Warrior (First to Fight #1)(69)

His eyes widen—what little they can around the blood, sweat and swelling. One is already swollen shut, so it can do little more than twitch. His chest shudders with breath, but he doesn’t answer.

Impatience has me getting to my knees, soaking my pants in his blood. I straddle his legs and grip his tattered T-shirt with my left hand, twisting it to hold his weight. His good eye darts to my face as he spasms underneath me. I get a warped sense of satisfaction from the fear in his eyes.

“Listen up, motherf*cker, or I will do what I have been dying to do since I got here and put an end to your pathetic life. You have one last chance to tell me where she is, or my friend Jack here will take that gun of his and start with your feet, working his way up to your knees, your balls, your gut. Then we’ll leave you here to die like the coward you are. It’ll be painful. In fact, I may just have him do it anyway, just for what you put my family through. You deserve much worse.”

Mason Smith’s face drains of color and he nearly goes slack in my arms. I jerk him back to consciousness. When his eyes meet mine, I tighten my hold on his shirt and force my voice to calm. “Now, are you going to tell me, or do I need to let Jack have you?”

His breath rattles between us for a moment. In that pause, I can feel everything I’ve done wrong over the past year bubble up in my chest. My regrets, my failings. I want just one chance to rectify all the mistakes I’ve made. The moment intensifies, and I don’t realize I’m not breathing until my chest starts to ache.

“The old lady.” He wheezes until I loosen my grip on his shirt. “Melissa.”

My hand goes slack and Mason thumps into a mass of bruises and blood on the dirty, cracked floor. I fall back on my heels and look dazedly at Logan and Jack behind me. Jack is slumped on a tattered chair, his hand running through his hair. Logan is on his phone murmuring to put an APB out on Melissa’s car, pointedly ignoring our little beat down inside the trailer.

“Livvie said it was a white SUV.” Jack’s voice is hollow. “I never thought—I didn’t even think to consider Melissa. She has one.”

I leave Mason on the floor and pull Jack up. “No one did. Focus. We have to find them before she gets hurt.”

“What about him?” Jack nods to Mason, who is huddled on the floor in a pile of his own blood.

Logan holds up his cell phone and walks back into the room. “I’ve got a car coming around. I’ll stay here until they get here. You guys go.”

“You gonna be okay with this?” I ask, knowing he put his ass on the line, letting me get to Mason first before calling it in.

He jerks his chin. “You don’t even have to f*ckin’ ask.”

I look at Jack and say, “You know Melissa best. Where would she take Livvie?”

His face falls. “She could be anywhere.”





I CHOKE ON the smell of fumes. Well, that and the tape covering my mouth. The gas Melissa pours on me stings my eyes and I struggle to breath.

“Shit, girl. I swear you f*ck everything up wherever you go,” Melissa says, dropping the gas can and slamming the door shut.

Ignoring her, I search in the back seat for something to saw through the bindings around my increasingly chaffed wrists.

We’d been driving for a half hour before she stopped to douse me in fuel. I tried to keep track of where we were going, but she took no discernable direction and she talked nonsense the entire way. I’d long since stopped listening as I was so f*cking pissed yet terrified at the same time.

She turns again, throwing me against the door and I scream against the gag. She’d wrenched me like a rag doll when she threw me into the car and I felt something give in my still-healing shoulder. When I get out of here, she’s so not going on my Christmas list.

I manage to work the tape off by licking my lips repeatedly until it peels off, one side hanging off my cheek. “Where are we going?” I ask.

Melissa turns to me, all traces of the sweet woman I’d known have vanished and are replaced by malice. “Back to where it all started. Back to where you tore my life from me. If it weren’t for you, I’d still have Tommy. I’d still have my Sam. If it weren’t for you none of this would have happened!”

My eyes catch on the speedometer which is inching towards eighty. The long stretches of back roads don’t worry me, but the close turns and pinched sections spell certain death if I can’t wrest control of the car from her.

“Why couldn’t you leave me alone? I was finally happy. I had a family I loved, that loved me. What did I ever do to you?”

“You ruined my life.”

She’s certifiable. My skin crawls, knowing that I left her alone with my son, that she had her hands on him.

“I never did anything to you. I was just a kid.”

She turns back to me and her backhand connects with my cheek. “Shut up.” We take another sharp turn and my freshly bruised cheek strikes the window with a snap. My vision flashes white and my ears start to ring. Over that, I hear her say, “I tried to give you a second chance. I wanted to see what you were up to. I thought maybe we could even be friends. Family. But when I overheard you telling your dad that you wanted to find me, I knew I needed to take matters into my own hands.”

That would explain why she wormed her way into our lives. Like a disease, infecting everything she touched.