Me and Monty watched Kay drive off the compound and I was feeling good about everything. Things were going smoothly with everyone, especially since Kay had talked with Kitty.
Once the gates closed behind her, I jogged down the steps and whistled for Monty to follow me. He whined like he did every time they went out. Until Kay was back, he’d be sat by the door, watching and waiting for her to walk back through it anyway.
I heard him follow me to the warehouse and sure enough, just like always, he sat straight by the door when we were inside. I went into my office to try and catch up on some paperwork, although I didn’t know how much I should do because Kay would most probably re-do it all.
It had been crazy these last few weeks and this weekend was just what we all needed. Spending time with Kay and Eli, as a family, was something that I never thought would happen.
Eli may not have been my son by blood, but by all other counts he was. With him not having a great start, I wanted to give him the best possible life that I could. I knew that Kay had done everything that she could, and that she’d tried to shield him from as much as possible, but now it was time for me to step in and be the father figure that he needed. To be honest, I was looking forward to it. I didn’t want to replace his father, although that wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Even though Kay had tried to shield him from everything, he’d been well aware of what had been going on. When he’d wanted to learn how to box, I’d had a good talk with him and asked him why he wanted to learn. I knew that it was a big decision, especially with Kay’s past. I’d never expected him to say what he had.
“I want to protect mama,” he had said. I’d tried to swallow past the lump in my throat, to explain that he didn’t need to learn how to box to protect his mama. In the end, we’d decided that it would be good for him to learn, I still hadn’t told Kay what he had said and I didn’t think I ever would.
Was it wrong for me to keep it from her? Probably.
But if I told her, all she would do was worry about it and she didn’t need to. It was over now and there was nothing she could do to change the past. All she could do was make the future a better one and with my help, I’d make damn sure that it was one hundred times better.
“Mornin’ boss,” Evan sang as he walked into the office.
“Mornin’.” I nodded.
Shuffling through all the paperwork, I put them all into a pile for Kay. There really wasn’t any point in trying to sort through it because I knew that it would just mess up the whole system that she had, and it would just cause more work for her.
Our time in the office had become less and less, I really should probably try and find someone to work in just the office. Kay was more suited to working on surveillance jobs anyway. I wondered sometimes what we did before her. She had this way of looking at situations; she was able to step back from them and look at it from all angles and that was what was needed in this job.
“What’s todays plan?” Evan asked, jumping onto the couch and placing his arms behind his head.
“Might pop in to see Charlie.” I looked up at him as a huge grin spread across his face. “What’s that for?” I pointed.
“What’s what?” He looked around, his face full of confusion but I saw the blush rise up onto his cheeks.
“That grin.” I raised an eyebrow.
Shrugging his shoulders, he lifted up off the couch. “Think I might tag along.” He tried to make it sound casual but he was far from it.
“To see Charlie?” I tilted my head to the side, assessing him. Why would he be so happy to see Charlie? “Oh, shit,” I said, coming to a realization.
“What?” His eyes widened in panic.
“You like Charlie?” I chuckled. Damn, I didn’t have anything against same sex couples but Charlie did not swing that way.
“I mean, he’s okay, yeah.” He shrugged again.
“You know he doesn’t, you know, swing that way?”
“Huh?” Evan looked at me, his face going pale as the blood drained from it. Holding his hands up in the air, he stepped back. “Jesus Fucking Christ! You think I like him, like him?”
Throwing my head back, I laughed so hard that I couldn’t stop, even when I had a pain in my side. “Fuck, that was funny.” Wiping the tears from my face, I looked back to Evan. “So? Tell me why?”
“Why, what?” he huffed, his hand going to his hip.
“Why you want to come with me to see Charlie?” I didn’t look away from him, he knew I could sit here all day and wait for him to answer me.
“Ugh!” He threw his hands up in the air and stomped to the door. “There’s a girl who works there that I like! Happy now?”
“Ooooooh! Evan’s got a crush?” I chuckled.
“Ugh!” he shouted, throwing his hands up in the air and stomped out of the office.
I couldn’t help but laugh again. It wasn’t often that he had a crush on anyone and when he did, I loved to play him up about it.
Shaking my head, I pushed out the chair, ready to go and see Charlie.
I’d spent most of the day at the precinct with Charlie, trying to go through some new leads that he’d had. We’d hit a major brick wall and neither of us were getting anywhere. I’d told him that when I got back to the warehouse, me and the team were going to go back to the drawing board and look at some different angles.
On the way back to the warehouse, it dawned on me that I was coming home to my family, something that I thought I’d be doing with Serena but that opportunity was snatched out of my hands before I’d even fully thought it through.
Shaking those thoughts from my head, I pushed the button for the compound gates, drove through and parked in my usual spot. Noticing Kay’s truck missing, I didn’t think anything of it and went into the warehouse.
“How did it go?” Kitty asked as soon as I walked in.
“He’s got some new leads that he’s checking out, but we need to think outside the box.” I sat down and looked around me.
I’d built a good life here. When I bought this piece of land, I never thought I would have achieved what I have.
After getting out the special forces, I didn’t know what I would do. Buying this piece of land was a spur of the moment thing, having just walked out on Serena. As soon as I saw the for sale sign, something in my gut told me I had to buy it. It symbolized having that freedom from Serena so I bought it. Right there, on the spot.
The only thing that I was sure about was building my house, I knew exactly what I wanted; a house that I could grow old in and raise a family, so that’s just what I did. I spent months building the house from scratch and when Luke left the forces, he helped me finish it off.
Having nowhere to go, I offered him a plot of land towards the back of the property so we spent the next six months building his house.
The only thing left that I didn’t know what to do with was the small cottage by Luke’s house. I was originally going to knock it down but when Kitty fell in love with it, it made sense to let her stay there.
That’s how our team started, with Evan coming along a couple of months later. The rest is history and we’d been solving cases for the last couple of years. Which was probably why this one was so frustrating. We had a fast turnaround time but this one had stumped us.
The worst part was that it was one of the most important cases that we’d ever been asked to help with.
“Where’s Kay?” Evan asked, slumping down in his seat at the table.
“Should be here any second,” I replied, looking down at my watch, then over to Monty. I’d know as soon as she was close because he’d go crazy for her. Normally, she’d only just be coming onto the compound and he’d be barking to be let out, then he’d run at her and nearly knock her over every single time.
This was the most I had been apart from her since she had moved into the compound. I didn’t want to bother her today though because she was spending time with Miss Maggie, something that she wasn’t able to do often.
Just as I was about to tell them what leads Charlie had, my cell rang.
Pulling it out, I frowned down at the screen. “Hello?”
“Hi, is that erm…Mr Mackenzie?” My heart sped up, my gut telling me that something wasn’t right.
“Yeah.” I pushed my chair back and stood up, my body knowing automatically that I needed to leave.
“Erm… Eli still hasn’t been collected from preschool yet and we can’t seem to get in contact Miss Anderson.” I gripped my keys hard, causing them to dig into the palm of my hand and walked to the door. “Your down as the next contact, would you be able to pick him up?”
“On my way,” I grunted down the line, and shoved my cell back into my pocket.
“What’s happened?” Kitty asked, following me outside with Evan right on her tail.
“Fuck!” I shouted, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. “Monty!” He came running to me and I could tell that he knew something had happened. He was on high alert as well.
“Kay hasn’t picked Eli up.”
“She may be with Miss Maggie,” Evan said. I desperately wanted to believe that she was but my gut told me that she wasn’t, she’d never miss picking Eli up on time.
Kitty pulled her phone out and held it to her ear, frowning down at it. “It says her cell’s no longer in service.”
“Get on the computers, I want her tracked. Let me know if anything comes up,” I said to Evan. “And Kitty, you come with me.”
“Right behind you,” Kitty replied and jogged to the truck.
Opening my door, I let Monty jump in first and flew out of the compound.
Pressing the buttons on the steering wheel, I dialed Luke’s number, listening as it rang out.
“Yeah?” he answered.
“Preschool, meet us there.”
“What? What’s happened?”
“Kay hasn’t picked Eli up and her phone is out of service.”
I didn’t need to say anymore; he knew what that meant. I didn’t have the time to explain it anyway, I needed to get there as soon as I could and being distracted by talking to him, wouldn’t allow me to get there as fast as I could.
We both knew what I wasn’t willing to say because there was no way I would say Kay’s name and that one word in the same sentence.
Kidnapped.
I groaned at the thumping in my head when I started to wake up. I tried to move but my head hurt even more when I did so I stayed still.
Keeping quiet, trying to assess myself and my surroundings without drawing attention, I concentrated on what I could feel. Almost all of my clothes had been stripped, being left with just my panties and bra. My skin scratched against the cold, rough surface, making me wince.
My ears perked up, telling me that I wasn’t alone. I listened for several seconds, making sure that I wasn’t in immediate danger, and then cracked one eye open. I let my eyes adjust to the dim light in the small space and tried to make out where I was.
The walls and floor were all concrete and from what I could make out in the low light, there was a tiny window and a door.
“Hello?” I whispered. Not knowing if I was talking to an empty room or if someone was here with me.
“Hi,” a small voice answered me back.
Sitting up slowly, using the wall to help keep me up, I opened both eyes and brought my knees to my chest.
I knew that Max would come after me at some stage, no matter how many times everyone tried to tell me that I was safe and he wouldn’t get to me. I always knew deep down, that it was only a matter of time before he caught up with me.
Although, I never imagined that it would be like this, he always liked to do it in private where no one else could see but I guess that he didn’t care now that everyone knew what he had done to me.
That made it so much worse, he was unpredictable to a whole other extreme. At least before, I had some idea of what would set him off but now I didn’t have a clue.
After a few minutes of my eyes adjusting to the dim light, I noticed two girls huddled together on the far side of the room. No clothes, just underwear, the same as me.
Where the hell was I?
“You should move from there,” the girl who had answered me said.
“Huh?” I frowned, looking around.
“You’re right by the door, you want to be as far away from the door as possible,” she said with an awareness that scared me. This was someone who knew what happened here. It also meant that I could find out what was going on and try to find a way out.
I wouldn’t let Max do this to me. I wasn’t the same woman that he’d tried to control and put down for all of those years. I was strong now and I’d show him just how strong I was when he showed his face.
Leaning on my hands and knees, too weak to stand, I shuffled forward with the concrete floor scratching against my knees.
“Where are we?” I asked when I was closer to them.
“Hell,” she answered.
Leaning against the wall next to them, I couldn’t see the one girls face as it was buried in her knees but the other girl’s face, the one who was talking, I recognized.
“Lindsey?” I gasped. She looked just like her, apart from the black eye and dried blood on her lip.
“Y…Yeah,” she stammered. I’d caught her off guard and for the first time, she showed some weakness. It was clear that she was putting on a front and trying to be strong, I suspected for the other girl, who still had her head buried in her knees.
A small smile spread across my face. We knew where she was now and even though we were stuck in here at the moment, I’d be able to get us out. That, I was sure of.
What I couldn’t understand was why Max had brought me here. If Lindsey had been taken by Daley, did that mean that Max was working with him?
“We’ve been looking for you,” I told Lindsey.
“You have?”
“Yeah, your parents-” She snorted, cutting me off and leaned forward.
“My parents put me here,” she gritted out.
“Josh was right then.” I nodded, knowing that she’d want to hear his name. I’d love nothing more than to hear Ty’s name. For someone to talk about him. I knew she’d been here a couple of weeks at least and I hated to think what had been happening to her in that time.
“You spoke to Josh?” she asked, her eyes wide.
“Let’s start this properly,” I said leaning forward and extending my hand. “I’m Kay and I’m part of a team that has been trying to find you.”
“Team?” she asked, shaking my hand. “You’re a cop?”
“No.” I shook my head and pulled my hand back. “Security company.”
“And you met Josh?”
“I sure did.” I smiled, glad that my mind was off whatever was going on here. “He told us all about your parents and how you’ve been living with him. He’s been looking for you.”
“I knew he would.” She nodded, a small smile spreading on her face. “He hasn’t got into any trouble though, has he?”
“No.” I chuckled. “He’s been quite clever actually, watching and waiting. You’ve got a good one there.”
“Yeah.” She sighed wistfully. “I really do.”
I smiled at the look on her face, her eyes glazing over as she was remembering things.
Then we heard the sound of boots on the floor coming closer and the rattle of keys as they were put in the lock. My stomach took a nose dive and the whole atmosphere around us changed.
“Quick,” Lindsey whispered, waving me closer. “Huddle up.”
I scrambled closer and sat next to the girl who still hadn’t looked up. Her hand came out and clutched onto mine and then she brought her head up.
Her blue eyes so light that they were almost see through. They made me think of Luke and that made me even more determined to get out of this place. I needed a plan.
We all listened at the click of the lock being turned, echoing off the walls.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to prepare myself for whatever was about to happen. But truthfully, I didn’t have a clue what would transpire from here. I just hoped that I could find a way out, and quick.