Page 213 of The Pucking Coach's Daughter
“Wait. Is this you pretending to be L.? Nice. So fucking nice.” Then, “Oliver?”
They recorded her. Cut the audio…
Bear laughs. “She thought my brother was one of you two. Did you end up going through with my plan? Wear the mask and fuck her? She wasn’t too happy… well, I’m sure you could tell. I thought it was fucking amusing. She turned and ran straight into me.”
“You bastard,” Penn curses.
Bear lifts one bulky shoulder. “Yeah? What of it, Walker? I was hoping she’d give us a good scream—I thought that might get you running, you know? Scare you a bit more. But she didn’t. Not yet anyway.”
I’m going to be sick.
I reach the offices and peek in through the window of the first. The room is empty unless she’s lying directly under the window. Risking that she’s not, I go on to the next. Then the storage room.
The door is open, but moving from my spot will leave me in the open.
I glance back at Bear and his brother.
“You assholes,” Penn shouts. “So caught up in your vendetta that you’d terrorize an innocent girl?”
He steps forward, and Bear’s brother hefts the gun up. Points it at him. Bean bag or not, it would suck to get hit with it. Penn stops, his hands going up.
“You think she’s innocent?” Bear spits.
I will my steps to be silent as I sprint across the open space and practically dive into the storage room. If she’s not in here, I’ll be stuck?—
But here she is.
Fuck.
Her arms are trapped above her head, her wrists wrapped in chains that hold her up. Her weight is fully on her wrists and shoulders. Her knees are bent, her legs not supporting her.
She lifts her head. There’s a belt wrapped around her neck. She’s also soaking wet. Naked except for her underwear. And there’s a cut on her inner thigh. A steady stream of blood runs down her leg, puddling on the floor under her.
I rush to her and undo the belt first. It’s so fucking tight, I don’t know how she’s still conscious. I have to physically swallow down my rage.
As soon as I loosen it, she sucks in a huge, gasping breath. Her chest heaves, and the blood flows faster from her leg.
Shit.
I shed my jacket, dropping it to the floor, then tear my shirt off and press it to the cut. They fucking made a nick in her artery—not big enough to bleed her out immediately. But if we hadn’t come along, she’d surely be dead soon.
I wrap the belt around her thigh, cinching it to keep pressure on the wound.
Her gaze finds mine. Her expression is confused, her brows pulling down. “Real?” she mouths.
“I’m real. I’ve got you.” I shake my head and examine the chains binding her wrists. It goes up and is looped over a pipe at the ceiling, then comes down to the far wall. “I’m getting you down.”
I cross the room, gripping the chain and unwinding it from its anchor. I keep one eye on her and one on the door, conscious of the fact that any noise might alert them to my presence.
Carefully, I lower her to the floor. Her teeth chatter, and she curls onto her side in the puddle of blood and water. She brings her arms down, and I remove the chains from her wrists. I pick her up, although her hip and outer thigh are now coated in the blood that she lost.
“Hang on,” I plead. “Stay with me, okay?”
She nods. I lean her against a wall. I wrap my jacket around her, then straighten. My attention snags on a car battery. One clamp of jumper cables is attached to it, the other on the floor. I stare at them, trying to figure out why…
It’s fucking obvious why. They tortured her.
I wasn’t going to resort to violence. I thought we might be able to save her and leave—but this is too far. God knows what else they did to her before leaving her like this?