Page 90 of Coerced
“Birch Creek is where Aria’s from,” I explained. “Fuck. I had this feeling on the way over here. When that guy followed her home from the pub, I had assumed it was random, but when I saw him on the camera footage this afternoon, and he was with another guy, something wasn’t right. I think she was a target.”
“What are you going to do?” Jesse asked. “Any idea who would want to harm her? Is this guy an ex?”
I was about to shake my head when a phone rang in my hand. But it wasn’t my own. I still had Aria’s phone, and the display indicated Britney was calling. “This is her best friend.”
“Maybe she knows something,” Jesse and Landen reasoned simultaneously.
Halfway through the second ring, I answered, “Britney?”
“Uh… yeah. Who’s this?”
“This is Paxton.”
Confusion turned to surprise and excitement. “Oh, Paxton. Hi. Is Aria in the shower right now?”
“Aria’s missing. And I need your help.”
“What? What do you mean, she’s missing? I just talked to her about an hour ago.”
I inhaled deeply, trying to keep my cool, but I was on the very edge of hopelessness. “I know. It just happened within the last half an hour or so.”
“Oh God,” she croaked.
“I have reason to believe that the men who took her are from Birch Creek,” I shared. “You’re her best friend,Britney. She’s talked about you several times. Do you have anything you can tell me about who might have come here from there for her, and why she might have willingly walked to their car?”
My words were met with silence.
That’s when I knew.
Britney didn’t have a doubt in her mind about who had taken Aria. There was only one thing left for me to do. “Britney?” I called.
“Yeah?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“I know Aria wasn’t just feeling adventurous when she decided to move to Steel Ridge,” I began. “Something happened. She told me she needed to get away. But she never gave me the full details, and I foolishly assumed it was simply some family problems, like she’d hinted at. She indicated there was more to the story, but I didn’t suspect anything that would lead to this.”
“I told her she should have shared the truth with you,” Britney cried. “She was terrified to do it. She didn’t want to risk losing you.”
This was bad.
Worse than I could have imagined, and I didn’t even know what I was dealing with yet.
I wanted to believe Aria knew the kind of guy I was. She had to know I wouldn’t walk away from her. Didn’t she know how I felt about her? I couldn’t get through an hour of my day without thinking about her.
Unless she’d done something truly heinous, which I didn’t believe Aria had the kind of evil inside her to commit a crime like that, there wasn’t a chance I’d leave her. She’d made me the happiest I’d ever been.
“You’ve got to tell me what I’m dealing with, Britney.”
“She’ll kill me if I tell you.”
“She might not survive if you don’t,” I warned her.
There was an extended pause. I thought I was crawling out of my skin with impatience. If Britney didn’t help me with this, I’d be heading into a town I didn’t know, trying to find a woman who meant everything to me. I pressed my palm against the wall, grateful for the support it provided. Maybe I needed to sit down, because the despair I felt was almost too much to stomach.
I couldn’t lose this woman. I’d do anything to protect her.
Just as I was about to make another demand for Aria’s best friend to help me, Britney said, “You have to promise me you’re going to give her the benefit of the doubt. She didn’t know what was happening.”
The benefit of the doubt?