Runaway (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 4)

Jasper squinted at her. “Are you visiting friends?”

“No.”

He placed his hands on his hips and levelled her with a look. “Don’t you think you are a bit too old to be running away from home?”

Molly shook her head at him. “Don’t you think you are a bit too old to be making assumptions about people?”

“It isn’t assumption,” Jasper murmured as he studied her. He wondered if she should rattle her some more just to make sure that when she did return home to mummy and daddy, she bloody well stayed there.

“Well, you certainly don’t know much, do you?” Molly fell silent then because she had run away from home. Aunt Edith’s house, for what it was, had been her home, even if she had hated it. She had left it without telling anybody and had snuck away. Did that constitute running away? She couldn’t be sure, but she wasn’t Oscar. Oscar had run away.

Or been abducted.

Oscar was young, so very young that just the thought of him being in a city like this all alone, and at the merciless hands of a kidnapper, was enough to bring Molly to her knees.

“I need to go,” Molly informed Jasper, as though he should care.

“Where to? It isn’t safe for you to walk anywhere now, not least because your friend back there is going to follow you. Why don’t you allow me to escort you? I will keep you safe,” Jasper promised.

Molly was already shaking her head, not least because he looked as though he had been chewed by the dog that continued to bark furiously, and only increased in volume when a disgruntled homeowner bellowed at it to shut up.

“Yes, I am sure you think you can,” she murmured, and watched Jasper’s brows shoot skyward.

“You don’t think I can?” Jasper grinned. There was nothing he liked more than a challenge.

“If you can, why are you all covered in cuts and bruises?” Molly waved a finger at the state of him.

Jasper shrugged. “Because I have been fighting the likes of him, who thought he could accost me and my friends. You see, you are not the only person men like him have preyed on tonight.”

“What does he want with you?”

“How in the Hell should I know? These men are thieves, cut throats, and pick-pockets. If they see a pretty young woman like you walking all alone, they will surround you and take from you whatever they deem valuable.” He paused for a moment and met her gaze directly. “Including your virtue. To them it’s a challenge. They won’t feel bad about it. People like that have no morals. Without morals there are no scruples, without scruples there is no conscience. Without conscience, people – criminals – like that will think they can do whatever they want to whomever they want without facing justice. They will also take whatever they want and not expect people to object to it. People who do object are there to be attacked, because in the criminal’s tiny mind, they are the only cut-throats with the moral right to thieve things that don’t belong to them. Someone’s body, virtue, soul, is theirs and theirs only. It isn’t for anybody to thieve it or attack it, but criminals like him and his friends will try.”

Molly knew he was right. She wished she could find something, a small ray of light, a tiny kernel of argument in his statement but couldn’t. The picture he had just painting of the attitude of the cretin who had attacked her and tried to steal her virtue said everything. Men like the thug had no conscience. They wouldn’t feel bad about the soul they tried to steal. They wouldn’t feel bad about taking someone’s life to try to escape justice.

“They twist things, Molly. People like that usually work in gangs. They think that the others in the gang can lie for them, protest their innocence and that being surrounded by people just like them make them safe. Unfortunately, they rely on others keeping their mouths shut if their own Fates hang in the balance. A cut-throat thief will hardly ever have any morals toward anybody. Once a person’s soul – no matter whose it is – is stolen, or damaged, that thief, cut-throat, whatever you wish to call them, will steal or damage another - anybody – especially if their own futures and lives are at stake. They will, and often do, turn on each other. That, my dear, is fact.”

“You sound as though you know from experience,” Molly mused.

Jasper had spoken with such fervency that she didn’t doubt him. She knew the man on the street corner wouldn’t give in. Whatever it was he

wanted from her he wouldn’t leave until he had taken it.

It is me he wants to take – far, far, away from here.

“Do you read, Molly?” Jasper asked.

“Pardon?” Molly lifted her brows.

“Not everybody does, but do you? Read, that is?” Jasper persisted.

“I have read the broadsheet last week,” she replied, unsure where he was going with this.

“Have you read the main article about the kidnappings of young women in Leicestershire and Derbyshire?” Jasper asked curiously.

Molly went cold all over. She began to shake even though she jerkily shook her head. Everything within her was screaming at her to not say anything, but she answered before she could quell the urge.

“Then you know the women who have been snatched from there are just like you. Young. Pretty. With dark blond hair. Slender. They were snatched off the street, right from the centre of the villages they lived in, and nobody noticed a damned thing. Unfortunately, nobody has seen or heard anything of them since.”