CHAPTER THIRTY, PART 1

Eddie

Eddie awoke to a sharp stick in her right arm. When she peeled her eyes open, she saw a face she barely recognized but knew to fear. Damian.

Immediately, his clammy hand clamped over Eddie's mouth and he grabbed a fistful of her blonde hair in his other hand. "Make one sound and I'll slit your throat," Damian said, his voice gruff in Eddie's ear.

Despite Damian's warning, Eddie screamed, "Help!" against his hand, but it was so muffled there was no way anyone would hear it. Still, Eddie did something she never did: she prayed. She prayed that someone — anyone — would hear her.

She screamed again. And again. No one came. Damian got madder by the second, and finally, Eddie felt a crushing blow to her head, and then everything went black.

Jamie

The ride from the safe house to the hospital seemed to take centuries to Jamie. It felt like there was an elephant sitting on his chest; it was almost impossible to breathe. The longer he thought about what could be happening to Eddie, the harder breathing became, and soon, he was on the cusp of a full-blown panic attack.

When they finally pulled into the St. Irene's parking lot, Jamie was out of the car before it had even fully stopped. Danny and Baez were right on his heels.

When they got to Eddie's floor, there were at least five police officers standing outside Eddie's door. The looks on their faces were grim, and Jamie knew it wasn't good. "Is she gone?" he asked, peering into Eddie's room. Sure enough, it was empty.

Before he even thought about it, Jamie's fist was smashing into the adjacent wall, and Danny's hands were on him, pulling him back. "He has her, Danny. Dammit, he has her." His hands were in his hair and his face was pinched almost painfully, and his vision was so blurred with anger he could barely see the people in front of him.

One of the officers — a woman with a name tag that said DAVIS — stepped forward and spoke quietly to Jamie. "We have plenty of surveillance footage. They're keying that up now. We'll catch him on there, no doubt." Her voice was sweet and calming, and it didn't make Jamie want to jam his fist through a wall again.

"How the hell did he get her out of here?" Jamie asked nobody in particular, wondering how in the hell someone could get Eddie Janko — his Eddie — out of a hospital bed and presumably to a waiting car without her throwing a hissy fit. "She's not a quiet person. She would not have gone without kicking and screaming."

Out of nowhere, Dr. Leigh appeared, her forehead pinched tight with focus and concern. "He drugged her, and… we found blood on her pillow. We think she was knocked out before she was taken out of here." Jamie could tell the doctor hated to tell him that, but it had to be said and they both knew it.

"What did he drug her with? Could it hurt her?" he asked, his hands trembling as he brought them up to swipe them through his hair (his nervous habit).

"It's a pretty serious sedative," Dr. Leigh replied, holding a syringe and examining it closely. "It depends on how much he gave her, but most likely, she'll be just fine. She'll just be out cold for a while."

Jamie nodded and turned his attention to Danny. "Yeah, well… where she is, being out cold is probably the best way to be." Every disgusting place Eddie could be right now ran through Jamie's head and it was almost unbearable to think about.

For Eddie's sake, Jamie hoped she was unconscious, with no real clue of what was going on.

Finally, the security footage was ready. A security guard led them to a small room down the hall that was filled with all kinds of monitors and computers, seemingly capturing everyone's every move. Now if only they could catch Brian in the act of escaping with Eddie.

They stopped at a monitor labeled Monitor 3 and they all huddled around the screen, trying to make sense of what they were seeing. Finally, Jamie saw a flash of blonde hair passing the hallway camera in a wheelchair and even though he couldn't see the person's face, he knew it was Eddie. A tall man with dark hair was pushing Eddie in front of him, obviously trying hard not to show his face to the camera.

She looked a little slumped over, but she didn't look injured — more than she already had been. Even so, that gave Jamie very little comfort. He knew it was only a matter of time.

"Is that Eddie, Jamie?" Danny asked, pointing his finger to the screen.

Jamie nodded, feeling sick to his stomach. "That's her."

"Is that Brian?"

Jamie studied the picture on the screen as closely as he possibly could. The first thing that told him that it wasn't Brian was the lack of bandages on him. He had been injured by Iris and was probably wrapped up pretty good in bandages. The person on the screen had none that Jamie could see. So that only meant one thing.

"It's Damian."

Everybody in the room stopped and looked at him, eyes wide. "You think so?" Danny asked, looking skeptical. "What makes you think that?"

Jamie shrugged and pointed at the screen. "This guy's not all bandaged up like Brian would be. And he just walks differently. It's not Brian. I'm positive."

Danny and the others nodded, and Jamie hoped they were taking what he was saying seriously. They had no time to waste.

"What I still want to know is how the hell he got her out of this hospital without her making a scene," Jamie mused, still looking closely at the video footage. He watched as Damian and Eddie disappeared down the hallway. "What exit did they take?"

"They took an exit near the elevators on the first floor," Officer Davis said, and then a look of realization crossed her face. "Elevator cameras! They had to take an elevator, so there has to be elevator footage."

The guy in charge of security tapped a few buttons on Monitor 2 and there it was, the inside of the elevator Eddie and Damian had likely taken. "Let me just cue up the right time frame." He tapped a few more buttons, scrolled as numerous people got on and off the elevator, and then suddenly, they were looking at Eddie and Damian.

Eddie was, in fact, unconscious. The camera had been mounted in the upper front corner of the elevator, giving them a near-perfect view. Eddie was slumped over, out cold, and Damian was right beside her, fidgeting and what looked to Jamie like tweaking.

Mainly, Jamie felt rage. How dare he? How dare he come in, drug Eddie, knock her out, and steal her right out of her hospital room? Jamie was trying his best not to vomit right then and there.

"Alright, kid," Danny began, clapping Jamie on the back. "Now, we dig into Damian's background. See if anything pops."

Eddie

When Eddie awoke, the first thing she noticed was the acute ache in her head. It was a sharp, searing pain unlike anything she'd ever felt — even after what Brian had done to her weeks ago — and she was hesitant to move even enough to open her eyes.

When she finally did, she cracked open only one eye, and the pain in her head worsened considerably as she was met with a bright light, coming from a hanging bulb that was positioned directly above her head, so close she could feel the heat from it.

When she finally managed to open her other eye, Eddie's vision was blurry and she could barely see out of her left eye, but what she could see wasn't good.

Other than the light above her head, the room was completely dark. It was freezing cold; there was obviously no heat in the building, which looked to be some type of warehouse. The floor she was laying on was concrete, cold and hard.

It wasn't until Eddie tried to roll over that she realized her wrists were aching because they were bound behind her back, seemingly with some kind of rope that was rubbing her skin raw the more she moved.

"Well, well, well… look who's awake."

The voice came from about ten feet away, and it sent chills up and down Eddie's spine.

Eddie lifted her head, which sent a lightning bolt of pain through it. (She remembered being hit on the head hard, and she couldn't help but worry about what damage had been done on top of the injuries to her brain that already existed.) From where she lay, she could see Damian sitting in the corner with Brian right beside him, both staring at her with grim smiles and roaming eyes.

"About damn time," Brian said, looking at Damian and snickering. The sound of his voice and the look on his face made Eddie's blood run cold.

Eddie said nothing, choosing to merely observe the men silently. Brian was bandaged heavily on his left arm—presumably where Dr. Ackerman had shot him—and his shirt in that area was soaked in blood. His face was sallow and gray-tinted. He looked like he was dying, and Eddie hoped to God he was.

But she knew it wouldn't be that easy. There was no way.

Eddie jumped a mile when Damian suddenly stood and charged towards her, something black in his hands. As he got closer, Eddie saw that it was a belt, and she felt bile fill her mouth. "Please just kill me. Get it over with. That's what you want, right? Me dead?"

Damian squatted down beside her and cracked the belt hard against the floor next to Eddie's head, so loud her left ear started to ring. She cringed away as he put his hand on her head, stroking his stained, greasy fingers through her hair. "Oh, honey… we're going to have our fun first."

Jamie

Jamie spent the next few hours completely helpless.

"Kid, I know it's hard to sit back and do nothing, but that's what we need you to do right now," Danny said when Jamie told him that he refused to just sit around. "Do you really think Eddie would want you putting yourself in danger trying to find her?"

"Can you at least give me a place to check?" Jamie asked, running his hands through his hair and over his face. "At least let me go with you. I refuse to just do nothing. I won't." His voice was getting louder the more he spoke, frustration coloring his tone.

Danny pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. "We're going to the only address we have on record for Damian. On the off chance that he left anything behind, we're going to go check it out."

"Then I'll go with you—"

"No!" Danny cut him off, his voice booming. "Jamie, you're a target, too, and it's not safe for you to be anywhere but the damn safe house! It's the one place that hasn't been compromised."

Now it was Jamie's turn to sigh and shake his head. He couldn't believe everything had come to this. Eddie was missing and now Jamie wasn't even allowed to help look for her; instead he was expected to sit in a safe house and do nothing except hope and pray with everything he had that she was okay.

"Dammit, Danny, she has to be alright," Jamie said finally, tears springing to his eyes. "She has to be."

Danny put his hand on his brother's shoulder and squeezed lightly. "She's okay, Jamie. She's a fighter; we know that. She'll make it."

Jamie merely nodded, too overcome with emotion to say respond.

As Jamie and Danny walked out of the hospital, Jamie found himself repeating three words like a prayer in his head:

Please be okay.

Eddie

Things went from bad to worse fast.

The beatings were horrendous from the beginning. She was hit with a belt at least twenty times, with wounds now covering her back—it even opened up the old wounds from the first attack—arms, and legs.

The punches to the face weren't as bad, but they had left her face red and purple, with deep gashes on her cheeks and forehead.

By the time the beatings stopped, Eddie was covered head to toe in bruises and gashes, and her face was slicked with tears that burned the cuts on her face.

Truthfully, Eddie was just waiting for Brian or Damian or both to rape her. Brian had done it once before, or more than once if you counted the times while they were dating that he forced her to have sex with him when she didn't want to; it wasn't exactly a stretch to think he would do it again.

So when he finally did, Eddie was as prepared as she could possibly be. To her relief, Damian didn't participate; he merely sat where Brian had been sitting and watched with a huge smile that made Eddie even more sick than she already felt.

When it was over, Eddie promptly vomited all over the floor, which earned her another two lashes with the belt, this time across her buttocks and then after one on the back of her legs. Brian went to throw away the condom and left Eddie lying on the floor in a puddle of her own vomit, blood gushing from one of the new wounds on her leg and new tears flowing from her eyes.

Now, more than ever, Eddie wished like hell that she were dead.

Jamie

Jamie did everything besides stand or sit still. He paced. He paced a lot. He called Danny what seemed like every ten minutes. He contemplated more than once getting out and going to look for Eddie himself, but where would he even start? There was nowhere he could think to start that Danny and Baez hadn't already looked.

Finally, just as the clock on the stove hit 10:00pm, Jamie's phone rang, the caller ID flashing Danny.

"Did you find something?" Jamie answered, foregoing the typical hello.

"We found something."

With those three words, everything started spinning and Jamie's heart began to pound. "What is it?" he asked anxiously, his pulse pounding in his ears.

"Damian's father is James Thomas Moore. He owns Thomas Moore Industries, and they have a warehouse on Franklin Avenue in Brooklyn. But here's the thing: Thomas Moore Industries went out of business in 2017. Meaning…" He trailed off.

"Meaning that the warehouse is probably empty," Jamie finished, feeling hopeful for the first time since Eddie went missing.

But the hope was quickly squashed when he thought of Eddie alone with Damian and probably Brian on this freezing cold night, in a warehouse that likely had no heat, with God only knows what being done to her. He knew she was likely hurt and certainly terrified, and the thought killed any hope he had and made him severely sick to his stomach.

"Jamie?" Danny prompted, pulling Jamie out of his dark thoughts.

"Yeah, I'm here. Do you have to get a warrant to search the warehouse?"

"We do, but it won't take long. Until then, try to rest. We'll call the second the warrant is up."

Jamie sighed deeply, knowing there was no way in hell he could sleep knowing what Eddie was likely going through. Still, he played along. "I'll try. Thanks, Danny."

The brothers hung up, and Jamie noticed his hands were shaking violently.

It was going to be a long night.

1:02 AM

It was just after one in the morning when Jamie's cell phone rang. His heart leapt with hope that it was Danny, calling to let him know they had the warrant and were coming to get him so they could get Eddie.

But that wasn't the case. The caller ID flashed Unknown Caller.

Jamie considered not answering it. Unknown callers usually were spam or some other useless nonsense, nonsense he didn't have the time nor the energy for at the moment.

But something inside him told him to answer the call, so he pushed the Accept button. "Hello?" he answered.

"Is this Jamie Reagan?"

The voice was low and gruff, and somehow, Jamie knew exactly who it was. "It is. Is this Brian?"

"Ding ding ding! You're smarter than I thought, Officer Reagan."

Brian's voice sent chills down Jamie's spine. His heart was thrumming wildly in his chest and he could hear his heartbeat in his ears. "Let me talk to Eddie. Now. I need to know she's alright."

To Jamie's shock, he heard shuffling, and then there was Eddie on the other end of the line. "Jamie?"

Two syllables and Jamie's heart broke. She sounded so broken and exhausted, so unlike the lively, sarcastic, witty woman he knew and loved so much. "Eddie, are you alright? Did he hurt you?"

Jamie's questions were met with silence at first, and that was all the answer he needed. She was hurt; he was sure of it. Quickly, her words confirmed it. "They hit me but I'm alright. I'll be okay. Are you alright?"

Jamie sighed, trying to keep his emotions in check and failing miserably. He was sure they did more than hit her, but he wasn't going to waste valuable time asking her questions she probably wouldn't answer. "Eddie, I'm fine. Don't worry about me. Can you tell me where you are?"

Eddie's voice lowered into a whisper that gave Jamie chills. She sounded terrified. "Some kind of warehouse. It's freezing cold in here. It was about thirty blocks north of the hospital. I can't say anymore; they're going to hear me."

Jamie quickly grabbed a pen and paper and jotted down what Eddie said. Everything was matching up with the Thomas Moore warehouse that Danny had talked about. He had Googled right after he and Danny had hung up; Franklin Avenue was thirty-two blocks from the hospital. "Eddie, we're going to find you. I love you so much and I promise you we'll find you. Just hang on."

"Jamie, I love—"

Suddenly Eddie was cut off as the phone was jerked away from her. "4750 Franklin Avenue. Twenty minutes. You alert police, Eddie dies."

Before Jamie could say anything, Brian hung up, leaving him in a stunned silence.

His first instinct was to call Danny, but Brian's threat rang in his ears at the thought.

Eddie dies.

The more Jamie thought about it, the more he knew that he had to do this alone.

Whatever it took.

The night was frigid as Jamie walked from his car to 4750 Franklin Avenue, and he couldn't help but think about how miserable Eddie must be, being that she was hurt and scared on top of being in a place that apparently had no heat.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked up to the door of the large warehouse looming in front of him, his heart pounding hard against his ribcage.

Before Jamie could raise his hand to knock, the door opened and he was jerked inside by someone he quickly identified as Damian. He had seen his face on the video footage and probably through something Danny had shown him, and he recognized him easily.

"Well, well, well," someone said from the corner of the room. Jamie's eyes found the source of the voice, who he immediately knew was Brian. "What have we here? Eddie, look who it is."

Jamie's eyes found Eddie next, and his heart dropped to his feet. She was sitting up on the cold concrete floor in the opposite corner of the room from Brian—literally as far as she could get from him—with her hands tied behind her back, and as he got closer, he could see that she was completely covered in blood, cuts, and bruises.

At the sight of Jamie, Eddie burst into tears, and Jamie ran to her, surprisingly not being stopped by Brian or Damian. He took her into his arms, trying his best not to hold her too tight but wanting so badly to squeeze her and never let her go. He stroked her hair and whispered reassurances in her ear as she sobbed.

"I thought I would never see you again," Eddie cried, burying her face in Jamie's neck. "Are yoI alright?"

Jamie couldn't help but laugh. "I should be asking you that. Are you alright? Jesus, what did they do to you?" He spoke quietly, hoping not to anger Brian and Damian any further.

Eddie just cried harder, her tears soaking Jamie's neck and shoulder. "They hit me with a belt," she whispered.

"Did they touch you?" Jamie asked, and Eddie knew exactly what he was asking. A mere nod was all he got, but it was enough. Jamie's stomach flipped and he felt sick.

"Was it Brian?" he asked, his voice quivering with anger.

Once again, just a mere nod. "I'm so sorry," Jamie whispered, placing a kiss on Eddie's temple. They stayed like that for a bit, Eddie's face buried in Jamie's neck, Jamie rocking her back and forth, and exchanging occasional whispers with each other.

Finally, the two heard footsteps, and Damian ripped Jamie away from Eddie, who promptly began to sob again.

Damian dragged Jamie over to a chair about ten feet away from Eddie and zip-tied his hands in front of him, so tight Jamie knew there would be bruises later. He couldn't imagine how uncomfortable Eddie probably was, nearly beaten to death with her arms tied behind her back, making her unable to defend herself.

Thinking about what she'd been going through the last few hours made Jamie sick.

"You two… such lovebirds," Brian said with an eerie laugh that sent chills down Jamie's spine.

"If you want someone, take me," Jamie pleaded. "Please just let Eddie go."

The words had barely left his mouth when he felt a blinding pain as Damian's fist made contact with his temple.

Then, everything went black.