“Yes,” she whispered.
“And you managed to escape? Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get away?” he asked, and by his tone, he seemed to be genuinely curious.
She shrugged, “I used one of the bedsheets to hold some hay above the door. When the guard or whatever came in to deliver my dinner tray, the hay fell on his head. While he was distracted, I slipped out the door and ran.”
“Simple, yet effective. Well done,” Luke complimented while nodding his head in approval.
“What happened to you while you were there?”
“Nothing, really. I was locked in a stall for horses with a crappy bed. They fed me, occasionally yelled at me, and sprayed me down with a water hose every other day,” she said flatly.
“How did you come to be in their possession?”
The small amount she had managed to relax vanished with that question. “Pass,” she uttered.
“What?” Luke asked.
“Pass. I don’t want to answer that one. Pass,” she explained.
“Layla, I’m trying to make sure everyone associated with Hastings and Hensley has been apprehended. Did they take you themselves or were you sold to them?”
She exhaled tiredly, “I was sold to them.” She held up her hand to stop his next question. “Let me save you the trouble. My mother passed away a few months ago. My father, who was never a part of our lives because my mother claimed he was a bad man, showed up at the funeral. He shoved me into a van, restrained me, and took me to some shithole where I was locked in a room for a few days. One day, he came to get me, threw me in a trunk, and sold me to the two pricks at the horse farm.”
Luke nodded, leaning forward with rapt attention. “What’s your father’s name?”
Layla made a disgusted face and spat three words that rocked my world, “Jimmy ‘Gnaw’ Burnett.”
12
The moment I uttered my father’s name, the air in the room shifted. And neither man said a word. I looked between their shocked faces and finally demanded, “What?”
Luke came out of his stupor first. “What do you know about your father?”
“Not much, and what I do know my mother told me on her death bed. She said he was part of a gang and a bad man. When she found out she was pregnant with me, she left him and worked her tail off to make a life for us. The first time I met him was when he kidnapped me after the funeral. I’m not sure how he even knew about me. She said she never told him she was pregnant, and he isn’t listed on my birth certificate,” I explained.
Luke blew out a breath. “Your father is dead,” he blurted.
“Good. How did he die?”
“He was shot in a warehouse that blew up. It couldn’t be determined if the bullet or the fire killed him first.”
“What happened to the person who shot him?” I asked.
“We don’t know who shot him. Why?” Luke asked with a furrowed brow.
“I wanted to know who to thank,” I said, meaning every word. “So, do you have any other good news for me?”
Luke grinned, “Hastings and Hensley have been arrested and are currently in custody awaiting trial. We’d been investigating them for a while. Actually, I was posing as a buyer and set to purchase you, but you managed to get away, which threw a wrench into our plans. In the end, it all worked out, and we got both of them.”
“I’ll fill her in on the other details,” Copper said cryptically.
Luke nodded, “Of course. Only a few more things to clear up, and I’ll get out of your hair. Where have you been since you got away from Hastings? We haven’t been able to find a trace of you since you got away from the stables.”
I tensed. I didn’t want to tell him where I’d been before I found the bunker. Thankfully, I didn’t have to because Copper took care of it for me. “Believe it or not, she stumbled across Badger’s bunker and has been holed up there until I found her last week.”