Page 11 of Sweet as Sugar

“Yep.” I hang up the phone and start looking around. There’s nothing in the gym itself that is out of place. It all looks good. I growl under my breath. I know something’s wrong. I can feel it.

Where the hell is she?

I check the back door by the employee parking lot and when I step outside the door, something hits my foot and I stumble.

“What the hell?”

I bend down and my heart drops to my toes. I pick it up and immediately recognize it. Chloe’s purse.

“Fuck!” I swear and run back in the door, my heart pounding and my stomach rolling.

I grab my phone off the charge and call my Dad right away. He picks up. “I don’t know what happened but I just found her wallet at the back door.”

“Shit! What the hell happened to her?”

“Dad, she had a stalker. An ex. He was harassing her and she got a message from him last night that said he was watching her.”

“Oh, dammit! Why didn’t she say anything?”

“She said she wanted to handle it herself.”

“That wasn’t too smart.”

“Dad! It’s not like she thought something like this was going to happen. She had a restraining order against him. There wasn’t really any reason to think that he would do something like this. Kidnapping I mean.” MY voice breaks and I groan.

“Hey, she’s gonna be alright. We just need to figure out where he went with her.”

“Check the cameras. I’m gonna check with Finn. I bet you anything that either her or her mom have got her on find my on her phone.”

“I’m on it. Let me know right away. I’ll go to find her.”

“We’ll all go. If you think that Finn and Stryker and the guys won’t want to go along, you’re out of your mind, boy.”

“Alright, Dad. We just need to get things going.”

“Go look at the video.”

He hangs up and then I joy to the camera banks in the office. It doesn’t take me long with watching that back door to see a figure in dark clothes grab Chloe on the way out the door. They struggled and my fists clenched when I saw her go down on the video after he knocked her into the wall.

“Don’t worry, Sweets. I’m gonna find you and then one of us is gonna kill that fucker!”

My phone rings and I pick it up immediately. “Anything?”

“Yeah. She’s out at the old cabin in the woods. The one that’s off the highway heading out of the city. About twenty minutes away.”

“I know where it is. I’m on my way.”

“We’re all heading there. Did you see anything on the video?”

“I saw him grab her and they fought and he knocked her into the wall. She was knocked out, Dad.”

“I doubt if he’s hurt her yet. It hasn’t been that long. We’ll get her, Sam.”

“I know we will, Dad.” There’s no way that we can’t. I can’t think like that. If anything were to happen to her, it would kill me.

CHAPTER 8

Chloe