Chapter Forty Three

Chapter Forty Three
Elizabeth’s POV
I awoke back in our bed, my head threatening to split open with the horrendous headache I had. I groaned, moving my barely functioning arm to my face, rubbing it as I fought to remember how I ended up here. Suddenly, the images flooded my mind, and my heart stopped. I sprung up, my pulse racing and the adrenaline consuming me.
“Zen!” I shouted, but my voice was hoarse. Images of Flynn raping me flooded into my brain, but my utter hatred pushed them back out. I was going to fucking kill that bastard, but first I had to find Zen. “Zen!” I cried out again, stumbling out of the bed with a hard thud. I had to make sure he was safe. I ignored the aching of my body and started crawling towards the bedroom door. Right before I reached it, the door swung open, revealing a severely beaten and bruised Tom on the other side. As soon as he saw me, he collapsed, crawling to meet me on the floor. “Zen. Tom, where is he?” I shouted. He had a black eye, a busted lip caked in dry blood, and what appeared to be a broken nose, based on the bruising. He didn’t answer me right away. Instead he wrapped me up in his arms, cradling me close to his chest.
“I’m so sorry, Liz.” He choked out into my shoulder. The warm air against my bare skin gave me goosebumps, and I looked down to realize that I was still completely naked from Flynn’s assault. I knew I should be embarrassed with how Tom was holding me, but I really didn’t give a shit. I wanted to know what the fuck was going on.
“Tom, where is he?” I asked again, sternly this time as I pushed his shoulders back and looked into his eyes. They were watering, full of shame. “Oh my God. What did you do?” I muttered in disbelief.
“He was contacted by Dan, Liz. He said it was the only way to protect you. I’m so sorry, it wasn’t supposed to go like this. I didn’t know that that prick was working with him. I didn’t know he would do that to you.” He sobbed. Zen left? He went with Dan willingly? To fucking protect me?
“Fuck! Why the hell didn’t you guys tell me?” I shouted in his face, shoving him the rest of the way off of me.
“He made me promise not to. He wanted it to seem like he abandoned you, but if he knew what those assholes did to you, I know he wouldn’t have went along with it.”
My mind was racing ahead of his words. I wanted to be pissed at Zen, but it would have to wait. I had to move quickly if I wanted to get to Zen before they killed him. Fortunately, I didn’t think they would be putting him out of his misery anytime soon. They wanted him to suffer. That’s why they recorded my assault. I cringed at the thought of Zen watching that recording. He had to watch his own mother get raped for years, and now he would have to watch me reach that same point. I just hoped he didn’t blame himself.
“How did Dan contact Zen?” I asked coldly, ignoring the blood Tom was expelling into his hand.
“He dropped off a folder. It had a notecard with instructions for him to meet Dan in the backyard, along with a shit ton of pictures of you two.” Simple intimidation. They knew where we were since the beginning. Why not take him back then? Did they want him to get more attached to me so that it hurt worse when he left? Sick freaks. But there was something else that stood out from what Tom said.
“Wait, he met them in the backyard?” I asked. He nodded. “So then the meeting was recorded on the external cameras?” His eyes lit up at the realization. I jumped to my feet, darting towards the living room. It still smelled like menthol and Zen’s cologne, but I ignored it, jumping for the remote control. I scrolled over to last night’s footage, only to find that it had been deleted. “Fuck!” I shouted, throwing the remote into the TV.
Tom came up behind me, draping a bathrobe over my bare shoulders. “What’s the matter?” He asked before glancing up at the cracked screen with a ‘no footage found’ message. “Oh, I have a backup hard drive back at home, Liz.” He said softly. I turned to him, my eyes alight with a near crazed excitement.
“Then what are we waiting for? We’re leaving.”
It was the longest six hours of my life, but while Tom drove, I was busy working. Tom had decided early on that it would be best if Zen got chipped as well for tracking purposes, so he sent Zen a kit to place an implant under his skin. I was glad that I talked him into doing it in the end, because if he thought that he could get rid of me that easily, he was sorely mistaken. We ended up placing it just beneath an already existing piece of scar tissue on his abdomen, so that way it would be harder to spot.
I pulled up the tracker on Tom’s laptop, nearly jumping from my seat when I saw it flashing somewhere in my home town. Thank God. They brought him back. But how was I going to get to him? I couldn’t exactly take on an entire assassination group, even after Zen’s training. I pulled the black pistol from Zen’s backpack, dropping the magazine to make sure it was loaded before sliding it back into place.
“Please tell me you aren’t thinking of doing something stupid.” Tom remarked from the seat beside me.
“Oh, no. I’m just planning on using my damn clever brain. Tell me, Tom, how do you fare with hacking?”