Page 34 of Unspoken Lies

Although, the odds are very low that she would have taken gum from a man. That means…

“The guy who was going to walk out with her had an accomplice,” I grunt. “My gut says it was a woman.”

“You sound like a detective or some shit,” Elijah mutters half heartedly as he stares at Lili.

“Doesn’t make his point any less valid,” Theo says. “Do you think she’d have taken gum from a guy? That’s some girl shit. Don’t girls have some kind of girl etiquette for club bathrooms?”

“If there is one, she definitely broke it with Liliana,” Elijah says. “Are you sure she’s breathing?”

His voice is high and worried. I understand it, because my heart is thudding as I continually check to see how far we are from the hospital. Instead of waiting for Rachelle to die in a box, we’re bringing her girlfriend in because she was drugged.

A light night before kidnapping indeed.

“Five minutes out,” Theo says, replying to an unasked question in the vehicle. “She’s going to be fine, Elijah. If someone is dosing people with roofies or some shit, she’ll get rid of them herself. On second thought, drugs could be why she’s in Santa Barbara.”

“Ignacio’s father doesn’t run drugs or skin,” I remind him. “You could be right that she may be hunting someone down. She was at the bar the other night. I saw her.”

“We did too. Could Lili be bait and the grim reaper?” Elijah asks.

“Too much conjecture, not enough answers,” I sigh as Theo pulls into the hospital parking lot. He uses a side lot where we won’t run into as many people, and this entrance doesn’t seem to be as well used. “It all tracks, though. Without her to tell us, it’s hard to know what the fuck is going on.”

Theo pushes the car’s gearshift into park and turns off the car before we all bail out. Walking quickly, I hope she decides to trust us, even if we don’t deserve it at all.

THEO

Her phone has been going off non-stop in the little plastic bag that they put her shit in. There’s an awful lot of weapons on herbody along with a bracelet, which are also in the bag next to me. Liliana brings the name Warrior Barbie to a new level, and frankly is fucking scary. There’s not a firearm on her, so they left the bag on the bedside table and started running tests.

She has an IV to help flush her system out, and the nurse said that Lili was lucky we found her. Jared said that he found her just outside of a bar, but that he didn’t know much else. The gum is with someone we trust to test it, and they’re also running blood tests on her to see why she collapsed.

I mentioned that I was worried she may have been drugged, and the nurses said that was a possibility they were exploring. Jared, Elijah, and I are just waiting for her to wake up at this point.

We’ve been here for over an hour, and she hasn’t fucking twitched.

“Who's calling her?” Jared asks, rubbing his face.

Turning the bag, I blanch as I read the name.

“Fuck, it’s her dad,” I breath. “Do I answer it? Will he kill me if I do?”

Lili whimpers in her sleep, the first real noise that she’s made, and it doesn’t help my anxiety at all.

“Answer it,” Elijah grunts. “Knowing him, he may have some kind of tracker on her.”

He’s scary enough to do it.

“Thank God he can’t murder me through the phone,” I mutter, opening the plastic bag and pulling out the cell phone as if it may bite me.

It stops ringing for a second but I refuse to relax because I know it’ll start again. When it does, I answer.

“Hello Mr. Cruz,” I say formally, forcing myself to breathe. “I’m at the hospital with your daughter.

“Why,”he growls. I swear it doesn’t matter how much shit I’ve seen in my life or how jaded I am, he makes my sphincter clench, hard.

“There was an issue at our club. She didn’t even know we were the owners, she came to unwind,” I say hurriedly. “Jared noticed her and went to say hello. Apparently, on her way out, she went to the bathroom. At some point while she was there, we believe she was drugged with a piece of gum.”

“Gum. That’s a new one,”he says. “It was acid at one point, printed on paper. Used to be a great way to fuck up your enemies. It would make them see crazy shit. Any idea what it was?”

Just because I grew up around mobsters, doesn’t mean he scares me any less, and I hesitate as I gaze at Lili in the bed.