But beyond that, I had no idea where I was.
Or what was going to happen to me next.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, either, but from my estimation based on the amount and quality of sunlight outside, it had to have been at least several hours. The sun was in that lazy, hazy position that usually accompanied the afternoon, so I assumed it was probably around two or three. My stomach growled, as I hadn’t eaten in at least twenty-four hours, and I urged it to shut up. I couldn’t even think about food right now. I was in pure survival mode at this point. Finally, I was getting frustrated with having my mouth taped. I mean, obviously it hadn’t exactly been a pleasant experience so far. But now I was determined to redeem at least a smidgen of my dignity by getting the tape off of my lips. So I started wiggling my lips and trying to work my mouth open, letting my tongue moisten the sticky tape as much as possible to lessen its adhesiveness. After what felt like another hour of doing this, I finally managed to feel it start to pull away slightly. My heart skipped a beat, adrenaline flooding my veins. Now I was getting somewhere.
I continued on, pushing my bottom lip out as far as I could. When the tape was just crinkled enough, I somehow managed to maneuver it back between my front teeth to chew it looser. With one final spitting motion it fell away, mostly, with the tape still clinging to the corner of my mouth. But I could breathe more freely now, and I worked my jaw around, inhaling deeply. I wondered if I should make a sound or something. Scream, maybe. But then, I realized that any movement or noise on my part would probably just result in my captor rushing in here to bind my mouth again-- or worse, punish me for my transgression. Besides, Vegas was so noisy all the time anyway, and city-dwellers were used to just ignoring strange noises they heard. If someone heard me scream they’d probably write it off as just very vocal sex or something.
But now that my lips were free, I was inspired and daring enough to try and free my hands or feet next. I started wriggling them around, my arms aching terribly from being pinned behind my back in the same painful position for so long. What was worse was that I could plainly see my purse sitting on a little dresser across the room. My phone had to be in there. I could call for help or at least turn on my GPS locator so that my mom or somebody could track my coordinates.
So I started scratching and clawing at the cords around my wrists. They weren’t bound that tightly, I could tell, but the cords were wrapped in an elaborate design encircling both my wrists and doubling back. Without being able to see behind me and find out what it looked like, it was nigh impossible to determine how to get out of it.
But I would not give up. I had to keep trying. If I’d managed to get the tape off my mouth, then surely this had to be within the realm of possibility too, right?
I squeezed my hands together, looping the cord around two fingers of one hand while I tried to slide the other free. To my infinite surprise, it seemed to be working! It was definitely a tight squeeze, and as I tugged my hand through the circle of cord, I could feel the skin on my hands scraping painfully. I winced, biting my lip to keep from grunting in pain, and at last I ripped one hand free of the binding. My heart was pounding so loudly in my chest that I almost worried that my captor might somehow hear it and come barging in here to punish me for trying to escape.
I was just reaching down to start loosening the cords around my ankles when I heard footsteps approaching. My heart sank. It was all over. He was going to find me like this and I was going to die.
The bedroom door pushed open and the man walked in, giving me a lazy, unperturbed once-over. He sighed. I dared not say a word as he looked at me, blinking those tired, bovine eyes at me like I was merely some troublesome toddler he was babysitting.
“Please don’t hurt me,” I murmured, my throat dry after hours without being able to open my mouth. The guy walked over to the bed and I instinctively recoiled, wriggling to the other side of the bed and staring at him in terror. He put one hand on his hip and the other reached up to rake back through his coarse black hair as he clucked his tongue in annoyance.
“Why’d you have to do all this?” he asked, shaking his head. “Is it ‘cause I smacked ya when was in the car? ‘Cause I shouldn’a done that. My apologies.”
“Why are you doing this to me? Who hired you?” I asked weakly. He cocked his head to one side and gave me a baleful expression, like a whipped dog.
“Don’t ask questions you know I’m not supposed to answer,” he replied, sounding exhausted, like I was putting him through the wringer. “Besides, you’ll find out soon enough.”
“What do you mean?” I persisted. He reached over to take my arm and I moved away, causing him to purse his lips as though offended.
“They’ll be here any minute, alright? Now would ya just be still for two seconds? My clients won’t like it if they show up and you’re untied…”
“Clients? As in multiple? So it’s not Brett,” I mused aloud, totally confused now. Who else would want to hurt me like this? I hardly socialized with anyone these days outside of work, except for Kieran.
“I don’t wanna hurt ya, and I swear I won’t put the tape back on, but you gotta at least let me tie your hands,” the man says, his fingers enclosing around my wrist. Just as I cry out, a door thuds shut across the apartment and a moment later two more figures come into the room.
I recognize them instantly: Paul and Janet. My stomach dropped. What the hell were they doing here? Could they have been behind this all along? And if so, then why? How did they even know I was involved with Kieran?
Did they really want to hurt him this badly?
“Tony, what kind of sloppy work is this?” said Paul, frowning. My captor, Tony, spun around and held his arms outstretched in a gesture of offense.
“Whaddya mean sloppy? I got the girl, alright? Nobody knows. Nobody saw a damn thing. What more do ya expect?” he said defensively. Janet tapped her stilettoed foot impatiently.
“We wanted her bound and gagged, don’t you remember? What kind of mafia hack are you? Ugh,” she complained, rolling her beautiful eyes.
“What do you want from me?” I interjected, pulling my legs up to my chest. All three of them looked genuinely surprised to hear me say anything. As though they’d expected me to just quietly accept whatever was going on. Like they thought of me as more like a prop or a pawn in their game than a living, breathing, thinking organism.
“Oh, we don’t care about you at all,” Paul stated matter-of-factly. “But Kieran does.”
“Though for the life of me, I can’t fathom why,” added Janet, with a scathing grimace.
“So this is some weird extortion thing, is it?” I piped up, getting angry despite the clear and present danger of my situation. Somehow, this had been easier to deal with when I thought it was just some ploy of Brett’s to get back at me. Now that I knew Kieran was involved, I was pissed. He didn’t deserve this.
“Extortion?” said Paul in mock astonishment.
“What an ugly word,” Janet drawled, inspecting her fingernails.
“I would stay quiet and stop making wild accusations, if I were you,” Paul warned me, smirking. He nodded to Tony. “Smack her around a little bit, see if that will mellow her out.”
Tony looked outright appalled. “Smack her around? What kinda guy do ya take me for?”
“A mob guy,” answered Janet, raising an eyebrow incredulously. “What else are you good for if you won’t even do what we hired you to do?”
Tony shook his head and held up his hands. “No, ma’am. You hired me to kidnap the girl, not beat ‘er up. I don’t hit ladies unless I gotta. It ain’t right.”
Paul shoved past him and lunged at me in one swift movement, hatred blazing in his eyes. He reached across the bed and hit me hard across the cheek before I could even process what was going on. Janet cheered him on, clapping her hands gleefully as Paul landed one blow after another while I tried in vain to shield myself with my arms. Finally, to my surprise, another pair of arms seized Pa
ul by the collar of his sleazy black suit and ripped him off of me.
Tony cried out, “Hey man! What did I just fuckin’ say? It ain’t right! Just ‘cause I won’t hit ‘er doesn’t mean you should do it for me!”
“I’m not paying you to have a slumber party with the bitch,” Paul spat, his face blotchy with rage. Tony shook his head and stood his ground. Even though he was a couple inches shorter, the mafioso was still thicker and younger than Paul, but the stand-off went on. Janet had her arms folded over her ample bosom, looking annoyed. Finally she turned on her heel and stormed out of the room with a petulant sigh.
“Dim-witted Italian bastard,” Paul hissed through his teeth as the two men stared at each other, their bodies heaving with hatred. And that was all it took.
Tony took a swing at the older man’s face, knocking him back a few feet. Paul dove back at him with a furious roar, his hands out and fingers splayed as though he was planning to choke Tony out. As their bodies collided and fell through the door back out into the hallway, I took the opportunity to untie my ankles, my fingers barely able to function through the trembling. I quietly slipped off the bed and raced to the dresser, rifling desperately through my purse to find my phone. I knew I didn’t have time to make a call or anything, but I hoped I would be able to turn on the GPS tracker. Finally, my fingertips landed on the smooth, hard shell of my phone and I whipped it out, rapidly sliding the screen open and tapping the little tracker icon before tossing the phone and purse back on the dresser and running to the bed before anyone could notice.
To my good luck, the two men were still grappling with each other, unaware that I’d even moved at all. For once, it was working out to my advantage that people tended to overlook and underestimate me. Now, the best thing I could do was just wait.
CHAPTER 14 - KIERAN
Carter was rummaging through a closet, Jamal was leaning against the counter, and I was at the table with my hands on a small map of the city as we talked things over. It had been a tense few minutes, and we’d already gone over the basics: Danielle was kidnapped, and we knew damn well who was behind it, but we had no way of proving it to the authorities and now way to know exactly where she was.
Anna, Carter’s wife, was at school working today, and her paperwork was likely going to keep her there for a while after hours, Carter had said. That was probably for the better. We didn’t want to worry her with more trouble like this.
“How many black cadillacs can there be in Vegas?” I asked absently, staring at the map of the vast city.
“More than you’d think,” Carter said from the closet. “And you’re sure we can’t go to the police with this? Kieran, I know you’re a hell of a fighter, I’ve seen you sparring a few times, but it sounds like Paul and Janet are in with the mob, and if that’s the case, no matter how much training you’ve got, you’re in over your head.”
“I don’t care,” I said, slamming my fist on the table hard enough to make Jamal step forward and put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “I’m not going to let them lay a finger on her, and I don’t care if they’ve got a whole army at their backs. They can’t have her. And they can’t jerk me around like this, either.”
“Hey,” Jamal said, getting me to look him in the eyes, “my family knows better than anyone else what it’s like to be afraid of losing someone dear to you. And I can tell you firsthand that losing your cool isn’t going to get you anywhere. We need to approach this carefully and methodically. If we don’t, then things will get hairy real quick.”
I nodded, knowing him to be right, and my shoulders slumped. “Alright. You’ve got a point, let’s get at this together.” I bent back over the map, scouring places I knew to be shadier parts of town--warehouse districts and the like. “But this feels so pointless. There’s a dozen places to disappear in Vegas, and even if we searched every part of town that looked like it would have something promising, this is the mob we’re dealing with--they might as well have disappeared anywhere in the whole damn city.”
Jamal opened his mouth to say something, but he paused as his eyes, along with mine, were drawn to my phone, which had lit up on the table next to my hand. It was calling from an unknown number.
Immediately, I felt color rushing to my face, and before Jamal could stop me, I seized the phone and brought it to my ear.
“Listen, Paul or Janet, whoever the fuck had the nerve to call,” I snarled, cutting off whatever voice had started to talk. “I don’t want to hear whatever asinine threat you’ve come up with, because I’m going to find you, and when I do, you’re going to be real fucking sorry real quick, do you hear me? Nobody fucks with the people I love like this.”
There was a pause on the line as Carter and Jamal winced visibly, and finally, there was a chilling chuckle on the other end of the line in a voice I didn’t recognize.
“You kiss ya mother with that mouth?” The New York Italian accent was thick, and it was the voice of a bigger man. “I’d be glad I ain’t neither of those two, pal, ‘cause all that sounded like threats that’d be admissible in a court o’ law, if you ask me.”
“Who are you?” I said after forcing myself to take a breath and regain my center. “And why are you calling me? You obviously know what I’m talking about.”
Carter strode over to me, holding in his hand some kind of device that looked like a walkie-talkie with a cord attached to it. Without a word, he reached over to my phone with the cord and plugged it into the side. I gave him a confused look, but he gestured for me to keep talking, and realization dawned on me. The device he had been looking for was a GPS tracker, something he’d mentioned the fire department using to track down missing persons from time to time.
“I’m no one special,” the voice said, sounding simple. “I’m just a guy with a message.”
“Paul and Janet too cowardly to try to contact me themselves anymore?” I snapped, trying to keep him on the line. “Or are they too strung out on blow?”
There was a low whistle from the other end. “Pal, you oughta look into anger management. If they were here with me, your broad would be dead already.”
My face blanched, and I nearly crushed the phone in my hand with anger. “Danielle is with you?”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding both knowing and reticent like a petulant child. “Boss told me to let her say ‘hello’ so you knows it’s her, but ah, she’s the type who’d try tellin’ you where we are if she got a hold of the phone, so...no.”
“Listen,” I growled, “if you so much as lay a finger on her, I’ll--Paul and Janet aren’t stable, you can’t trust them to come through with whatever they’re offering you.”
“Oh, that much I know,” he mused, “they’re fuckin’ nuts. But they’re loaded, and my boss don’t care much about who he works with so long as they’s payin’, and buddy, your broad’s worth a lot to them,” he chuckled.
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” I said, already having forgotten that I was supposed to be just keeping him talking.
“Nah, I know who you are. Tough guy,” he said, sounding bored. “But uh, oh, right. Warning. Listen, they wanted me to tell you that if you don’t sign that contract thing of theirs, Danielle gets killed.”
The words sunk into my stomach heavy, and my lips were cold. I couldn’t handle that. Not now. Not like this. “You rat bastard,” I said numbly, and I heard something that sounded like a noncommittal grunt from the other end of the line. Carter looked up at me and nodded as something blinked on his screen.
“What can I say? It’s a job. But I’d hurry up if I was you. Your girl bruises pretty easily, so I dunno how long she’ll last with me,” he said as casually as though he were talking about the weather, and before I could respond, he hung up.
I raised my hand to hurl my phone across the room in anger, but Jamla caught my wrist from behind, and I set it down before standing up and pacing around the room.
“Fuck. FUCK. How could I have let this happen? She never would have gotten into a
ll this if I hadn’t made a move on her. She should have never gotten involved with me, I shouldn’t have dragged her into my life with all this going on.”
“Kieran,” Carter said calmly.
“Those fuckers are going to kill her now that--”
“Kieran,” Carter said more firmly, and my gaze snapped up to glare at him, the two of us staring hard at each other before he spoke.
“Love isn’t something you can control,” he said, “neither of you. And you had no idea this was going to spiral out of control the way it has. Kieran, I know you better than you think. You’re a lot like me.” He crossed his arms, leaning back against the counter. “My first month on the job at the fire department, we got a call about a big fire in an apartment complex on the outskirts of the city. By all rights, it should have been an in-and-out job. Twenty-five people were trapped in that building when we rolled up to the place,” he said, his gaze level with me. “Twenty-four made it out. You know how close I was to turning my two weeks in after that job? Captain had to hold me back. It was the hardest week of my life, but I had to power through it.”
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