“I’ll check outside, you check inside,” Holden said from beside him.
He pushed through the crowd to the place where she’d been standing, his gaze searching.
Nothing.
He scoured the crowd, checking every face.
Less than a minute later—less than sixty fucking seconds—and he knew, she wasn’t here. The realization hit him so hard, his knees almost caved.
He ran outside, pulling his phone from his pocket and calling her number as he moved. It rang out.
Holden rounded the building and shook his head at Jesse.
Gone. He’d taken his eyes off her for one fucking minute and she was gone.
The dull humof a car engine swelled in Aspen’s foggy mind. Where was she? And why did everything hurt? Her stomach, her head…it was like one big ache.
She scrunched her eyes before opening them, the brightness immediately making her snap them shut again.
Someone cursed, and her entire body froze.
Dylan.
For a moment, she had to remind herself to breathe. To suck one breath in after the next.
Little things started to come back to her. The Tea House. Her mother. The room as it blurred around her. Then nothing.
Now she was in a car with Dylan. Maybe on the floor of the back seat. It didn’t matter that she didn’t remember how she got here. Or that everything hurt and she had no idea why. What mattered was that she was here now, and she needed toget out.
Dylan cursed a second time, and the car made a sharp turn, sending her body into what she could only assume was the bottom of the seat behind her.
Slowly, she forced her eyes open. They wanted to snap shut again, but she refused to let them. Definitely the floor of the back of a car, and she was facing the front.
She tested her wrists, moving them just a fraction. She wasn’t bound. If he didn’t want to bind her, why wouldn’t he have put her in the trunk? Did he assume she wouldn’t wake up?
Her belly rolled, and she just kept herself from grabbing her stomach.
You can’t be sick now, Aspen. Hold it together.
He must have drugged her. How? The last thing she remembered drinking was her coffee. Could someone have slipped something into it? Who? Mrs. Gerald wouldn’t have. Her mother?
The thought made her belly roll a second time.
No. She’d sipped her coffeebeforespeaking to her mother.
Something pricked at her thigh.
Silently, she reached down. Her fingers brushed over cold metal. She wrapped her fingers around it.
A key. A key for what, she wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter. It was all she had; the end was surely sharp enough to use as a weapon.
She gripped the key with her fist, the end pointing out.
Bile crawled up her throat at the thought of what she was about to do. But what was the alternative? Let this psychopath take her God knew where and kill her? She’d end up like his ex, but she probably wouldn’t make it out alive.
She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm her racing heart.
You can do this, Aspen. You have to. You don’t have any other options.
