Page 36 of Shattered King

I shoved my hands though my hair. Where the hell was she? Lulu’s aunt had called the office over an hour ago, hysterical. Van took the call. Lulu was in trouble. Sara confirmed that Lulu didn’t get on with Pierce, that he was the reason she ran, the reason she’d stayed away.

Then Sara fucking begged us to save her.

I felt like something was tearing at my insides, my mind scrabbling to put all the pieces together. What the fuck had I missed? Going by the state of Sara’s house, the overturned furniture, the fucking blood, the obvious signs that Lulu had been fighting for her life, I’d missed a whole hell of a lot. Pierce was behind this. Who else could it be? After the way she’d freaked out earlier? She’d been scared out of her mind when she thought I was going to hand her over to her stepfather. She’d tried to pretend it was me she wanted to get away from, and I’d been too blinded by my own anger to see through her lie. My head thudded back against the back wall of Sara’s house. I hit it again for good measure, like I could knock some sense into my thick skull, like the answers would magically come to me. But they wouldn’t. I couldn’t think about any of that now, not if I wanted to find her, not if I wanted to keep my shit together. Right then, I was hanging on by my fucking fingernails. This close to losing my goddamn mind.

Lulu was hurt, alone, and scared as hell.

I spun and punched the wall, pent-up emotion exploding out of me. Fuck. We had every one of our men on it, combing the street searching for her. So far nothing. A street light flickered beyond the back fence. It was a single bulb, lighting up a single sign: “Jacobson’s Park.”

I started across the yard, toward the fence. There were a couple of boards loose. I tested them and they slid to the side easily, making a big enough space for someone to crawl through. It was a tight squeeze, but I got through. There were a lot of places to hide back here. I moved quicker, broke into a jog. Some of the guys were already scouring the trees lining the park, but I went right by them, to the playground area itself. It was dark, near impossible to see a damn thing.

A flashlight from one of our guys searching not far from me slashed across the ground by the fort. It was only a split second, but it caught on something. Something light colored. “I need a flashlight!”

Jude appeared at my side a few seconds later, lighting the way.

I saw her pale hand first, then all that fucking beautiful red hair lying in the mud. I couldn’t see her face. She’d tucked herself in a tight ball, her body concealed under the small fort. Seeing her like that, fuck, it felt like someone had nailed me in the back of the knee with a sledgehammer. I went down hard in front of her. “Lulu?”

Nothing. She gave me nothing.

I heard Jude’s retreating steps, his voice booming, yelling for a medic. I carefully dragged her clear and rolled her toward me. A guttural sound left the back of my throat as I pulled her in close. She was naked from the waist down. No. Ah fuck, baby, no. I couldn’t allow myself to think about what that meant, not yet. My mind would fracture into a million pieces if I did. I yanked off my shirt and covered her the best I could, then lifted her in my arms. Her skin was cold, so fucking cold, but her pulse was steady.

Her eyelashes fluttered, then blinked open. “Hunter?’

Thank fuck. “I’m here, Lulu. You’re safe now.”

She tried to curl in on herself.

“It’s going to be okay. Help’s on the way.” I didn’t know what the hell else to say. My emotions were all over the place. The only thing I knew for certain was I didn’t want to let her go.

She started to struggle, like a wounded animal. “Don’t . . . don’t take me back. Don’t take me to him.”

I held her tighter, trying to control her struggles without hurting her. “I’m not. I promise you, he’ll never get near you again.”

She wasn’t hearing me. She was lost in panic, in fear, babbling. “I thought . . . I thought you loved me,” she said in a harsh whisper. “I thought you’d work it out. That you’d find a way to reach out to me. That when you got out, you’d find me. I’d wake up one morning, and you’d be there, you’d rescue me.” Her fingers dug into my shoulders. “That you’d tell me you knew.”

I was trying to understand what she was saying, what she was trying to tell me.

“Lulu . . .”

“But you never came,” she whispered.

The oxygen exploded from my lungs.

“You never came.” She looked up at me. “You want to know why, Hunter? Why I did what I did?”

“Baby . . .”

Her nails dug into my skin, eyes round and haunted, glazed as fuck, like she wasn’t really with me, and the truth poured out of her like a burst dam. “Pierce told me if I provided your alibi he’d kill you. That no one could touch him, that he could make you disappear and no one would ever find your body.” She clung tighter. “He had a man inside and he’d know if I tried to warn you. He told me to visit you in prison, tell you I was going. He had someone watching me, said if I opened my mouth, he’d have you killed. I wouldn’t let him kill you, Hunter. You have to believe me, you have to . . .”

Jesus fucking Christ. “Lulu . . .”

“Then I ran because I was afraid Van would find me, make me tell the truth, and Pierce would hurt you. I ran because if Pierce found me he’d drag me back to that hell.” She started to sound slurred, eyes getting unfocused, lids getting heavy. “And I . . . I ran for another reason . . .” She blinked slowly, her eyes staying closed. “Hunter, I . . .”

She went limp in my arms. “Fuck. Stay with me, Lulu, stay with me, baby.”

I wasn’t letting her go.

I brushed her thick hair back. Jesus. The blood. There was so much of it. I could barely recognize her, her face was so messed up.