Page 59 of Waiting For A Girl Like You (Haven House #4)

“ T aylor breaks all her toys. Don’t let her play with you.”

Bruce hadn’t been entirely truthful. The drugs did knock her out, albeit only briefly. She woke to strange whispers, which were quickly drowned out by Taylor’s incessant rambling.

“So where was I? We took the sailboat further out, went choppy-choppy to Charlie’s body, and tossed him.

” Sitting in the front passenger seat, Taylor tapped her chin thoughtfully.

“Then we grabbed my boat and went ashore. Buck Island is a nature preserve and is so beautiful. Toby and I said our vows on the beach right at sunrise. It was amazing. Much prettier than what your stupid beach wedding would have been. Ours was spontaneous and fun.”

A laundry list of responses rolled through Jamison’s head. So many smartass things she could say that would tear a hole right through Taylor’s ridiculously over inflated ego.

Trapped in her body, she imagined this must be what hell felt like.

She had no control of her movements, and the only thing she could hear was Taylor’s yapping as it mixed with the erratic thumps of her own heart.

Fast and slow. Fast and slow. Like her body was fighting a war to regain control, shooting adrenaline through her veins, but the drugs, being as potent as they were, gave the chemical no purpose and nowhere to go.

“Anyway, Toby had a way with the human body, right? He knew how to fuck, and he could… disassemble? Yeah, let’s go with that. No need to get into all the gore of Charlie’s transition into shark food.” Ta ylor wrinkled her nose. “And I told him, babe, you should totally be a doctor.”

Driving the van, Parker mumbled something. Jamison couldn’t hear clearly, but Taylor punched his shoulder. “Not cool, Parker. Toby isn’t here to defend himself.”

One of the only things Jamison held partial control over was her eyes.

Rolling them as far up as she could, she stared at Bruce, who appeared both bored and annoyed by what he was hearing.

With her head in his lap, she glared—or tried to glare—at him.

Beyond his head, there was only sky through the window with the soft glow of night descending, but there was no way she could properly gauge time in this state.

“At first, Toby wasn’t into being a doctor, but when he changed his mind, he refused to take my dad’s money for school.

That pissed me off, but Toby wanted to prove he had the financial status to be worthy of someone like me.

My dad said he had a point. We didn’t know who the fuck the Fairweathers were.

All we had to go off of was Charlie, which wasn’t saying much.

Toby and CeCe always talked about Haven House.

They would say how beautiful and majestic it was. Toby always promised to take me there.”

There were others in the van. Two women sitting on the third row, and try as she might, Jamison couldn’t see them clearly.

The only thing she could make out were a few features, like how one woman had a head of long, dark hair and wore white.

The second one also wore white but had much lighter hair, almost platinum blonde, and very similar to her own.

There was something shiny and green at the base of the second one’s throat.

Jamison stared at the color, hypnotized by how the dying light danced over it.

Bruce never acknowledged them, nor did Parker or Taylor, which meant they were probably Zanmi “sisters” only here to do the dirty work if needed.

“You see, I don’t do poor. It’s a bad look for me,” Taylor jabbered on.

“Toby understood that. When you can talk again, I want you to explain what you were thinking with Liam. FBI agents make no money, at least not enough for your high-dollar ass. I mean, he’s got the body, the face, the brains, but Jamison, babe, there’s no money.

You fuck those types of guys. You don’t marry them. ”

The GPS informed Parker he needed to make a left, and Taylor danced in her seat, excited over something. The car turned, and Jamison felt as if she were going to slide right off onto the van’s floor, but Bruce held her in place, grunting at Parker to take it easy on the turns.

“Yay! It’s here!” Taylor clapped like a seal. “Bruce, I told you they’d come through. My daddy’s friends have connections you could only dream of. Remember, you and Mike aren’t the only ones with private planes.”

Parker hit the brakes abruptly, and Jamison fully expected her body to go flying, but Bruce came to her rescue again, keeping a firm enough hold on her that she remained in place.

Once they parked, Taylor rushed out of the van, with Parker right behind her, both slamming their car doors hard enough to rattle her teeth.

Jamison thought Bruce and the women would follow, but they stayed in the van.

“When your next dose comes due, I’m not going to give you as much, but I need you to keep calm,” Bruce whispered, turning his head to the side so those outside the car couldn’t see he was speaking.

“No stunts, got me? I don’t want them catching on. ”

Pumping air in and out of her nose, Jamison attempted to blink a few times and was excited to find that her eyelids worked once more. She tried to communicate her thanks with her gaze, but he wouldn’t look at her directly.

“Taylor doesn’t need you long-term. Behave, and she might let you live,” Bruce continued softly. “But remember, what she wants doesn’t require consciousness. If you make trouble, she’ll keep you knocked out for the whole nine months.”

Nine months.

Nine .

Months .

The air thinned, panic constricting her chest. Nine months. Nine fucking months. This wasn’t new information, but at their mercy, and hearing it spoken aloud had the fear clawing its way through her.

The women in the back leaned forward, their faces sandwiched around Bruce’s head. Even this close, Jamison couldn’t see them clearly, nor could she hear what they were saying in his ear.

“Damon has to be kept fully sedated. Your cousin is one big motherfucker with some fight in him. Taylor wants him first, but then she has a list of others she’s approved to have him.

” Bruce frowned, his eyes sliding to the side where the dark-haired woman continued to whisper.

“And she’s about to knock Claudia out for the duration of her pregnancy.

That woman is fucking terrifying, and when paired with Emily, the two have already maimed a few Zanmi sisters. Taylor is tired of it.”

Jamison’s eyelids fluttered, and Bruce noticed, the corner of his lips curved upward. “Oh, you like that, huh? Figures. Taylor thinking she can handle kids with your family’s DNA is ridiculous.”

She began to blink rapidly, urging him to keep talking. He was giving her information she could tell Liam if she saw him again.

When .

When she saw him again.

Liam would come for her. Now and forever, he would never rest until she was found, and scared out of her mind, she had to hold on to that.

She thought of her father. He didn’t deserve this. Living with as much pain as he did, he didn’t deserve to go through the kidnapping of his daughter. It would break him. A final straw that would put in him an early grave.

The smaller woman—the one with the lighter colored hair—slipped her hand over the top of the seat to wrap her fingers around Jamison’s ankle. Her touch was a mixture of ice and fire, searing the flesh as each digit made contact.

Either out of terror or anticipation of what was to come, Jamison’s heart thundered in her chest. Faster and faster, it beat until her ears roared with the sound of blood flowing through her veins.

Bruce spared her a glance, but shook his head in warning when she continued to blink. “I don’t know why, but that shit is running through your system faster than normal, and you need to chill. I don’t want them to force another dose on you until we’re in the air.”

In the air? She blinked double time, making Bruce heave out a sigh. “You can’t see it, but we’re on a private airstrip. Decoys will drive this car while we fly north.”

She didn’t stop blinking, and his enormous shoulders slumped. Bruce might have served with Michael, but he was older, not by much, but enough to make it noticeable.

“Mike will be at the house,” Bruce told her as the sound of voices outside the car came closer again. “No one is going to hurt you once we’re with him, not even Taylor. She’s a dangerous idiot, but she’s smart enough not to do anything stupid when he’s around.”

Whether it be from the blinking or the finite terror, a tear gathered in the corner of her eye.

Spilling over, it landed on Bruce’s hand, and he finally lowered his gaze to meet hers.

“I want you to listen to me. Mike Sinclair is a good man—one of the best. He finishes what he starts, and before he goes down, he will end the game for good. That family—your family—has a shadow hanging over it. A challenge between Destiny and the Grim Reaper. A never-ending battle for the fate of the Fairweathers. It’s all there if you’re paying attention. ”

Bruce’s eyes softened a fraction. “I don’t say all that with an outsider’s perspective.

I’m not some asshole who makes judgments about people over what he sees on television.

Well, not totally. I watched some of the movies.

I find your dad to be the most interesting.

The empire and the emotional crash. The balance he’ll never know. ”

The blonde woman laid a hand on Bruce’s shoulder, and the drugs in her system made Jamison think that a shimmering glow came from the touch. She began to whisper in his ear, her face completely obscured by the light.

“I bet he really did love her. Your dad. I bet he really loved your mom. I don’t think she was a homewrecker.

I heard she was actually very nice,” Bruce said, his gaze returning to the activity happening outside the car.

“But ol’ Grim won that round. He always wins eventually.

Destiny might have saved you and those girls in the graveyard when Toby came calling, but Grim doesn’t take losing well, and honey, I’m afraid he’s going to make it hurt when you’re back on the playing table. ”

The darker woman’s whispering picked up in Bruce's free ear while the blonde continued doing the same. Their lips moved in a blur, and Jamison wished she could reach out and touch one of them, if only to reassure herself that what she was seeing wasn’t a hallucination.

“And I don’t like that graveyard. I don’t know what your people did, but that place isn’t right.

Never has been. Something is out there. Watching and waiting like a damn animal, ready to pounce and drag you to hell.

It was there the night we tried to take you.

What was that? What was that… thing ?” Bruce went pale as the women’s whispers grew louder.

“She didn’t deserve to be tied to that place.

She needed her own home, her own family.

Destiny. She needed her destiny, and he was it. ”

The dark-haired woman seized Bruce by the face, squeezing his cheeks with her long, spindly fingers.

She held him still as she hissed into his ear with a fevered frenzy.

“No, don’t say that. We won’t let this go too far.

He loves you,” Bruce said in a hushed voice, as if talking to himself.

“He loves you more than any man has ever loved a woman. It’ll be over soon. I promise.”

The voices outside the car grew louder, the groups sounding like old friends as they approached the vehicle. Feeling a tingling sensation in her limbs, Jamison attempted to wiggle her fingers and nearly cried with relief when she found that she could.

“Mike has blamed himself for so long,” Bruce continued to speak to the darker woman as a sheen of sweat popped out across his brow. “Oh, sweet girl, you know what he’s going to do.”

The darker woman released Bruce’s face to slink back into her seat while the lighter one did the same, their whispers halting.

“It’s done. Grim will win the round.” Bruce swiped a hand down his face as he panted. “Death will win big, and every last one of them will pay for their sins.”