by L. P. Dover
My heart sank and I gasped in fear. To be imprisoned with him forever terrified me to death. I’d rather die than be forced to be his, to have to endure what he’d do to me day in and day out. But most of all, I worried about what he’d do to Kellan. Would he kill him like he did Cole?
“What have you done to Kellan?”
“Nothing yet, but that all depends on you and how you cooperate. You see, I’ve been watching you the last three months. You’ve made quite a life for yourself and even got a job at the one place you dreamed about your entire life.”
Teeth clenched, I slammed a hand down on the kitchen table. “Which will be gone if I don’t get back home. My friends will find me, Mitchell. It’s only a matter of time.” It was a desperate attempt, but even I didn’t know if they’d actually find me.
He chuckled and it made me even more furious. Being angry helped mask the fear. I was afraid for my life, but I didn’t want him to hear it. It was like he got off on it. How the hell could I have not seen this side of him before? “Are you talking about the FBI? I hate to inform you, but they decided to move on. It’s interesting how far money can go.”
The world started to spin so I sat down at the table. “You bribed them?”
“Let’s just say I got what I want. Your friends won’t be able to find you. I made sure of that. But don’t worry, I’m going to let you talk to Kellan. He deserves to know you’re okay.”
“When?” I cried.
“As soon as I arrive tomorrow. But when I get there, we have a lot of catching up to do. In the meantime, you’re being guarded by my men, so don’t even think of trying to leave. They’ve been instructed to keep you there by any means possible. I suggest you don’t piss them off.”
Darren smiled again and bile rose up my throat. I didn’t want to know what he was capable of. “This isn’t going to end well, Mitchell. You can’t keep me here forever.”
“I don’t plan on it. The more I get what I want, the more freedom you’ll earn. It’s all up to you. Now relax and get something to eat. I don’t want you wasting away by the time I get there.”
Mitchell hung up and Darren was right there to take the phone away. “If he wants me to eat, he’s going to have to make me.”
Darren chuckled and looked down at his phone. “I was afraid you’d say that. Unfortunately, you don’t have a choice.” He showed me a picture of Aubrey, who was walking into the skating rink.
“Why do you have a picture of her?”
His lips pulled back into an evil grin. “If you don’t eat, she’ll be the first casualty. You don’t want anything happening to that pretty face of hers, do you?”
I felt sick and completely helpless. “You’re bluffing.”
“Am I?” He laughed. “Let’s just see now.” He called someone else and then turned the phone to me so I could see. “All right, you’re on.”
It was a live video, so I couldn’t see the man behind the camera, but I could hear his voice. “As you can see, I’m at the rink. It looks like our target comes in every morning and leaves around one but then comes back later in the evening. She should be heading out any minute.” He was right about Aubrey’s schedule. My whole body shook with rage, but most of all, fear, especially when Aubrey walked out the doors. “There she is. Say bye-bye to little miss sunshine.”
He started to get out of the car and I screamed. “Stop! What the hell is wrong with you people?” The guy got back into the car and laughed. “Leave her alone and I’ll do whatever you want. Just get away from her.”
Darren turned the phone away and looked at the screen. “That’s enough. I think she’ll listen now.” He hung up and pointed to the refrigerator. “Now get something to eat. We have a long list of people who’ll suffer if you don’t do what you’re told.”
Terror racked through my body. I could only imagine the friends of mine they had on that list. What scared me even more were the things I was going to have to do to keep them safe. The refrigerator was stocked full of food, so I grabbed the deli meat and made a sandwich. I had one day before Mitchell arrived and then my life would end. I was in hell.
Chapter 31
Kellan
Kristen had been gone for twenty-four hours and I hadn’t slept a wink. We couldn’t even file a missing persons report until she was missing for forty-eight hours. It wasn’t like that would help us anyway. I wasn’t going to be able to rest until I knew she was okay. Jason and Aylee had passed out on the couch but awoke when the sound of a car door slammed out front. Hurrying to the door, I opened it and Brooklyn came barging in.
“Anything?” she asked, dropping her bag to the floor.
Jason shook his head and yawned. “Only that Blackwell’s still in Boston according to our contacts.”
Brooklyn grabbed her bag and jerked out her notebook. “On the plane, I made some notes. I was trying to remember everything Kristen told me while she dated that asshat.” She sifted through the pages, and before she could speak, my phone rang and so did Aylee’s. She rushed out of the room and I hoped to hell it was her FBI friends.
I stumbled over the coffee table to get my phone, only to see it was my mother. “Who is it?” Jason asked.
“My mother.” Unfortunately, it didn’t just stop with one call. My phone kept ringing, over and over.
“Why don’t you just answer it?” Brooklyn said. “If you play it cool, you might be able to get Mitchell’s location without her suspecting anything.”
Jason agreed with a nod. “We’ve tried everything else.”
Huffing, I picked up my phone. “Is it really necessary to annoy the fuck out of me?” I growled.
My mother sniffled. “Sorry, son, but I wanted to talk to you.” I hated being an ass to her, but she deserved it. She only wanted to talk to me when it benefited her.
“About what?” Your dickhead of a husband who had my fiancée kidnapped? I thought.
“I want to congratulate you on the engagement. Your fiancée is a beautiful woman.”
My teeth clenched. “Yeah, she is.”
She sniffled again as if she’d been crying. “I’m so proud of everything you’ve accomplished. I wanted to see if you minded if I came down there and visited with you.”
This was my chance. “By yourself? Where’s Mitchell?”
The line went quiet, but then she released a heavy sigh. “He wants a divorce. I got the papers today. And before you say I deserve this, I already know. I knew it was bound to happen.”
“He wants a divorce? Where’s the cocksucker now?” I asked angrily.
“He left this morning to go overseas for work. He said he wants me out of the house by the time he gets back.” I didn’t feel sorry for her, but I had a sickening feeling I knew why he wanted the divorce.
Jason snapped his fingers and I looked over at him. “This is it. Tell her the truth. We’re going to need her help.”
The last thing I wanted was to ask my mother for help, but for Kristen I’d do just about anything. “Fine, you can come down, but there’s actually something I need your help on.”
She gasped. “Oh, Kellan. You have no idea how much this means to me. I’m dying to see you. What do you need help with?”
I told her everything, from the very beginning when Kristen met Mitchell to where we were now, with his kidnapping her. A part of me was afraid she’d lose her shit and say that I was lying, and the other part hoped to hell she’d work with us. The line went quiet and I held my breath.
“Mom, you still there?”
For so long I’d called her Mary, but I prayed that being her son would outweigh her duty to her husband. “I’m here,” she whispered. “I don’t know what to say. For the longest time, I knew Mitchell was involved with other women and I can’t lie, that did bother me—more than I can say. But never in my wildest dreams had I ever thought he’d succumb to something like this. Only crazy people would do something like this.”
“Just please tell me you’ll help us find her.”
&nbs
p; “I’ll help you in any way that I can. He keeps a bunch of stuff in his office downstairs, so let me take a look and I’ll call you back.”
“Thanks, Mom. This means a lot to me.”
We said our goodbyes and I hung up quickly. Everyone stared at me as I faced them. “She’s going to look around his office to see if she can find anything. But she said he left this morning to go overseas. Can we see if he purchased a plane ticket?”
Brooklyn rushed over to Aylee’s laptop. “On it.”
I peeked over her shoulder at the screen. Her fingers moved ninety miles an hour over the keys and I had no clue what I was looking at as she went from screen to screen. “Mitchell never took Kristen overseas did he?”
She shook her head. “No, but they did go to Wyoming a lot. He even bought a house and put it in a different name so your mother couldn’t trace him.”
Jason’s eyes went wide and we both looked at each other, clearly thinking the same thing. “Kristen never told me that,” he said. “What if Mitchell took her there? Do you know what city in Wyoming?”
Brooklyn’s head snapped up. “Wilson,” she exclaimed. “It’s near Jackson Hole. Give me one sec and I’ll see if I can find it. But first…” She typed away again, her gaze focused on the screen. “You need to see this.” Turning the laptop our way, she pointed at what looked to be a boarding pass. “Mitchell’s on his way to London.”
“No, he’s not,” Aylee said, marching back into the room. “Our guys are at the airport now. They’re going to stop him for questioning. They said they’re about to get him.” Waiting for the call back was fucking torture. If Kristen was in London, we were screwed. Finding her in our own country was hard enough, much less if she was overseas. “What were you guys talking about before I came in?” Aylee asked, glancing back and forth at us all. The tension in the air was so thick I couldn’t fucking think straight.
Huffing, I sat down. “Only that Mitchell bought a house in Wyoming so he and Kristen could sneak away and fuck without my mother finding out.” Just the thought of them being together made me so goddamn livid.
Aylee whistled. “Wow, that’s kind of crazy. Kristen never told me that.”
“She never told me, either,” I hissed low.
Aylee’s phone rang and my heart stopped. “Hey,” she said quickly. There was talking on the other end, but I couldn’t hear what they said. All I knew was that it couldn’t have been good by the look on Aylee’s face. “Thanks, Rogers. We’ll be trying to figure it out on this end as well.”
She hung up and tossed her phone onto the couch. “What’s going on?” I demanded.
Sighing, she rubbed a hand over her face. “Apparently, Mitchell wanted to screw with us. It wasn’t him at the airport; it was someone else who looked like him. He planted the decoy to get us off his track.”
The anger became too much and I snapped. I didn’t realize I had gotten up and punched the wall until Jason grabbed my wrist. “We’re not going to let him get away. I know you’re angry, but you have to calm down.”
“So help me God, I’m going to kill him.”
“And I’ll be happy to help you, but we need to concentrate on finding her.” He squeezed my shoulder reassuringly, but it did nothing to calm the fire inside me. “Brooklyn, see if you can find the house in Wyoming,” he commanded. I turned around and sat back down while Jason joined Brooklyn on the couch. They both looked at the screen while she typed. “What name are you looking under?” he asked her.
“Kristen Blackwell,” she replied. The second I heard that come out of her mouth, I was livid. She was never going to be his, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to have his name.
Clenching my fists tight, I knew our time was running out. “He’s probably on his way to her now.”
Jason looked over at me. “And we won’t be too far behind.”
“All right, I found it,” Brooklyn claimed.
Jason pulled out his phone. “We have someone in Wyoming who can help us. He’ll scope it out and call us back.”
My only fear was what was going to happen to her in the meantime.
—
All we could do was wait. Jason’s contact went out to search the house and we had yet to hear anything; I was losing my fucking mind. “What if they’re there?” I asked.
Jason looked up from his phone. “Then we go and kick some ass.” There were other Kristen Blackwells in the country, but there was no background on the Kristen Blackwell in Wyoming. It was the only lead we had.
“What if they’re not?” I said.
He shrugged. “Then we keep searching.”
Jason’s phone rang and he snapped his fingers at us before putting it on speakerphone.
“It’s him, guys. Blake, what ya got?”
“Nothing,” Blake said. “The house is vacant and looks like it’s been that way for some time.”
“Fuck,” I spat out.
Jason lowered his head. “Thanks, man. I appreciate you checking it out for us.”
“No problem. Let me know if you need anything else.”
They hung up and every single ounce of hope I felt earlier was gone. “What if there’s another house somewhere?” I suggested. “He’s not going to take her somewhere where people will see her.”
“True,” Jason agreed, hurrying over to Aylee’s laptop. “Maybe we just need to dig further. If we can tap into his bank accounts, we can see if any of his money was transferred to pay for a large investment…like a house.”
“You can do that?” I asked.
“Yep, I’ve done it plenty of times. There’s only one problem.” He glanced up at me, his expression torn. “It’s going to take time. Unless your mother comes through for us.”
“How much time?”
He looked over at Aylee and she placed a hand on his shoulder. “A couple of days at least. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but it’s all we got.”
Without another word, I stormed out of the house so I could breathe. The next few days were going to be the longest in my life.
Chapter 32
Kristen
A full day had passed and still no one had found me. After taking a shower this morning, I was about to put my dirty clothes back on, but then I looked in the closet and found it packed with clothes and shoes in my size. When Mitchell said I was going to be there for a while, I believed him now. The thought of being imprisoned with him terrified the hell out of me.
I was hoping to be out of there before Mitchell showed up, but it was hopeless. There were at least three men guarding the house while I was alone, but as soon as Mitchell’s car pulled into the driveway, two of the men drove off. The fewer men there were with guns, the better. I could fight with my body, but I couldn’t do anything against a gun. Unfortunately, Darren was still around, and he was twice my size.
Mitchell glanced up at my window with a devilish grin on his face. He looked the same as he usually did, dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt. I used to think that was sexy, but I missed Kellan’s jeans and T-shirts. I flipped him off, and that seemed to amuse him even more. He walked inside and I knew my time was up. His footsteps sounded on the floor below and then on the stairs. Heart racing, I stood by the window, waiting for him to come into my room. I wasn’t locked in, but I chose to stay hidden away so I wouldn’t have to be around Darren or the other men.
The door opened and Mitchell walked inside, shutting the door behind him. His gaze roamed up and down my body, so I crossed my arms over my chest. “Do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you?”
“As you can see, I don’t really care.”
Chuckling, he took a step forward until he was only a hairbreadth away. There was nowhere for me to go but back into a wall. “You’re going to care,” he murmured, brushing his body against mine. “I’m going to make sure you do.” He lowered his nose to my neck and breathed in, his hands resting on my hips.
“So help me God, if you don’t back up I’ll make you choke on your balls.”<
br />
Mitchell stepped back, all humor put aside as he stared down at me. “You might want to rethink that, sweetheart. As you saw earlier, the fate of your friends rests in my hands. You don’t want them getting hurt, do you?”
“Aubrey is innocent in all of this. Threatening her isn’t the way to win me back. All it does is make me hate you even more.”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have hurt the girl. I know you care about her.”
I scoffed. “Like that matters. I cared about Cole and you got rid of him. I overheard the police saying they had to cover it up or their lives would be ruined. There’s only one person I know who does that to people.”
“Fine,” he murmured low. “You want to play this the hard way? Well, here it goes. I did kill Cole. Not many people cross me and live to see another day. Kellan is lucky I haven’t gotten rid of him…yet.” There was a part of me that really hoped Cole’s accident was just that, but hearing the truth finally leave Mitchell’s lips made my situation more dire. Mitchell was capable of killing people, including Kellan and myself. There was a darkness in Mitchell’s eyes I never saw before; it scared the hell out of me. He was a monster, the kind of guy your mother warns you about but you find out too late.
“Don’t you dare hurt Kellan,” I spat.
He brushed a hand down my cheek and I recoiled. “That all depends on you, my love. You do what I say and he lives, if not…”
“What do I have to do?” I had a sinking feeling I already knew, but I couldn’t stomach the thought.
Mitchell bit his lip and smiled. “You’re going to call him.”
“And say what? Won’t he know I’m calling from your number?”
Pulling out his phone, I watched him scroll down to Kellan’s name. “Nope, I have it untraceable. I want you to tell him you’re fine and that it was your choice to leave.”
I snorted. “He won’t believe that. He’ll keep looking for me.”
“Like he’s doing now? Did you know he hasn’t even left his house?”