Page 67 of Stolen Dreams

I run back to my truck.“Where the fuck are you going?”Charlie asks me.

“Her house!”I shout, jumping into the truck.“Fuck!Fuck!Fuck!”I yell, hitting the steering wheel as Charlie gets into the cab.“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Focus,” Charlie advises.“Relax.”

“You fucking relax,” I retort, racing over to her house.“How would you fucking feel if Autumn was missing?”

“We don’t know she’s missing.”His voice is trying to calm me down when the phone rings, and he picks it up.“Hello.”

“Someone tampered with the feed.”Pops’s voice fills the cab, and if I wasn’t holding the steering wheel with all of my strength, I think I would drive off the fucking side of the road.

“How the fuck is that possible?”I feel like my skin is about to come off my bones.“How the fuck”—my whole body shakes with rage, my voice ravaged—“is that possible?”I look at Charlie, repeating the same fucking question, waiting for one of them to answer me.

“I’m on my way down,” Pops says, disconnecting at the same time we pull up to her apartment.I stop and get out, leaving the truck on the side and still running before I run up the stairs two at a time.Getting to her door, I see the green light is still on, which means it’s recording.

“Her truck isn’t in the parking lot,” Charlie reports, moving me aside so he can open the door with his key.

I step in and smell her right away, the pain just so much it’s like someone kicked me in the stomach.“Fuck,” I hiss out, putting my hands on my knees.“Fucking hell.”

“Don’t do this right now,” Charlie says, looking around while he pulls up the camera feed.“She left this morning at four oh four.”

“Why the fuck is she up so fucking early?”I try to control my breathing and the rage, not sure which one is going to win over the other.For ten days, all I’ve thought about is her, yet for ten days, I’ve fought with myself about doing something about it.

“Probably the same reason you’re sleeping on your fuckin’ couch.And refusing to admit to yourself what a fucking moron you are!”he yells at me.“Fuck!”he roars out as he tosses his phone across the room.It smashes on the wall and then straight to the floor.

My phone rings, and I pick it up to see it’s Bobby.“Hello.”I close my eyes, begging him to tell me she’s there.Begging him to say it was all a mistake, and we’re all freaking out for nothing.

“She’s not here, boss,” he informs me.“No one has seen her here.”

“Okay.”I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose.“I’m going to call Sammy.”He disconnects, and I call Sammy, who answers right away.

“Hey,” he answers, “she’s not here, and Juliet is in her stall.”He breathes out.“Spoke to a couple of the guys, and they haven’t seen her yet.”

“I want everyone back at the barn,” I tell him.“Call Bobby, call the night shift, call fucking everyone,” I instruct and then look at Charlie, who has his hands on the top of his head, and I say the words I never thought I would say, “Someone took her.”The phone slips from my hand as I admit it, and I look at Charlie.“Someone took Lilah.”My vision goes almost black.“And when I find them, I’m going to kill them.”

ChapterThirty-Seven

LILAH

My head feels like it’s a million pounds, and my eyes feel even heavier.I moan as I move my head side to side, trying to open my eyes.I try to move my hand to rub my eyes and find it stuck.Opening my eyes, I finally look around, my heart speeding up when I take in the room.

The panic runs through me as I try to move my hand and see it handcuffed to the side of the bed.I move the other one, feeling the other one also handcuffed.I lift my head and look around the room.The whole wall is covered with pictures of me, from the barn to riding my horse to sitting at my desk.Every inch of the wall is all me.The bile runs up my throat as I lean my body over the small bed, dry heaving.

I spit before I start to speak, wiping my mouth with my T-shirt.“Help!”I shout and then listen to nothing.“Help me.”I start to yank my arm from the bed, the stinging from the metal stopping me.“Please, someone help me.”

I close my eyes when I hear nothing as I remember how the fuck I got here.Sammy.Sammy and his coffee.I remember falling and him holding me up and then carrying me to my truck.

My eyes opened when he placed me in the back seat as he rushed away from the barn.I lay down and felt like my body was floating outside of itself.I tried my hardest to stay awake, but I couldn’t.“You’ll be okay.”That’s the last thing I heard before the darkness took me.

I felt like I was being carried again, and when I opened my eyes, I was in Sammy’s arms.I tried to get away from him, but my body wasn’t moving the way I wanted it to.In other words, not at fucking all.I couldn’t get anything to move, and I got sucked back down into the darkness again.

Now here I am in this fucking bedroom, the only things in the room are the bed, which I now see is a hospital bed.And one lone table is in the corner with a lamp on it, giving a soft yellow glow.

I look up at the ceiling, trying to calm myself down, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, when I hear something creak before the wall is pushed open, and you wouldn’t even know there is an opening there.“Hey,” he says softly, “you’re awake.”

“Sammy,” I say, “what the fuck is going on?”

“I don’t have a lot of time,” he says.“I wish I did, but it all happened so fast.”He comes over and presses a button at the bottom of the bed and my head moves up.“Are you okay?”

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