I left Cleo alone when I shouldn't and now I was going to get her back. She wasn't going to die and she'd be okay.
She had to be okay.
I could do this on my own, I just needed Ash to point me in the right direction.
No matter how many people I had to kill.
Finally, after thirty more minutes of driving on the edge of the speed limit, I parked my car in front of Ash's beach house and I made sure to grab my gun and keep it loaded. I tucked it in the back of my pants and rushed out of the car, ringing the damn buzzer over and over again to wake her up.
"Who the fuck- Harry?" Her voice answered and I looked up to find a security camera right on top of the main gate. "It's almost seven-"
"Let me the fuck in, Ashley." I interrupted her, and my tone was enough to make her open the gate.
I rushed inside and made my way to the front porch, and she was already opening the front door with a very confused and sleepy face, wearing polka- dotted pajamas.
"Holly is asleep, what the fuck is this?" She whispered angrily but I walked past her to get inside the house, bumping my shoulders into hers and letting out an exasperated breath.
"What the fuck is wrong, Harry?"
"Someone took Cleo from my apartment when I wasn't there and I have no fucking idea where she is, some guy called me and he told me he raped her but I broke my phone and they fucking left her finger on the bed as some sort of sick message and I can't fucking take this anymore!" I tried to keep my voice down but I failed, running my fingers through my hair and tugging at the roots.
My head was throbbing with pain and I felt like I was going to be sick again, the tears threatening to fall again only made me feel more hopeless.
Never in my life I had worried about someone this fucking much, love was such a dangerous feeling.
"Whoa, what the fuck? They raped her?" Ash furrowed her eyebrows, looking around the living room as if she wanted to make sure Holly hadn't woken up. "This is so fucking sick and wrong, didn't they tell you a name? Was it Rowley?"
"It didn't sound like Rowley but I honestly didn't pay much attention, my brain is a fucking mess. Why the fuck would they cut her pinky finger and leave it behind for me to find? God help me, I'm gonna cut their fucking heads off!" I was shouting by now and she glared at me, but I had no control over my emotions.
However, her expression changed slightly as she processed my words, and perhaps she was finally fully awake by now to fucking help me.
"Her pinky finger?" She asked me and I nodded, and said finger was being kept in ice back in my car but the hours were passing by fast... I had hopes I could get to her in time, but her not having a finger wasn't a fucking problem.
The problem was that these motherfuckers thought they had the fucking right to touch her without her consent and hurt her in the first place. They fucking dared to cut her finger off, Cleo was probably just as frustrated and pissed off as me.
If she was alive.
"I think I know who it is, a guy named Ray has this new gang and he already caused some trouble with Rowley. His m.o. is to always cut a pinky finger off, it's how we know he was around." She grimaced. "Kinda like a signature."
"What the fuck?" I was about to lose my fucking mind.
"His business is mostly drugs and guns, but his men are disgusting," Ash told me. "I have a friend who used to own a strip club about an hour from here, Ray forced her to sell the place to him and I heard his men did terrible things to the dancers there to scare them into staying and working. It's a 24- hour club, maybe you could try going there and figuring out where they are?"
