Page 28

CHAPTER 28

AJ

I heard her yell too late.

When I turned to see what was wrong, I saw her being shoved into her car roughly by a biker wearing all black. Her brother was next to me, and his gaze followed mine. We both took off as we watched the biker slide into the driver's seat and start the car.

“Fuck!” I growled as the car’s tires screeched when he took off into the crowd.

The smell of burning rubber filled the air as people jumped out of the way. It was chaos, and as they passed, I could see Rosalie looking out the passenger window, her eyes wide with fear.

“Rosalie!” Jayden shouted next to me.

We were both powerless to stop the car in motion, but that didn’t stop Jayden from running toward the car. When it came to a sickening, crashing halt outside the doors, he flinched. But he snapped out of it when we saw the car take off down the alleyway, hearing shouts from people as they passed.

“Dammit! Get out of my way!” I yelled at people as I pushed through the crowd to get to my car.

My heart was pounding so loudly that I could hear it in my ears. I jumped in the driver's seat and fumbled with the key, trying to get it into the ignition, finally jamming it in. I took off through the crowd—or at least I tried to, but people wouldn’t get the fuck out of my way fast enough.

I rolled the window down and yelled at people to make room to drive out or I was going to hit them.

“Fucking MOVE!”

People started to move and pull others who weren’t paying attention out of my way, but it still took a few minutes to get out into the alleyway. People pointed in the direction Rosalie’s car left once they hit the street, but soon, I realized there was no way I could figure out where they went from there.

“Goddammit!” I growled as I drove down another side street.

No trace of her car anywhere. The walls of the warehouses felt like they were closing in, but I kept moving forward. My anger was building, but I wasn’t just angry. No, I was afraid of what he might do to her. And those emotions, mixing together, were a dangerous combination. My mind flashed back to when I had fought in my last championship match, having a phone tossed to me, and I had seen photos of her beaten, lying on the concrete ground. The video of her sobbing my name vividly replayed in my memory. I gripped my hoodie as my chest felt tight. I couldn’t fail her again.

Punching my hand into the steering wheel, I used that pain to snap out of it. I had to stay calm and think.

Where would he take her?

Would he take her up to his clubhouse? Where is that? Isn’t that up in fucking Morro Bay? Shit, but if I go there and he’s not there, who knows where he’ll take her or what the fuck he will do to her?

I pulled over to the side of the road and slammed on the brakes. I grabbed my phone, but who the fuck should I call? Maybe her dad, and he could send all the drivers who had been at the race out to look for her car. But as I opened my text, I saw Rosalie’s name, and then it hit me. I had her location.

I had completely forgotten she had turned that on after we got back together. She’d said Kordell tried to use that against her once, but she wanted me to have access to it, just in case. And while I had told her there wasn’t any way he was going to come anywhere near her, fuck was I glad she’d insisted on sharing it. I opened her profile and clicked on the map. Her location was steadily moving through the city. There was no way her phone wasn’t on her.

I put the phone on the dash between a couple of dials; I didn’t need to see my speed anyway. I pulled back onto the street. Weaving through traffic, I barely got a mile down the road before my phone started to ring with an unknown number.

I reached over and answered it. “Who the fuck is it?” I put the phone on speaker and stepped harder on the gas.

“Jayden. Where’d that fucker go?” he snapped over the phone.

I could hear the sounds of people yelling. He must still be at the meet.

“She shared her location with me. They are driving toward the other end of the city.”

“What are you waiting for? Send me their fucking location.” Jayden’s voice crackled through the line.

My eyes twitched.

What’s it look like I’m doing, jackass? He’s really going to try to start some shit right now, when he knows that I’m just as fucking worried about Rosalie as anyone else?

But as much as I didn’t like him yelling at me, I got it. He’d watched a crazy motherfucker throw his twin sister into a car and take off. We both knew this guy was nuts, and that Rosalie was in danger. We could hash our shit out some other time.

I took a breath, clicked into her location again, and waited for it to refresh.

“They just got onto the 101 in the Valley. I’m probably twenty minutes out at this point.”

“Shit! I’m over forty minutes away from them. I’ll go as fast as I can. Share your location with me so I can follow.”

I kept one eye on the road and quickly shared my location with Jayden.

“All right, I’m mapping to you now, so gain on them as fast as you can. He won’t know how to drive her car as fast as she does, so we should be able to catch up to him. Are you packing?”

“No.” I gripped the wheel tighter. I hadn’t even thought to try to grab something from someone at the race before I took off.

It might be time I start carrying a damn gun in my car.

“Shit, well, do you have anything?”

“I’ve got my brass knuckles on me. It’ll hurt just as bad when they connect.” I subconsciously reached in and ran my fingers along the ridges of the brass knuckles.

“If you connect,” Jayden replied sarcastically.

“Nah, you heard me right. I said when .”

“Fine, whatever. Make sure you keep your knuckles on you until I get there. As long as they’re moving, she’s safer. He can’t do much when he’s driving. So, just keep that in mind.”

Jayden was basically muttering to himself with the last few words, so I wasn’t sure if he was saying it to me or just reassuring himself. Whatever it was, I just agreed with him.

As I was driving up the interstate, I started to hit some traffic. Horns were honking, and as we slowed down, people were trying to look around the cars in front of them to see what was happening.

“Shit,” I growled out.

I looked at the map, and it showed an accident ahead. The next exit was a couple of minutes away even if there wasn’t any traffic, so who knew when this would be flowing again? I merged over to the right lane, glanced down the shoulder, and saw it was clear.

Fuck it.

I pulled onto it and flew past the other cars, hoping all the debris wouldn’t pop a tire when I felt it crunching under my car.

“What?” Jayden said.

“Nothing. I got it. Don’t take I-5. Go a different way. There’s an accident, and traffic’s backed up.”

“Dammit. Fine, I’ll take a different route. Are you still able to follow them?” Jayden asked.

“Yeah, it might take a few minutes longer, but I’ll run this car into the ground if I have to, to catch back up.”

I meant it too. I would destroy any of my cars if it meant I got to Rosalie before someone hurt her again. Fuck, how could I have let that piece of shit get to her? I should have done better to keep her safe.

“And grab gas.”

“What?” I realized I hadn’t heard a fucking word Jayden had said.

“Fuck, AJ, pay attention, man. I said, my car’s running on E. Gotta stop and get gas. I’m going to hang up and call my parents to let them know what’s happening. I’ll keep following you.”

Before I could say anything, he hung up the phone. And I was alone with my thoughts of what might be happening to her as I weaved around cars and drove at faster speeds than what most of these corners were safe to take.

He was going toward Morro Bay now, but his speed had slowed down. Then, I saw it. He took an exit and started driving through the streets around Thousand Oaks. The hell was in that area? I had just passed Calabasas a few minutes ago, so I hadn’t really gained any time yet after that detour. But I watched as her location came to a stop.

Shit. Go faster, you piece of crap.

But this car had been first built for drifting; although I could get up to decent speeds, any small yank of the wheel could make me slide into a skid. And at this point, I couldn’t deal with something else going wrong. And keeping my mind on the road helped me from letting it wander off to think about what he might be doing to her right now.

Is he hurting her? Or worse, is he raping her?

Stop it. Nothing is going to happen to her this time. Just focus on getting there. Then, I’ll make him pay.

I got a text a few minutes later that Jayden was about thirty minutes out from me now. But he had a fast supercar. As long as he could get around any traffic, he would cut that time down by half. I pulled off at the Thousand Oaks exit and drove down the streets. As I got closer to where he had taken her, the houses started to fade away from the California hills, and some old, industrial warehouses now dotted the landscape.

I checked her phone’s location again, and it showed it was just down the road at a dead end on the map.

Did I take the chance to just drive right into something? No, being able to see what the situation was before he knew I was there would probably be best. Because I didn’t know if they were alone or if he had other guys with him too.

I cut the engine and turned my headlights off, letting my car roll to a complete stop. Making sure I had the location right one final time, I opened the door and got out of the car before I pulled up my mask and flipped my hood over my hat, trying to be as quiet as possible.

I made sure my brass knuckles were in my hoodie pocket before I made my way down the road. As I got closer to the big building. It seemed to be some old factory or warehouse that had been abandoned a while ago, based on the weeds growing up around the place and the rust on the walls. It was a little foggy out, and the air felt heavier here than it did in the city. Or maybe that was just my adrenaline pumping harder than it had been the rest of the night.

Rosalie’s car was parked out front, off to one side, and I slowly snuck up behind it. But when I got to it, it was empty. I looked inside and saw her phone on the back floorboard.

Fuck. Where are they? Did they change rides here?

But just as I was about to look around for signs of them leaving, I heard hushed voices coming from around the side of the big warehouse.

So, they aren’t inside it. This makes it easier to see what the situation is before they know I’m here.

I took cover against the wall of the building and inched my way to the corner, and it was just in time to see Kordell pin Rosalie onto a couch in a space that looked like some run-down college party area and kiss her. And they were alone. My vision focused on him, and my blood boiled as my mind started to go black. She struggled against him, and he slapped her across the face and said something to her before he shoved her legs apart. Which gave one of his hands access to her shorts. I watched as he started to unbutton them.

Oh, fuck no, he doesn’t.

I shoved off the wall and stormed around the corner, my fingers sliding through my brass knuckles.

“Hey, asshole! Get your fucking hands off her!”

Rosalie’s face snapped toward me, fear and hope in her eyes. Kordell just smirked as he looked over, slow and deliberate, as if he didn’t think I could stop him.