Great Sass (Providence Family Ties 1)

“Before you go to sleep, can you do me a favor and have a bit more to drink. Parker said I was to get you to drink as much as possible and make sure you ate small amounts regularly. He also recommended plain stuff like crackers and dry toast.”

Cracking an eye open to glare at him, I came face-to-face with a bottle of some sporty rehydration thing that Jesse had picked up at our last stop. Fortunately, it was the flavor that agreed with me, and not the cloudy pee looking one that they’d tried me on the first time around.

“We’ll stop in an hour at a motel I found,” Jesse said as I drank down as much as I could, grateful for the fact that it was cooling down my stomach. It was a weird sensation, but it felt like putting ice on a volcano inside me.

Passing it back to the drink bully, I cuddled into him and closed my eyes, letting the movement of the car rock me to sleep. I even slept through being carried into the motel room, but through the haze when I woke up, I heard Elijah and Jesse arguing about who got which bed because there’d only been one room.

Smiling, I fell back to sleep again after making sure I had some more to drink. With the medication the doctor had given me in Gonzales County, my stomach was feeling more settled, and I could breathe without wanting to throw up everywhere. Apparently, doing that was exhausting because I slept deeply that night, not even having one of my cartoon dreams.

It also meant that I slept through the phone call Jesse got that freaked both men out. Orson was making his moves and showing his displeasure that he couldn’t find me, and he was leaving proof of it where he knew everyone wouldn’t miss it.

Elijah“Yo,” Jesse said as he answered his phone, shooting me the finger at getting to his phone before I could.

Yeah, we were thirty and twenty-eight, but who gave a shit.

Whatever he was hearing, though, erased the smirk off his face. “No, we sent Webb to get the cat. He was taking it to a friend’s, then driving down to meet me at Daytona Beach for the handover.” Pause. “He left before we did.” Another pause. “Fuck, I’ll tell Elijah. Okay, keep me updated.”

Before he’d even ended the call, I was up and pacing. “What?”

“Seems Orson broke into Sadie’s apartment in Gonzales and deactivated the security she set up without tripping any of the signals. Levi and Archer went to go and check on the place, and he’d…” he stopped talking and winced, checking to make sure Sadie was still asleep. This time when he spoke, he whispered so quietly that I almost didn’t hear him. “He put a photo of Sadie as a kid on her bed and did the dirty all over it.”

Panic is a strange feeling, and it almost suffocated me as it engulfed me.

“Did the dirty?” I hissed. “There’s a lot that counts as dirty.”

“You don’t want to know.”

I didn’t, but at the same time, what I knew of criminals, how they did ‘the dirty’ said a lot about their emotions for the victim. For example, tearing up her place would be a sign of anger or frustration, maybe even intended as a message to scare her. He’d know she wasn’t there, though, so it would definitely be the first two emotions. If he’d defecated, that was considered more of a negative emotion, one of disrespect and resentment. It didn’t always fit into those boxes, sure, but usually, it did.

“I need to know where his head’s at emotionally.”

Looking at me like I’d sprouted horns, Jesse asked, “What? Do you want to call him and have a heart-to-heart? Seriously, Elijah, he didn’t go on Jerry Springer and reveal—”

Holding a hand up, I stopped him mid-rant. “What he did gives an idea of where his head’s at, you moron.”

Growling, he ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “He masturbated on a photo of Sadie from when she was younger on her bed.”

Either I was having sympathy nausea with Sadie, or…

Gulping in a deep breath, I shook my head to get the mental image out of it.

“How safe is the house in Sarasota Bay, Elijah?”

Looking up at my brother, I saw that he was as worried as I was by this development. Orson’s actions were out of passion, and using the photo showed us he was committed to getting to her.

“When me and Coop bought it, we signed an addendum that gifted our half of the property to the other one in the event of our deaths, so I own it outright and all of the land. We were looking for an investment to rent out while we were away, but we never got around to doing it. While I was there this time, I got a friend of mine to bury the paperwork and put a dummy company as the owners on it until this shit gets sorted out in case we needed a place to hide.”