SEIZED Part 1: New Adult Romantic Suspense (Seize Me Romance Fiction Series) Read online

  I’m halfway away across the road before I even know what’s happening. My lungs hurt, my head hurts, and my breath hitches with every step. I’m gasping in panic and fear. The sound is so loud; I’ll never be able to hide like this. I pump my arms desperately, speeding up, frantic to escape, but I’m sure they’re behind me. My stocking clad feet seem clumsy. I’m not fast enough to make it. I nearly trip and I cut myself, but the pain is secondary to the panic that’s surging through me. The anger is gone now, smacked out of me by that cold concrete. All there is is fear and cold sweat between my breasts.

  They’ve got April and I’m next. I’m next; the words are looping in my brain as I clear another block and dart toward a mini mart. My skirt is nearly up around my waist but I don’t care. I’m scared, adrenaline pounding as I look frantically through the cashier’s window. The store is lit but no one can see me.

  I swear I can hear them coming up behind me, so I run toward a row of parked cars, throwing myself at the back wheels of one. I manage to roll underneath before the impact of the fall really hits me. Blood is still pouring from my forehead and my head swims. I know I need to hide, so I try not to breathe or make a sound. Two pairs of black boots pass right by my head, and I nearly vomit in fear. I’m holding myself, starting to shake and praying for a miracle as they track backward and forward on both sides of the car.

  They’re not giving up. The search for me is thorough enough that I know this isn’t some random crime. The pain in my head begins to detach me from my body. I’m lying there bleeding and holding in the sobs as I start to realize that this is it. I’m going to die. They need to find me and eliminate me. I’m a witness, and it’s only a matter of time.

  The sound of the approaching hot dog cart is sweet music to my ears. I hear a muffled conversation followed by the sound of running, and then three car doors slamming. The sedan guns its powerful motor, and the tires screech as those bastards take off and I’m left alone. Shit. They’ve got April. My friend is going to die. The sobs finally come, wracking my body. I crumple against the dirty wheel of the car. I can smell the rubber and feel the pain. I need to sleep. I need to get away.

  The hot dog guys sees me as he stops for a smoke and his shocked expression makes me realize I’ve got to get up. Every second counts. I can’t let April down. I need cops now. There’s no time to wait around. Those bastards have her. Scrambling out from underneath the car, I ignore his plea to sit down. Now is not the time for sitting. I start running again. I’ve no idea where I’m going, but I don’t care. I can hardly see the pavement ahead of me. My mind is full of the past. Images I haven’t seen in years start to flash in front of my eyes. It’s a horror show in my head. Every second is worse but I just clutch myself and run faster.

  The nerves in my back send a sharp pain down my legs. Something feels broken. I stop, trying to get a sense of where I am. I must have run twenty blocks by now. Barefoot and bleeding, I know I look like a madwoman, but someone has to be awake. Anyone! Up ahead, I see an off-duty patrol car turn into a driveway. They’ve already disappeared behind a fence, but I start shrieking for their attention anyway. I run, tripping and nearly falling toward the gate just as it’s closing.

  The barbed wire on top rattles with the impact and I see it’s a car park full of police cars. I throw my body against the metal of the fence.

  “I need some help,” I cry out, before sinking to the pavement. My voice comes out strangled, I know my hair is matted with blood, and my face is a mess. They must have seen me approach as within seconds the gates start to slide open again.

  Two female officers pull me to my feet. Their voices cut through the tinnitus and fear in my head. Finally, I know I’m safe. I stumble past rows of cars and wait for the roller door. We make our way up the ramp and into the back caverns of the station. My eyesight fades in and out. I can hear them asking me questions but the voices are a blur. I’m clutching April’s handbag and tugging at my skirt. Blood is still dribbling from my forehead. The lights are too bright I need to eat. The alcohol and the pain have left me shaking.

  I’m ushered into a small room with a table. I’m left alone. The cup of water they give me is gone in a second. Are they watching me now through the pane? I feel desperation start to claw at the surface again.

  “I need to see someone now!” I’m up at the glass, leaving smudges on it with my demands and starting to panic. I can’t be alone right now.

  The door opens, and a nerdy looking young officer walks in. He’s asking me what’s happened, but all I can do is babble.

  “April, they took her, she’s gone.”

  He’s trying to find out who hit me. “Are you married, ma’am?” I realize if I don’t calm down, no one’s going to listen, so I say, “No, I’m not married, I was out with my friend and someone attacked us.” The sobs come, as everything that’s happened in the last hour hits me at once and I choke up.

  “Who were you with when it happened, ma’am?” he asks, his kind brown eyes showing nervousness, and I can tell he’s new. Sobbing, I finally manage to get out my story while he takes notes. I tell him about April, about the club. I tell him how I got away, and I show him my injuries. He takes notes and seems sympathetic but nothing more.

  Another officer with a camera comes in. She’s from the sexual abuse team, but I don’t need a rape kit, I just need someone who will find April. I know from watching TV that the first twenty-four hours of a kidnapping are the most important. If they don’t find her now, they may never find her. The female officer is firm as she leads me into another room. There’s a bed covered in plastic, and I lie there as a nurse looks over my injuries. Each is photographed as I describe again and again what happened. I’m tired and the tears are close. My throat hurts where his hands bruised me, and suddenly I don’t feel so tough at all. Sobbing, I cover my face. I don’t want her to see me cry, but she just lays a gloved hand on my back and lets me sob.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Blake

  I’m finishing my workout when my cell rings, interrupting the hip-hop that’s pounding through the ear buds. It’s the officer at the front desk. My mind immediately jumps to the bum thief we were dealing with before, but it’s not that he’s calling about.

  “I’ve had a case come in with your name pretty much etched on it,” he says, sounding chuffed and not apologetic at all.

  I sigh. It’s the end of my shift. I’m tired, I’m sweaty, and all I can think about is heading home to crash on my pillow.

  “What is it?” I swipe at the sweat running down my neck, and try to keep the irritation out of my voice. His reply is more cautious now. He knows I’m on edge, but continues anyway.

  “It’s a kidnapping on Times Square. One female victim was out with a friend for the night. One was injured, but escaped. She ran here, the other was taken. They’re both good-looking girls. I think it’s a task force case, if you want the jump.” He sounds like a puppy that’s brought me a stick. I know the kid’s just trying to be a good cop, but I’m about done with looking at the faces of victims for now. Sucking up my negative shit, I tell him I’ll just finish my workout, and hit the showers. “Put her in room two to wait. I won’t be long.”

  The beats flood my ears again, and I decide to do one more set of dead lifts. The weights feel good. I’m working my back. Checking my form in the mirror, I lift and steel myself for another few hours on the job. My stomach growls for protein, so I drop the weight bar and wipe down the bench press.

  Towel in hand, I grab my water bottle and take a long chug before flicking off a text to Brenda. I tell her I’ll pick George up from school if she can drop him off. She works near the school so it shouldn’t be an issue. Her boss is more flexible than mine. I’m hoping sometime today I can catch some sleep but for now, I need to hit the showers.

  Cops are starting to trickle in now. They come into the locker rooms to change for shift, in groups of two or three. The laughter is raucous. I grin at a few jokes, and mock salute one of the others b
ut my mind is already on the case waiting upstairs. It’s a gutsy move to make a grab in Midtown. The chances of being seen are too high for most. This has to be professional ransom job.

  I grimace at the thought of dealing with another little rich girl’s daddy. Kidnappings are more common than most people know. Everyone is extorting everyone else for something these days. There’s even an option in most of the elite’s insurance policies that parents can tick to cover the cost of the cash if their little darling gets taken.

  New York is so ‘old money’. There are families here that have more wealth than I’ve ever seen. Some flash it around, some give it away. There’s a whole sector of society living the kinds of lives people make movies about. This all goes on, while in other parts of the city, single moms like Brenda are working in coffee shops to make ends meet.

  It’s not that I don’t like rich people. I just don’t like the way they behave. Flashy daddies handing out black Amex cards to daughters who’ve never worked a day in their lives. These are the girls who usually get taken in Midtown. I can predict the end of the story now. Soon we’ll receive a crying video where she’ll hold up a newspaper and claim they’re going to kill her if they don’t get their money.

  Daddy will storm into the station, practically with guns a-blazing and the checkbook ready, demanding the best of everything and threatening our jobs if we don’t find his little girl. It’s a story that’s so worn out it makes me yawn. All he has to do is pay the money, and she’ll be restored to her former life. And, of course, there will be years of expensive therapy to help her deal with the two traumatic days she went without food.

  Then, after picking up on the story, the media will have a field day. She’ll probably hire a ghostwriter to tell her horrifying tale and further glorify her own wealth. Most of the media will stupidly wish they were taken along with her, and TV producers will recreate a ‘based on a true story’ movie just so a hero could carry them home. Midtown girls don’t know the true horrors of kidnapping, not to mention child slavery, but listening to them talk to Oprah or Barbara Walters, you’d think they’ve been through some sort of Armageddon.

  And what happens to these girls once the spotlight fades? Do they go on to work in women’s rights or do something great with their experiences? No. They continue to live rich, spoiled lives. They exist at the center of the universe, and they keep underpaying their staff to maintain the illusion.

  A decade or so after the event, they finally morph into their mothers. The middle-aged women of Manhattan are like dress-up dolls with their outfits and their discreet plastic surgery. They spend their lives on an endless circuit of shopping, lunch, and spa dates. Sometimes there’s a dog in the handbag or a charity function to organize, but usually it’s all about them.

  I know I’m being judgmental, but I can’t help it. Every day, I see how scarce the resources for the real victims of kidnapping are. The chance of finding a safe place and a warm bed for girls once they’ve been taken is almost nil. There are one hundred beds in the whole country dedicated to helping the lucky ones who survive being forced into the sex trade. They’re lucky because they lived even if they were forced into sex thirty or forty times each day.

  Instead of the recovery of their uptown counterparts, most young victims of kidnapping are dumped back in the foster system, sent to group homes, or with their troubled pasts, they end up in juvie. There’s no therapy or time to heal, and they’re stuck there. The choice is either to run away again or wait out the time until they turn eighteen, and can finally try to make sense of the world on their own.

  It pisses me off that as many as one in three girls on the street will become a prostitute within twenty-four hours of leaving home. Pimps know where to find the girls, too, tracking them down in the all-night diners where they sit on one coffee for hours and try to make a plan, knapsack tucked between their feet. They usually have cheap make-up smeared from crying, but whatever they’ve been running away from will be nothing compared to where they end up.

  I wonder if it’s lack of instinct or plain old desperation that causes so many young women to fall into this shit. Despite years of ‘stranger danger’ training and kidnap movies, thousands are still snagged and taken away. Sometimes it’s by force, and sometimes they willingly follow whatever bait is being offered.

  It’s like a pimp fishing contest. The carrot on the end of the stick could be a hunky young guy who promises to look out for them, or the compassionate ear of another young girl who offers them a room of her own in a supposedly ‘cool warehouse apartment’.

  Of course, whatever their new and exciting option is, it comes for astoundingly cheap, and ‘little miss lost and alone’ perks up immediately without even thinking to get more details. I guess in those moments the runaway’s logic is drowned by relief. Believing she’s been lucky enough to fall on her feet, she’ll hop along nicely, but have no idea the nightmare is just beginning.

  Once they’ve got the girls, pimps are experts at turning them. Breaking in a new girl takes deceit, manipulation, and sometimes straight-up violence. He’ll give her drugs and romance her. He’ll play on her insecurities, treat her like she’s special, and then the work will begin. He’ll make sex work seem glamorous. She’ll be given new clothes and sexy shoes. If she’s lucky, she’ll have a moment where she thinks, ‘this isn’t so bad,’ before the first nasty John beats her. If she’s unlucky, the beating and gang rapes will begin on day one.

  That’s why it’s hard for me to have compassion for rich girls who are taken from Park Avenue. That’s why I get frustrated with demanding daddies and dramatic ransom videos. There are hundreds of women in America who’ll never get a ransom video, a book deal, or a chance to run sobbing into the arms of their family. I’m not even counting the foreign nationals who come in by boat or border each year. There are whole truckloads of human cargo heading to lives most people can’t imagine, as Manhattan girls like the one waiting upstairs indulge in dramatics.

  I guess that’s the job, though. Through the wall of the shower cubicle, I can hear that the men’s changing rooms are starting to fill up now. I need to get a move on. The faster I get this girl’s parents in here, and tell them what to do, the quicker I’ll be home again to get some shut-eye.

  The station is just starting to pump as I hit the top floor. There’ll be a changeover briefing starting soon, and officers are milling around in the halls waiting. Nobody wants to be late for morning briefing, and the pack of blue uniforms is swelling rapidly. So many cops in one place. This is the main reason I work nights. There may be more thugs out in the hallways wreaking havoc, but at night, for the most part, the Detective’s cage is empty and I can keep to myself. It’s not just the focus I like, though. I guess I’m not really much of a team player. Everything’s so much easier when I’m alone.

  Stopping at the cage, I ditch my gym bag at my desk and pick up my files and recorder. It’s five forty-five. I head down the hall, nodding at people and saying hi, but I hope my stance makes it clear I’m too busy to chat. It seems to work as people clear the pathway toward interview room two. I look through the window before I head in and see a huddled figure sitting at the center of the table. She’s been given a blanket and a coffee, but she’s still shaking, so I switch off the air conditioning that’s blasting the room before I open the door.

  I’m still waiting for her file from the receiving officer, but I’m tired, so I decide to jump right in. “Hi, how are you feeling, ma’am?”

  She looks up at me and I get my first glimpse of her swollen face. There’s a gash on her forehead covered by a patch. Big, pale blue eyes look out at me from under the white gauze, and I’m taken aback by the severity of the beating she has received.

  “I know you’ve already done this once, but I need you to tell me the story again, okay?”

  She looks back at me and I see she wants to say something, but doesn’t.

  “Are you warm enough? Can I get someone to bring you more coffee?”

/>   She stays silent, so I launch into my spiel. “I’m Detective Anderson. I’ll be taking care of your case. Can you tell me exactly what happened last night?”

  “I’m Carrie,” she says, holding her neck, her voice throaty. “It hurts to talk, ’cause he strangled me.” I see the purple marks on her face and jaw, and I almost wince but remain professional.

  “Have you had some pain relief?”

  She nods in answer, and in a shaky voice begins to tell me about how the night began. Listening to her, I note that her accent sounds familiar, and I realize she’s from Iowa, not a New Yorker after all.

  “We went to a bunch of places. We’re on vacation, we needed a night out.”

  She looks defensively at me as if I’m going to tell her off for having fun. Instead, I keep my gaze steady and nod, waiting for her to continue.

  “We were dressed up and having the best time. By two in the morning, April was done, but I wanted to go to Caliber so I dragged her along.” At this, Carrie looks down at the recorder between us.

  “It’s not that she didn’t want to go,” Carrie says. “April just didn’t want to see anyone she knew. There’s some family thing going on there. Her uncle owns it, and I think she doesn’t want to seem like she’s angling for free drinks.”

  Making note of the family connection, I prompt her to continue. She tells me about the dancing and the guys who were hitting on them. She speaks quietly, holding her neck the whole time, and I start to regret my earlier assumptions. This woman really is a victim. Her face is pale, the white of the dressing and the angry bruises a contrast with the sweep of dark hair that falls around her shoulders.