Deep (Chicago Underground #8)(25)

A sudden warmth filled me, because, God, I hadn’t wanted to admit this to myself, but I couldn’t be sure they would be upset to find me gone.

“I’m okay,” I told her, even though I wasn’t totally sure I was. An hour ago I’d had a gun pointed at my head, even if the safety had been on. Now I was in the house of the man who had held that gun. And he claimed I couldn’t go back.

It didn’t matter, though. She didn’t seem to hear me. She was talking, almost pleading. “They took him, Ella. They came last night and took him. Please. You have to help. Please.”

My blood turned cold. “Dad?”

He claimed to have quit gambling, but they never really quit, did they? If I had learned anything from my sociology classes, it was that—people didn’t change.

“Tyler,” she said, and my heart stopped completely. Not my brother. My brother that I in turn resented and adored, the brother that I never should have had, the brother I never deserved.

“No,” I whispered.

“They said we have to pay—more now that they have him. They didn’t say where or when, but—”

But we didn’t have the money, however much it was. My father must have been deep in the hole again. And if that was true, there wouldn’t be any money to pay for the dorm or college tuition. Not that I could even go back, if what Philip had said was true.

“Mom, I’m not—” My voice cracked. “I’m not on campus. Something happened.”

“What are you talking about?”

I should have told her. I needed to. But I just didn’t have the heart to explain about Philip or the armed men outside my window. Not when she was already scared to death. Some habits died hard, and I had never completely stopped trying to be a good daughter. “A friend needed my help.”

“Ella,” she whispered. “I don’t know when they’ll contact us. I’m trying to get some money together, but you know we don’t have… I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know who to…who to call…and I don’t… Oh God.”

She sounded like a mother in agony, and why shouldn’t she be? Her child was gone. Her only child. She hadn’t worried half as much when I was taken the same way.

“I’ll find him,” I told her, not knowing how I’d actually accomplish it. I was stuck here, and even if I could have left, where would I go? I didn’t have any resources, any connections to the dangerous men who could have taken him.

Except for Philip. He would at least know where to look.

She was crying now, and I couldn’t console her.

I tried anyway. I told her he was safe, that they wouldn’t hurt him—even though I couldn’t know that it was true. Even though they had hurt me when I’d been gone. I told her I’d find him, save him. That I’d bring him back, safe and sound. Because she was my mother—I loved her, even if she didn’t quite love me back. It broke my heart to hear her cry.

She was still crying when we hung up the phone.

I clutched the burner phone to my chest and stared unseeing at the row of mechanical trinkets on the shelf. Twenty minutes ago I would have said I needed to get away from Philip no matter the cost. I would have said I would never have sold my body for money, never become what they had tried to turn me into in that penthouse.

Now he was the only one who could help me. And I knew the cost would be high.

It was with a kind of knowing that I turned where I stood. There was no surprise as I saw him in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, his arms crossed over his chest.

There was no point in pretending. He’d heard everything.

“She said they haven’t contacted her,” I said. “Why would they take him if there isn’t going to be a ransom?” I thought of several things that could be done with a teenage boy. The same things they’d tried to do to me.

“There will be a ransom,” Philip said. “They’re just waiting to make you worry more.”

He must have showered. Showered and barely toweled dry when he got out. Most of the water had sunk into his thin, faded T-shirt, so that it clung to his muscles. The short bristles of his hair still glistened wet.

It felt surreal to see him there, fresh and composed when just last night he’d been unconscious at my door. At the time I had been relaxed, confident, focused on my sociology test. And now here I was, falling apart.

Not real. A dream.

“How do you know?” the dream version of me asked.

“Because that’s what I would do.”

It was a cold fist to the heart, the reminder that he could be as cruel and as dangerous as the men who’d taken Tyler. As the men who once took me. He was a criminal. A killer. He knew the best ways to hurt people, and one day, probably soon, the person who got hurt would be me.





Chapter Nineteen

I CROSSED THE floor to him in my dream because there was no reason not to. No reason to hide how I felt in this surreal state. Dream Philip couldn’t touch me, couldn’t hurt me. Not really. His eyes watched me, a little too sharp for a dream, a flicker of concern that didn’t belong.

“Kitten,” he said, his voice low.

I brushed my fingers over his T-shirt. I felt something smooth underneath, definitely not the ragged wound from earlier. A bandage. And no blood. “All better.”