let her live. You’ll be the two shining stars of my new business. What do you think of New York City? It’s reminiscent of Paris, no? What do you say, Bridget? Deal or no deal?”

  Fury burned through my veins and shook my body, but with Officer Scott in the room, I had no choice but to play along with Fox’s game.

  “Fine.”

  “Good,” Fox said, and I sensed the satisfied smile in his tone. “Three days, Bridget. Then I find your sister for myself, and you do not want that to happen. Keep this number active. You’re going to need it.”

  The line went dead, but I kept the phone at my ear, as if some unknown force might whisper something reassuring.

  Officer Scott cleared his throat. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, hanging up. “Solicitor. Apparently, I won a cruise.”

  Scott chuckled. “If I had a nickel. I wasn’t exactly talking about the phone call though. How’s your head? Physically and figuratively.”

  I rubbed the bump near my temple. It was sore and swollen but no worse than any of the other injuries I’d procured over the years as an adrenaline seeker. “Physically, fine. Metaphorically, I’m freaking out. You gotta give me something, Scott. Holly’s running out of time.”

  “I have ninety percent of the force out looking for your sister,” Scott said. “The other ten percent are working on the same thing from the station. We’ll find her, Bridget, especially now that we know what to look for.”

  The door to the room opened, and a transport nurse wheeled in another bed. It was Mac, fresh from surgery, still unconscious from the anesthesia. Scott stood up from his chair.

  “I thought the two of you wouldn’t mind sharing a room,” he said as the transport nurse set up Mac’s bed next to mine. “You’re to stay here overnight, Dubois. No arguments. Let that hard head of yours heal. Let me worry about Holly.” He clapped the transport nurse on the shoulder. “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s stable,” the lean, muscled man in scrubs replied. “No complications. She should wake up soon. Then it’s just painkillers and physical therapy until the wound heals.”

  “I remember,” Scott said. He tipped his hat at me. “I have to go check in at the station. Keep me posted on Hart’s status, will you, Dubois?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The officer left with the transport nurse, leaving me alone in the dark hospital room with Mac’s sleeping figure. She looked all right, better than she had when we left Emmett’s house. There was a pink tinge to her cheeks, and her chest rose and fell evenly with her breath. Her thigh was wrapped in thick, clean bandages. There was no blood in sight. That alone eased the worry in my chest. Mac was tough. She’d pull through. It was Holly I had to worry about.

  I watched Mac for a while, losing track of the time. The room lightened as the sun peeked over the horizon, sending orange streaks through Mac’s red hair. She stirred when the light hit her eyelids, turned over, and woke up. Almost immediately, she became alert, pushing herself up into a seated position and grimacing when she realized that her leg had become a hindrance.

  “How long was I out?” she asked.

  “No idea,” I said. “How’s your leg?”

  “It hurts. Any news on Holly?”

  “They found Emmett’s truck,” I told her. “But that’s it. Fox called me too. Apparently, Emmett taking Holly for a joy ride wasn’t part of his plan. He wants me to find them.”

  Mac raised an eyebrow. “He wants you to find them?”

  “He gave me three days. Then he’s going after them himself.”

  Mac kneaded the muscle around the damaged part of her thigh with a wince. “So what do we need to do? Where do we start?”

  “I was hoping you could help me with that actually.�
�

  She chewed on the inside of her cheek, thinking as her hands worked out the sore spots in her muscle. Then she grinned. “I’ve got an idea.”

  2

  It Ain’t Me

  For the second time in under a week, I left the hospital without being cleared by a doctor. The ultimate problem with this plan was my lack of clothing. The hospital gown was not exactly what you would call modest. The ties slipped out of place no matter how many double knots I weaved into them. The back flowed open under the slightest breeze, exposing my rear end to anyone who wanted a free show. According to Officer Scott, the clothes that I had arrived in had been collected as evidence. They had been sent off to the station for testing, and unlike the last time I spent a night in one of these chilly mint-green rooms, my best friend wasn’t here to bring me new outfits from the boutique that she owned. The nurses were no help either. Despite my pleas for actual pants, claiming that the air conditioning was too overzealous above my bed, none of them took the bait. Instead, they piled blanket after blanket on top of me until I was sweating beneath the covers while Mac laughed like an idiot from her side of the room.

  “Shut up,” I growled at her after my latest attempt. She was doubled over, clutching her stomach in silent hilarity. For someone who had lost several units of blood the day before, she was in good spirits. Thankfully, the bullet had missed her femoral artery. If it had landed any closer to it, she might have bled out on the scene like Christian had. “Before I come over there and shove a finger into that hole in your leg.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping moisture from her eyes. “I have to laugh about something. It’s a coping mechanism. Everything else is shit, but you have to hold it together somehow.”

  It had been roughly three weeks since I had met Mac, but our easy camaraderie made it feel like we had grown up together. I trusted her wholeheartedly. She went out of her way to help me locate Holly, and she had risked her entire career to do it. That was something I didn’t understand. There was a story there, one that she wasn’t willing to share. I didn’t want to push her, but there had to be a reason as to why she’d give up her position with the force to help a pair of sisters that she hardly knew. For now, I didn’t question her dedication to the cause. She was not only an asset but excellent company. In a crisis like this, she was the best person in Belle Dame to have on my side. We communicated and worked well together, as though the two of us had been partners in law enforcement in a previous life. The thought made me laugh. Me as a police officer? Fat chance.

  Above all, the thing that I really appreciated about Mac was her level-headedness. While I was a walking humanization of stress and anxiety, she was cool and collected. When Christian had had a gun to her head, she remained calm, waited for the opportune moment, and dispatched Christian as quickly as possible. Maybe she had learned the special skill of tranquility at the police academy. Maybe it was instinctive. Hell, maybe she meditated on a regular basis. Whatever her method, I was forever grateful that she could take a terrible situation and put it into perspective. This whole thing with Holly was the worst thing I’d ever gone through, and that was including the time I had spent in that damned hotel in Paris. With my little sister shot and sick, in the care of someone who had long since lost a grip on sanity and humanity, it was difficult not to lose hope. Emmett’s off-the-beaten-path approach to winning me over had thrown a wrench in Fox’s plans. Fox was pissed, I was pissed, and Emmett was an idiot. Everything, as Mac had so poetically pointed out, was shit, but if it wasn’t for her unflagging optimism and steady logic, I would have been out of the game a long time ago.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do?” I struggled to shove the heavy weight of the blankets off of me. They cemented me to the bed like a straightjacket. “I can’t walk out of here half-naked. That won’t be obvious at all.”

  “We could take out a nurse,” Mac said, a snigger hiding underneath the suggestion. “You’ve got enough blankets. We could easily wait in the corner of the room and drop one down like a rogue bat in the attic.”

  “You think this is a joke?”

  She sobered up and used her arms to drag her dead leg into a more comfortable position, wincing as the bandages brushed against the sheets. “Of course not. I’m sorry.”

  “The longer it takes for me to get out of here, the longer Holly has to deal with Emmett,” I said. “Please. We have to think of something.”

  Mac peeked down the front of her clinical gown. “There is one way…”

  “Great. Does it get me a pair of underwear?”

  “Not exactly,” Mac replied. “You’re going to have to book it out of here in what’s left of your birthday suit, but I think I can distract everyone on this floor long enough for you to make it out of the building.”

  “How?”

  She reached into her gown and pulled up a thin wire. It was attached to the electrodes stuck to her chest that monitored her heart rate. “One little yank, and everyone comes flying into this room for a code blue.”

  I followed the trail of the wire to the heart rate monitor, which beeped a steady beat in time with Mac’s pulse. “Let’s do it.”

  I sidled out from under the massive pile of blankets. The tile floor was freezing against the soles of my bare feet, but it was a welcome change compared to the sweltering bed. My toes, slippery with sweat, worked to find traction as I padded past Mac’s bed to the open door of our room and looked out. The nurse’s station was down the hall in the opposite direction of the stairwell. A few employees lingered about, but once they cleared the way, it was a straight shot to the exit.

  “Well?” Mac whispered.

  “Shh. One second.”

  From my hidden corner, I watched and waited as a nurse checked on a patient a few doors down. She finished up, dropped off the patient’s chart, and headed to another room at the far end of the hallway.

  “Okay,” I said. “Get ready.”

  “I’m ready. Here, you’re going to need these.” She tossed me a set of keys from her bedside table. “And Bridget?”

  “What?”

  “Good luck.”

  I took in the sight of my new friend, bedridden because of my mistakes, one more person that had gotten hurt because of me. It didn’t matter if this was her line of duty. She had literally taken a bullet for my younger sister, and by extension, for me.

  “Thanks, Mac.”

  “Sure. Oh, and Bridget?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your ass is hanging out.”

  “Goddamn it!”

  I clutched the back of the clinical gown together and checked the hallway again. The coast was clear, so I waved to Mac, slid out of the room, and began to make my way toward the stairs. Halfway there, an alarm went off. All at once, nurses and orderlies pounded down the hall toward Mac’s room. They sprinted right past me, totally unconcerned with my unauthorized jaunt.

  “Code blue! Code blue!”

  I ran off. There wasn’t much time. Once the staff discovered that the cause of panic was only a disconnected electrode, it wouldn’t be long before they noticed that the other bed in the room was empty. I bulldozed through the door to the stairs and thundered down, letting the hospital gown billow out behind me like a cape as I skipped several steps at a time. Thankfully, we were only on the third floor, and the exit door on the ground level led directly out to the parking lot. I didn’t even have to pass through the lobby of the hospital.

  Mac’s squad car was easy to spot. It was a blessing that it was still here from when she had been watching over another victim of Fox’s games. I unlocked it and piled into the driver’s seat before anyone could notice that a half-naked patient in a hospital gown was making her escape in an emergency vehicle that didn’t belong to her. The view from behind the wheel was a lot different than the uncomfortable back seat, which was where I’d spent the majority of my time in cop cars. Gadgets clung to every surface. A laptop, a GPS system, a control for the car’s lights and sirens, and a remote for
the radar system were all piled on the center console. The dashboard sported the radar display, an extra pair of handcuffs, and the switch for the spotlight. Mac’s backup Glock rested in a holster near the driver’s seat. I started up the engine, careful to not jostle any of the unfamiliar buttons, and peeled out of the hospital’s parking lot.

  This was Mac’s idea. It was the height of illegal, and I would have never considered it if it weren’t for her encouragement and my desperation to locate Holly. My first objective was to get back to Belle Dame. The best part about driving Mac’s cruiser was that I could speed along the left lane of the interstate without fear of retribution. Cars automatically moved out of my way. The tinted windows prevented the other drivers from noticing my lack of a uniform. As I whizzed by slower vehicles, the radio yammered with updates from the Belle Dame police force. Officer Scott’s gruff voice grunted unfamiliar codes, but the occasional mutter of my last name was enough to clue me in on what the cops were talking about. Everyone was on the lookout for my younger sister.

  Mac lived in one of the old apartments above the shops near Main Street. I maneuvered through the pedestrians, jealous of their simple, everyday, unencumbered lives, and pulled the cruiser into a spot around the back of the bakery. There was a separate entrance to the living space above, so I wouldn’t have to parade through the bakery in the hospital gown. I turned off the cruiser, checked that the coast was clear, and made a break for the stairs that led up to the door of Mac’s apartment.

  The place was immaculate. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought it was one of those tour apartments that the company dressed up and showed off to lure in new residents. The modern simplicity didn’t reflect Belle Dame’s cluttered sense of style. The walls were painted a cool light gray, the color of the sky before a snowfall. The furniture was slim, angled, and basic. There was no clutter or trash or any evidence at all that someone lived there, other than the pots and pans that hung neatly from a row of hooks on the wall in the kitchen, a loaf of organic whole wheat bread on the counter, and a stack of unopened mail on the desk by the balcony door. A fluffy orange cat that I thought was a throw pillow jumped down from the sofa and wound herself around my legs.