Ripped Read online

  I shook my head, feeling sick. Which made me wonder if it was an early pregnancy symptom, although the TTC boards seemed to say that usually didn’t show up until you were about a month along, so it probably wasn’t—

  I got up from the table. “I need to get out of here.”

  “I don’t think you should do that.”

  “I just… I need to drive,” I said. “You have a car. Give me the keys.”

  “Come on, Shell. You can’t go off like that. You’re in hiding.”

  “If Ice was here, he’d already have done something,” I said. “We’ve been here days.”

  “You should just have some orange juice and calm down. Trust me, I know what it’s like with Ripper. He can make you feel like you’re the most important person on the earth. And, the thing is, I think he really feels that way when you’re alone with him. It’s only that he feels that way about everyone. I think he’s genuinely unaware of it all. I think he’s just being sincere, and he doesn’t even know who he’s hurting.”

  I wanted to strangle him. I wanted to pound my fists against his chest and sob and call him every insult I could think of.

  I wanted as far away from him as I could be.

  “Sit back down,” said Sable.

  “You just told me that Cade is a dog, who uses girls one after another and makes them think he’s into them, when he’s actually not, and that I’m the latest idiot to fall for it, and you want me to sit down?”

  “That’s not exactly what I said, and it’s not what I mean.”

  I stalked over to the counter, where her purse was sitting.

  “Hey, Shell, don’t,” she said, getting up.

  I reached in the front pocket. Jackpot. I pulled out the keys.

  “Put them down,” she said.

  “I just need away from here,” I said, and I dove out the front door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Cade

  Sable was shaking me. “Ripper, you need to wake up.”

  I sat up straight in bed. I was pretty good at waking up quickly when I needed to. “What?”

  “I tried to stop her.”

  “What are you talking about?” I threw aside the covers and got up, reaching for a t-shirt to pull on over the jeans I had slept in.

  “Shell took my car,” said Sable. “She was upset.”

  “What?” The word bellowed out of me.

  Sable cringed. “I’m sorry.”

  “How hard did you try to stop her? Not very.”

  She grabbed my arm. “Look, I think you need to have a talk with her, and I thought that if you and I just had a couple of minutes alone, maybe I could—”

  “She’s in fucking danger, Sable.” I shook her off. I stalked out of the room and down the hallway. “Which direction did she go?”

  “Out the driveway. I couldn’t see which way after that.” Sable was following me. “She said that if Ice was going to make a move, he would have, and I think she’s right.”

  I took a deep breath. “Okay, maybe you’re right. We are fourteen hours away from him. He’s probably not around.”

  “Probably not,” she said.

  I went to the window and looked out. “Still, you shouldn’t have let her go off like that.”

  “She was upset.”

  “What was she upset about?” Oh, fuck, had she somehow figured out that she was pregnant? I rubbed my face.

  Sable gestured into the living room. “Let’s sit down.”

  I braced one hand against the top of the window and gazed out. If she was pregnant, she should know that she could come to me. But, hell, I hadn’t been talking to her for the past few days. I was hurt that she had rejected me, and that she didn’t want to be with me anymore, even though I should have seen it coming. I just couldn’t figure out what had set her off. One minute, we’d been all over each other. The next, she was shutting me down.

  I should have talked to her about it. Maybe she wouldn’t be running off now.

  “You can just tell me,” I said to the window. “I can handle it.”

  “I think she… has feelings for you.”

  I let go of the doorway and turned around to face Sable. “But she specifically said she didn’t want to share a room with me. I thought there was something there too, but she wised up. She doesn’t want to be with someone like me. No one does.”

  “No one?” Sable gave me a confused look. “What are you talking about, Ripper? You have women throwing themselves at you—”

  “They don’t know the truth. They don’t know what I am.”

  “All of them do,” she said. “Every single woman you’ve ever saved from getting hurt or killed has had a big crush on you.”

  “But I don’t…” I folded my arms over my chest. “I don’t get involved with people I save.” I looked out after Shell. “Usually.”

  Sable raised her eyebrows.

  I cleared my throat. “Well, what happened with us was…” I ran a hand through my hair. “We were really drunk. And you… I…”

  “I know that you don’t form attachments like that,” she said. “I know that you just don’t feel whatever it is that people like Shell and I feel for you, but you need to understand that sometimes, realizing that it’s all been physical, and that it hasn’t meant anything, is painful for a girl like her. I know how she feels.”

  I blinked. I was feeling very confused.

  Sable swallowed. “This is embarrassing and all, but I’ve always, ever since that night, sort of, had this… thing when it comes to you, but I know that you never saw me that way, and I’m okay with that. I just think you need to try to be sensitive with Shell—”

  “Hold on.” I looked at her. “A thing?” I was having trouble processing this. Was it even possible for a woman who knew that I was a killer to feel anything for me other than revulsion? Deep down, I mean. I knew that Shell was attracted to me, but that didn’t mean anything, not really. She had rejected me. I knew she had, so why was Sable acting like I’d been the one who’d rejected Shell? And why was Sable saying that she felt things for me?

  That was just ridiculous. Sable was like a sister to me. Okay, so one drunken night we’d sort of hooked up, but I barely remembered that. What I did remember was that we hadn’t had much chemistry, and the event had only served to cement the notion that there should never be anything between Sable and me besides friendship.

  She shoved her hands into her pockets and let out a little laugh. “A thing. You know, I… Oh, hell, Ripper, you really don’t understand?”

  I licked my lips, trying to think of a response. Finally, I turned back to the window. “Well, that’s just dumb.”

  “Oh, thank you.” She was sarcastic. Hurt.

  “I mean it,” I said. “There’s no way that you should be with someone like me.”

  “Someone who understands me? Someone who I have a lot in common with? Someone who’s pretty fucking hot? Yeah, that’s crazy on my part.”

  Now, I just felt like a dumbass for not noticing this. And I felt… really bad. Because I didn’t feel anything for Sable at all. She was practically not a female as far as I was concerned. But she was a good friend, and I cared about her, and if I had known that some other guy had behaved toward her the way I had, then I would probably be pissed at him. I glanced at her over my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I muttered.

  She sighed. “Whatever.” She backed out of the room.

  “Wait,” I said, turning around. “Really, I didn’t know that you—”

  “Drop it,” she snapped.

  I went after her.

  She turned and faced me. “Back off. I don’t feel like being around you right now. I’m really embarrassed, and you’re being kind of a dick.”

  “I know,” I said. “Another reason you should probably not have feelings for me. But the thing is, I’m still really confused, because you’re saying all this stuff about Shell being hurt and stuff, and she is the one who rejected me, not the other way around, so that makes no sense
.”

  Sable looked at her shoes. “You do care about her.”

  “No. I mean, she doesn’t care about me, so—”

  “She does.” Sable sounded like she might start crying.

  I had never seen her cry before, not even when she got stabbed in a knife fight with a terrorist target that she and I were working on together—a government job. She’d taken that dry-eyed, and to see her start to crack…

  I backed away. “Look, I’m just going to go after her, okay?”

  “Yeah, fine.” She turned around and continued back the hallway.

  I ducked into my room to get the keys to my car. I was such a fucking idiot. I couldn’t see anything clearly, apparently.

  * * *

  Shell

  I was turning over pregnancy tests in my hand, reading the back label to try to figure out which one I should buy. I was pretty sure I wanted the First Response kind, which said it could detect hormones up to six days before my missed period, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted the brand name or the generic, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted two or three tests. I thought that the generic was probably as good as the brand name, but I couldn’t really be sure, so I thought maybe I should get the brand name. And two tests would be fine if I was actually pregnant. But if two tests came back negative, then I was just going to want to take one the next day.

  The women on the TTC forums all were testing daily, sometimes more than once. They were obsessed with trying to get pregnant, and they were all trying to interpret symptoms and stuff.

  Maybe I should get two packs of three.

  But if the first one came back positive, then I would have wasted money. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to get back to the store.

  I picked up two packages of the brand name tests and headed for the front of the store.

  Now, when I got back to the house, I was going to have to wait to take the test, because I knew from the TTC forums that they were more accurate first thing in morning, because your urine was more concentrated right when you woke up. Which was gross and all, but if I was pregnant, everything was just going to get grosser.

  I paid for the tests and headed out the door into the parking lot.

  Now, where was Sable’s car?

  I spotted it and started to go that direction, when I felt something hard and metal poke me in the back.

  “Well, hello, there, Shell.” It was Ice. He was here, and he had a gun to my back.

  I opened my throat to scream.

  “Don’t make a noise,” he said, “or I’ll shoot.”

  I closed my mouth.

  “Good,” he said. “Now, we’re going to walk slowly and casually, like we don’t have a care in the world, toward that red car over there. Then you’re going to get inside, acting naturally, and we’re going to drive off. Understand?”

  Oh, God, I’d left the gun that Cade have given me back at Sable’s. I could see it, nestled in my bag with my clothes, completely worthless. Damn it.

  I bit my lip. “Why should I do what you say? You’re going to kill me either way, right?”

  He chuckled. “Oh, I don’t know. Ripper seemed to like having you alive, didn’t he? Maybe I’ll spend some time figuring out why. Maybe if you make me very, very happy, I won’t kill you at all. Your sister’s a talented whore, isn’t she? Maybe it runs in the family.”

  I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. I wanted to do something—anything—other than what he was saying to me. The prospect of being raped and tortured and murdered was filling my brain, and not in a hypothetical way, the way I generally thought of those things when I heard them on the news. In a very real, personal way.

  No, I thought.

  Then he nudged me with the gun again.

  And I started walking, slowly and casually, just like he’d told me to.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Cade

  “Yeah, I saw a girl like that come in a while ago,” said the cashier. “She bought pregnancy tests.”

  “That’s her,” I said, a lump in my throat. “So, where’d she go?” I knew that she hadn’t gotten back in Sable’s car, because that was how I’d come to be talking to this man in the first place. I found Sable’s car in this parking lot, abandoned, no sign of Shell anywhere.

  The cashier shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. I saw her walk out.” He furrowed his brow. “There was a man waiting for her. He put his arm around her, and they went to his car.”

  “A man with red hair?” I said. “Freckles?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.” The cashier nodded.

  Fuck. Ice had her. Ice was here.

  Damn it.

  How had he found us? Had it been the car after all? The one in Virginia?

  No one knew where Sable was, no one except me…

  He must have followed us somehow. It had to have been the damned car. Fuck, fuck, fuck, I shouldn’t have switched vehicles. I rubbed my forehead.

  “Are you all right, sir?” said the cashier.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you for your time.” I left the store.

  I stood out in the parking lot and stared at the blacktop, at the white lines that formed the spaces. Ice had her, and I didn’t know where the hell he was.

  He hadn’t left me a note or a clue this time.

  Or had he?

  I raced back to Sable’s car, and there… sure enough, right under the windshield wiper was a tiny square of paper. I hadn’t noticed it before. I snatched it out.

  Tag, it read. You’re it.

  Shit. That wasn’t much to go on.

  * * *

  Shell

  Ice took me to an abandoned daycare center with boarded up windows. Inside, there was one big room, and I could barely see that the walls had been painted with jungle animals and rainbows. I wasn’t sure that really went together, but maybe that was why the place had been shut down. Because of the murals. Oh, there was a dragon on that wall. Yeah, that didn’t make any sense thematically, either.

  He was carrying the shopping bag from the drug store, and he held my arm as he looked inside it.

  When he took out the pregnancy tests, he was quiet. He let go of me and started to pace, holding them.

  I thought about making a run for it. He wasn’t looking at me, and maybe I could get to the front door and get outside and run.

  But it was hot out there, and we were out in the middle of nowhere. I might get free, but I wouldn’t be able to run for very long before—

  Seriously?

  He was going to kill me, what was I thinking?

  I made a break for it.

  He turned immediately and snatched my wrist.

  I tripped over my own feet and fell flat on my face. My chin glanced against the floor painfully.

  Groaning, I rolled into a ball.

  He knelt down next to me. “Why’d you buy these tests?”

  “I get a kick out of peeing on plastic,” I snapped. “What kind of question is that? I would think it’s pretty obvious.”

  “You think you’re pregnant.”

  “I don’t know.” I sat up. I looked at the door again.

  “Don’t even think about it. I will shoot you in the back,” he said. He looked back at the tests. “With Cade’s child. It is Cade, yes?”

  I nodded. “Yes. But I don’t know if I am or not.”

  He slammed one of the boxes into my hand. “You need to find out.”

  “What does it matter to you?”

  His nostrils flared. “You take the test.”

  I looked around. “Okay, well, I need a bathroom.”

  He dragged me to my feet and yanked me to the back of the room. There were two doors here, one with a girl tiger painted on it and one with a boy tiger. He took me into the boy tiger room, not that I guessed it mattered. There was a window inside, and bright sunlight illuminated the small room.

  Inside was a tiny, child-sized toilet. No water in the bowl.

  He shut the door, closing us both inside. He
gestured.

  I turned the test over in my hands. “You going to give me some privacy?”

  “Don’t be stupid.” He leaned against the door, arms over his chest.

  “I can’t go with you in here,” I said. “Besides, it might not be accurate at this time of the day.”

  “What does the time of the day have to do with it?”

  “Well, sometimes you get a false negative if the urine is too diluted,” I said.

  He took the box from me and ripped it open. He took out one of the tests, which was wrapped in another packet. He ripped that open too. He handed it to me. “We’ll stay in here until you take the test.”

  “I can’t…” I shook my head. “I can’t have you watch me.”

  Ice giggled. “Does it bother you? Good.” He reached out and unbuttoned my pants.

  I backed up. “I can do it myself.” I didn’t want him there, but if he was going to be there, then I definitely didn’t want his hands on me. I managed to undo my pants and squat over the toilet while still hiding most of my body from view. I hovered there, holding the test down below myself.

  But there really was no way that I was going to be able to do this with him watching. No fucking way.

  * * *

  Cade

  I paced in the parking lot, holding my phone against my ear in one hand and the slip of paper from Ice in my other hand.

  “I’m just going to come out there,” said Sable on the other end of the phone.

  “No, no, no,” I said. “That’s a bad idea. You’re in hiding. In fact, you need to get the fuck out of dodge. You need to get in a car and start driving, and I’ll get in touch with you when I know where you should go.”

  “It’s just Ice, Ripper,” she said. “He’s not going to sell me out to the Gallo family.”

  “He’d do it in a heartbeat,” I said.

  “I thought you liked this guy.”

  “I never liked him,” I said. “I just… I thought we understood each other.”

  “So, if you understand him so well, what’s the note mean?”

  “Well, if I knew that, I’d be there, kicking his ass, not calling you for help.”