“Police!”
“Have fun getting arrested,” Xander said nastily. “Regards from Brickton.”
I laid my head back on the pillow and laughed as a thousand dominoes seemed to fall all at once. “Fucking seriously? This is because I headhunted West from his firm? He’s the last person I would have expected to give enough of a shit to go this far! He has two mistresses. When does he have the fucking time?”
But everyone was gone, everyone except me and Seb, who had snuggled like a kitten into my side.
“You better be at least fucking seventeen or I’m cooked,” I grumped, but when I leaned closer to him, all I could see was the splash of blond eyelashes on his cheeks as he snored a little. “You’re probably Brickton’s idea of a joke. Shane’s young, you’re young.” My stomach wobbled. This was bad.
The door that led toward the parking lot burst in, and I was too floaty to care much. The room was getting colder, but the temperature change was more interesting than uncomfortable.
“Motherfucker,” someone growled, someone I should know.
“Oh, what the—Mr. Demchenko?” That accent was also familiar. Someone came close to the bed and my glasses were settled onto my face. I blinked up at Officer Paxton, only he wasn’t dressed like a cop right now, he was wearing a nice sweater and jeans, and his blond hair was fluffy on the top of his head like he’d pulled off a cap not too long ago.
“You’re handsome today. Guess you had a reason last time to be… shit, I shouldn’t talk about that. Little help?” My words were slurred, but I felt like one big slug, so that wasn’t a surprise.
Slater and Paxton both followed the chains along the wall to where they were anchored to an actual metal loop, like I was in a real fucking dungeon. My stomach heaved. Wait… Slater?Fuck.This could have been such a good night, but now I was just embarrassed, and… my stomach roiled and turned sour.
“Don’t suppose you have a key?” Paxton asked with far more cheer than I thought the situation needed. He used his body weight to pull on the chain, but it didn’t snap free from the wall.
“I’m calling Madden,” Slater said, all sanctimonious. They must have been talking about me lately. I groaned.
“No, don’t do that. Don’t. Anything but that.”
“What’s going on here?” Paxton asked with a horrible scowl that made me feel awful. The last time I’d seen him his eyes had sparkled, even through his pain, like I was someone worth talking to, and now…. He shook me hard with a hand on my shoulder. “This boy has been missing for nearly two years. We think a sex trafficking ring has been using him to lure other teenagers in. He’s old enough that the cops said they wouldn’t look for him anymore.” Paxton had such a thunderous look on his face that I floundered.
“Well, thank God for that.”
“Are you for real?” Paxton asked, and his expression slipped from thunderous to downright dangerous.
“Well, I didn’t take him. I never met him until… fifteen minutes ago.”
Paxton shoved me again, even though I was stuck. “You’re in bed with him.”
“Trust me, not willingly.”
He glared at me some more, and Slater appeared again with wire cutters. He was a massive man, and it took him barely any effort at all to snap through the metal close to my wrists. I breathed out a sigh of relief as one and then the other of my hands was suddenly able to move. I flopped them around and accidentally hit Paxton.
“How—”
“In my truck,” Slater said with a shoulder shrug.
“Why do you have those?”
Slater glanced around the room. “You really want to ask me this when I’m saving your ass?”
“Yeah, no,” I muttered.
“We can deal with the actual cuffs later,” Slater said.
I sat up slowly but groaned. My stomach ached, even with the drugs in my system, and I massaged it. Paxton covered the boy with a blanket he’d found, I had no idea where, and he stared at me. His blue eyes were so accusing that I blew a breath in his face and was very satisfied when he blinked.
“What were you doing here?”
Shrugging, I looked away from him.
“Mr. Demchenko, this is serious. Did you—”
