Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 28222 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 141(@200wpm)___ 113(@250wpm)___ 94(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 28222 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 141(@200wpm)___ 113(@250wpm)___ 94(@300wpm)
Draven
I haven’t laid eyes on my wife in five minutes and I’m starting feel jumpy.
“Where did Claire go?” I ask one of the line cooks.
“I saw her go into the locker room,” she responds, absently. “Few minutes ago.”
I’m already striding in that direction, shoving open the door. My stomach drops when I find the light is off. It’s never off. I flip it on, a chill going down my spine when I see that Claire’s locker is wide open, a black hair band discarded on the floor.
My gut instinct takes over immediately.
“Where is my brother?” I bellow, red, jagged scratches hindering my vision. Rage. I lunge for the back door and tear it open, nearly ripping the thing off its hinges.
What I see makes my body go ice cold.
Pierre is walking back toward the restaurant fixing his hair, breathing fast. Too fast.
A white van has just taken a right turn out of the parking lot.
“What are you doing out here?” I grab him by the collar of his shirt. “Where is Claire?”
“How would I know?” Pierre shouts up at me. “I was loading up a catering order.”
“Bullshit. There were no orders this morning.” Thanking God my car keys are still in my pocket, I waste no time sprinting for my BMW.
When Pierre steps into my path and shoves me, trying to keep me from leaving, unfiltered ire blasts through my nervous system, because it’s proof. It’s proof something is wrong. “Claire is in that van, isn’t she?” I rasp, the world spinning in sickening fashion around me.
“I’m saving you from yourself!” Pierre screeches, sounding hysterical, doing everything he can to wrestle me backward. “You think I’ll just let you leave me behind for a stupid girl? You think you can just scrap me like stale bread? Who is going to cook?”
A surge of power rocks me and I pick Pierre up, launching him a good ten yards.
He lands on the asphalt face first and goes skidding into the side of a silver Mazda.
“If you’ve harmed a hair on her head, I’ll come back here and mutilate you,” I say in a strangled roar, before turning and running full speed toward my car.
“You think I’d damage my ticket to millions?” Pierre yells at my back. “She might be a little bruised up, but as long as her pussy still works its magic, that’s all I care about.”
Fear and outrage combust in my chest, and I throw myself into the BMW, peeling out of the parking lot and gunning in the direction of the van.
He knows.
He knows about Claire’s gift.
And I’m too late. That’s what I think. What I believe, until miraculously, I spot the van five blocks in front of me, taking a hard right. I dissociate in that moment, because I have no choice. If I think about my wife being bruised, kidnapped and scared, I think my heart might stop beating from the distress.
Locking into my mission, I drive.
I hit one hundred miles an hour on the avenue, weaving through cars and blaring my horn for cars and pedestrians to get out of the way. There is a painful pounding in my skull, pressure pushing behind my eyes, like my head might crack into a million pieces. I have to find her. I must find my wife. She’s got to be fucking terrified.
I should have done more to protect her.
Once I became aware of her body’s abilities, I should have left with her immediately, before Pierre got wind of what she could do. Now, she’s been taken from me.
My car takes the right turn on two wheels, and I frantically search the side road for the van. I almost miss it. If I’d blinked, I would have.
There.
The garage door on the house that closes a final inch as I pass.
As though someone has just pulled in.
I squeal to a stop and throw myself out of the car, advancing on the garage.
“Claire!”
I lean down and attempt to pry to garage door open, but it’s impossible. Undeterred, I sprint for the front door of the house, putting my shoulder down and ramming into it as hard as possible. Then again, again, again, until the door splinters at the lock, smacking open against the far wall. A man stands with his hands up, a set of keys dangling from one hand.
“You,” I growl.
Our head waiter. He must have been recruited by Pierre.
“You’re fucking dead,” I say, hitting him with a right cross.
He goes down, unconscious, and my rage forces me to punch him twice more for good measure, before I snatch up the keys and storm toward the garage. There’s no sound coming from inside the van, and my heart beats in a lopsided tempo, though my blood doesn’t feel like it’s moving at all.
“Claire?” I croak, unlocking the door of the van with shaking, bloody hands.