A woman didn’t stare at you the way she did and not have a million questions. No way was I only getting away with one.
As expected, as soon as I answered, she started on the next one. “You don’t find him… Perky?”
Perky? Sure, Cyrus had a positive personality, which was one of the things I enjoyed about him. “Sure, I guess.”
Her expression tumbled around for a bit and then stopped on contemplative. She stared at me and then glanced at Cyrus before back at me. “Weird. So you don’t want to suffocate him with a pillow at night?”
What kind of relationship did Corbin’s girlfriend have with his twin brother? I laughed. “No.”
I wanted to do many things with Cyrus but none of them included suffocation.
Not that I’d had an opportunity to do any of them.
Mainly I just wanted to snuggle. Which was weird for me because even though that was something most women were supposed to do, I found I normally didn’t. I enjoyed my personal space at night. I wanted room to roll around. Plus, when you lay next to someone, it usually got hot, nothing was worse than being hot during sleep time. I kept a fan on even in the winter.
But all of those rules flew out the window with Cyrus. Just the night before, we both lay in bed, and I’d been staring at the wall wondering if I’d ever be able to get to sleep. Something was missing. I wanted him to roll over and wrap his arms around me like how we woke up the morning in the car, but I didn’t know how to ask.
Finally, after a few minutes, it seemed as if he read my thoughts and Cyrus rolled over, facing my direction. I scooted back, getting closer to him, and then his arms wrapped around my middle, and we snuggled into a peaceful sleep.
I didn’t share any of that with Hazel, so all she did to my answer was shrug. “To each their own, I guess.”
Hoping we were done with the questions, I rifled through the items she brought, a few pairs of shorts, a tank top, and two short sleeve shirts with different things on them, but I came back empty with the item that I really wanted most.
“I need to call my mom. Is there a phone I can use?”
I should have called my mother the night before, but I worried about what to say. A good daughter would’ve called her mother immediately to let her know she survived the kidnapping, but my mother didn’t know I was kidnapped. How did I tell her about my situation but then reassure her I was safe or make it like it never happened and hope she didn’t ask me questions?
As if he could sense my discomfort, Corbin stepped over and pulled his girlfriend close. “Regardless of what Hazel says, Cyrus is a good guy.”
Hazel scoffed in his arms and turned around to scowl at him. “I didn’t say he wasn’t good. Just annoying.”
“I’m standing right here, you know?” Cyrus said, making his way to our small group that was now congregated at the side of the bed.
In his hands, he held a phone, and he slipped it into mine. “This is for you. It’s the same number as your old phone, so your mom won’t notice anything is amiss when you call her from an unrecognized number. And Corbin programed her number into your contacts along with a few other important ones,” he said.
Wow.
And that was why I didn’t want to suffocate Cyrus in his sleep. He was always looking out for me. Cyrus saw my needs and fixed them before I even recognized I had any. Who didn’t want that kind of man in their life?
Except I was confused about one thing. “How did you find my phone number?” We shared a lot of things with each other over the last two days, but I definitely never gave him my phone number. We didn’t need it since neither of us had a phone.
CHAPTER 18
CYRUS
Where did anyone find anything? I couldn’t believe she had to ask. “The internet.”
You gave me someone’s first name, last name, and the town they’ve lived at any point in life and I could figure out more information about them than you ever wanted to know. And I wasn’t the brother with good hacking skills. It was actually scary what was on the internet and so easy for people to find.
Imogen’s forehead crinkled in thought. “The internet is a scary place,” she said, mimicking my thoughts from a second earlier.
“You have no idea.” I had minimal ability on the regular internet, but Corbin dealt in the dark web and things downright horrifying. Thankfully, he’d been monitoring the space for Imogen’s name, but it hadn’t popped up anywhere. Even the deep, deep underground circles.
It meant when they kidnapped her from her work parking garage, they probably took her at random. It was both comforting and concerning. Comforting because more than likely they weren’t that interested in her but concerning because we didn’t know if they figured out her name and other personal information, which meant she wasn’t safe until we handled this problem.
It was also terrifying people out in the world thought a great way to solve a problem, like having one of your crew members with a bullet wound, was to kidnap a nurse from a parking garage.
Imogen stared at the phone, running her thumb through the contacts and smiling when she saw mine listed with the asterisk next to it to denote me as her emergency contact. No one else would keep her as safe as me.
