Break The Cycle

Chapter 57:

Killian POV:

Emma must have been having a busy day, usually she could text me a few times on the job, but today it was radio silence. I shrugged it off and went about my day, still occasionally texting her little things here and there like we always did.

But by 5, I was worried. Her work day ended at 4:30, and she always called if she would be staying late. So I went to pick up Henry from Regina's.

"Hey, have you heard from Emma?" I asked her and Robin while Henry was still upstairs.

"No." Regina raised an eyebrow.

"Is anything wrong?" Robin asked.

"I haven't heard from her since this morning, and she isn't home from work and hasn't called." I explained.

"But she always calls." Regina pointed out.

"Exactly my thoughts." I said and tapped my finger to my chin.

One at a time, we all tried calling her. After an hour of her not answering, it was time to get worried. The first thing I did was call David.

"Hey Killian." He greeted happily.

I sighed, time to ruin that good mood.

"No one knows where Emma is. She isn't answering her phone and she never bothered to call to say if she was off work or staying late." I said.

"Keep calm, have you checked her office?" He asked me.

"Not yet, I wanted to give you a heads up first, in case anything bad has happened."

"Check her work, then home, if she's not at either of those places, call me back."

I hung up and went back to the living room.

"I'm going to her office, then checking the house again. If she's not there, I'm calling David again and going to the police station." I grimly told Regina and Robin.

"We'll keep Henry here as long as you need to." Regina assured me.

"Thank you." I sighed. Emma couldn't seem to catch a break. After everything we had been through, the past year had been so peaceful, and now this.

Emma's boss said she never even came back after lunch, he had assumed there had been some sort of emergency. It wasn't like her to just not return to work without calling, unless something bad had happened. She wasn't at home either. That was it. I called David again and went straight to the police station. I gave a full description of what she was wearing that morning, and if there had been anything suspicious going on lately. I mentioned the man she claimed she was nervous about, but it didn't help much because I didn't know what he looked like since I never noticed him. My wife was officially a missing person.

Emma POV:

According to the clock on the dash, it was well past five. Killian had to be worried about me after not hearing from me for hours. The asshole who was holding me captive threw my phone out the window in the middle of the woods, so there was no tracking that.

I hoped Henry and Liam wouldn't worry. Killian could come up with an excuse for my older son, but my sweet baby, he would want his mother, and no one could give him an explanation.

We drove for a few hours, until we came up to this barn. Crap, an old barn in the middle of nowhere. At least when Henry was taken, Gold stuck to civilization.

He yanked me from the car and took me inside. As soon as the doors were shut, he kicked my legs out from under me.

"I'm not above hurting a woman, especially not one who screwed me." He said angrily.

"How in the hell did I screw you?" I groaned, trying to get up. It would buy time and information if I could keep him talking.

He kneed me in the face to knock me down again.

"My business associate is dead because of you, you bitch." He said through gritted teeth, holding me down with his foot. I could feel my cheek start to swell where he hit me.

So Gold kidnapped my son, and tries to kill me and my husband, but I'm the bad guy? As much as I wanted to say it, I kept my remark to myself. I was already going to have a welt on my face, and more bruises on my back.

"You're going to be bait. I lost a lot of money because of you, and now I'm going to get it back." He growled.

He picked me up by my hair. As much as I wanted to scream, I wouldn't give him the satisfaction so I bit my cheek. I was dragged several feet and then thrown into a room. I hit the ground and could hear a lock being clicked outside.

Fantastic. It was mostly dark in here, sure to be pitch black by night. My hands were zip tied together, and unless I could get them separated, I didn't stand a chance if he came in here to attack me.

At some point during the night, I managed to fall asleep. I found the softest corner I could and managed to get into a good position, even with my hands tied. It had gotten too dark too fast for me to try to find a way to untie them, so I just decided to sleep and look around as soon as I woke up.

Early in the morning, a loud voice startled me from sleep.

"I don't care who's ass you have to kick, I want the package delivered to the warehouse tonight! I have customers waiting and they're willing to pay good money for the good shit."

Drugs, I knew a conversation about them when I heard it. He must have been trying to avoid talking about it directly just in case I was listening, I guess he didn't bother to think I would be able to understand.

So that was what Gold was into. Sure, he was a bad man, but this was all kinds of illegal. He must have been a partner if this man, and apparently a good one if I'd pissed him off that much.

It was a rough night of sleep, but I'd managed. I shook my head to wake myself up a little more and started looking around for a way to undo the zip tie. Eventually, I found an old nail sticking out of the wall. I made a mental note to stay away from this part at night and began to work away at the plastic around my wrists. After a minute or two, it popped loose. I rolled my wrists and sighed at the relief, hoping that if he figured it out, he wouldn't get too crazy.

Killian POV:

By the next morning, I was frantic. Elsa forced me to take a sleep aid, reminding me that I couldn't help find Emma if I hadn't slept. No one had heard from or seen my wife since yesterday when she left for lunch.

I checked our bank accounts transaction history, her debit card had been used at the coffee shop we loved. So David was able to pull the camera feed and see that she had bought lunch for her and I, and then walked out. She had been on her way to meet me, and somewhere between there and the docks, something bad happened.

She hadn't shown up at any nearby hospitals, she hadn't passed any traffic cameras. She had vanished.

We were telling Henry that she was sent off by work for a little while, and poor Liam was growing increasingly impatient to see his mother. It was tearing me apart, I was able to soothe him some. But he missed her.

When I told the police about her suspicions about the man at the zoo, they began searching the camera feed there too. Eventually, they got a decent shot of his face and were able to identify him. He was a private detective, probably hired by whoever was responsible for this.

They were able to bring him in to question him, but his customer had given no name, just a large sum of money in order to remain anonymous. He said he had no idea why he was hired to follow Emma, me, and our children. Henry and Liam, someone had been stalking them. I wanted to strangle the man with his bare hands, but he was an unwitting pawn in all of this.

He gave us all of the information he could, and we went from there. Whoever this was, they were making it very difficult to track them down.