by Niecey Roy
“I want that contract.”
She bared her teeth at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I’d had about enough of her, and at this point, there was no point in being glib. Crossing the room so I could stand toe to toe with her, I said, “Listen, bitch, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Cut the crap.”
Her eyes hardened. “Well, look who’s getting tough now.”
Behind Deborah’s back, Richard pointed to the recorder in his hand, and he pressed the red button. I stared back at Deborah, my gaze unwavering. It was now or never, and I wasn’t leaving here without what I’d come for.
“I want the contract. The one you forced me to sign on my wedding day. You threatened to ruin my business if I didn’t sign it, and then you bribed me with money if I did. The one where you were going to force me and your son to get an annulment after Gerard won the election, after all the votes you hoped to get from putting on a fake wedding.” There, that would sound good on an audio recording. I felt pretty good about it and smirked. “Remember, you also threatened to ruin my parents’ business too, if I didn’t sign the contract.”
She glanced to Roxanna, then back at me. Her gaze dawned with realization.
“If you think you’re going to get some contrived confession out of me, you’re both idiots.” She turned on her heel and stalked to the door, and Richard shuffled out of her way. “I’m calling security to have you removed from my property.”
Panicking, I rushed after her and jumped between her and the door. She stopped short of knocking into me.
“You aren’t leaving until you confess what you did and give me that contract.”
“I’ll do no such thing.” She turned to step around me, but I side-stepped in front of her. “Get out of my way.”
“No.” I shook my head. The only way she was getting past me is if she threw me out of her way.
Deborah laughed. “You’re an idiot. I think I’ll file a protection order against you. I’m sure that will do wonders for your business.”
“You’re not going anywhere!” Roxanna squealed.
I looked over Deborah’s shoulder to Roxanna. She had a taser gun pointed at Deborah’s back. My mouth dropped open.
Deborah turned around to look at Roxanna, and her breath caught. “What is this?”
“This, you evil witch, is your worst nightmare,” Roxanna said, shaking the taser gun at her. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Rox, what are you doing?” I breathed.
“I’m making sure we get our confession and that contract before we leave, that’s what,” she said, her voice edging an octave higher. “Now, confess, you crazy bitch.”
“You aren’t going to use that on me.” Deborah shook her head. “Idiots, all of you.”
She reached for the door handle, and my heart sank.
It happened so fast, I could hardly believe it was real. The probes shot from the taser gun and stuck into Deborah’s back, zapping her. She fell into a heap on the floor and Richard let out a man scream. I ran to Deborah and dropped to her side. She didn’t move. I looked up to Roxanna, who looked as stunned as Richard and I.
“Oh my God, you shot her!” I felt for Deborah’s pulse in her neck. “Thank God,” I said on a sigh. “She’s not dead.”
“Of course she’s not dead.” Roxanna’s voice shook. She stuffed the taser gun into her little handbag. “I only shocked her.”
“Now what the hell are we going to do?” I stood, my hands frantic as they waved in the air. “We just assaulted Deborah Buchanan.”
This was not good. Not good at all. I paced beside Deborah’s still body, my mind ticking over our options. I looked up to Roxanna. “We are so screwed!”
Richard nudged Deborah with his shoe. “When she wakes up she’s going to be so pissed.”
“No kidding,” I screeched and clutched handfuls of my skirt.
“We should get out of here,” Richard said, staring down at Deborah’s body.
I nodded, my head jerking with the movement. “Yes. We really need to get out of here.”
“No,” Roxanna said, and I whirled to face her. “We can’t leave until we find that contract.”
“What if someone comes in?” I asked, and we all stared at the door. We were sitting ducks here.
“We don’t have a choice,” she reasoned.
“Okay, five minutes, and if we haven’t found the contract, we’ll leave.” I looked down at Deborah.
Roxanna cringed. “God, this is bad. I didn’t mean to taze her, it just happened.”
“You’ve been itching to use that taser gun ever since you got it,” I snapped, and she winced. I pressed my fingers to my temples. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t mean to, I’m just freaking out right now.”
A simple in-and-out theft job had turned into an assault. This was bad. Very, very bad.
“Come on, help me find the contract,” I said, and we all rushed across the room to the desk and the hutch.
We looked for five minutes and didn’t find anything. “Maybe she has a safe,” Richard suggested.
I hadn’t thought about that. Why the hell hadn’t I thought about a safe? Of course Deborah would have a safe. Didn’t all rich people have safes? Deborah was right, I was an idiot. An idiot who had committed a felony. Wasn’t assault a felony? I was pretty sure it was a felony. My thoughts kept rambling in my brain, and I squeezed my eyes shut. We were in so much trouble.
“Lexie,” Roxanna said. When I didn’t answer her, she took me by the shoulders and shook me. “We have to take her.”
I opened my eyes to stare at her, confused. “What do you mean, take her?”
“She has to come with us.”
“Why?” Richard asked. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Because if she wakes up and we have nothing against her, she’ll send us to jail.” Roxanna shook my shoulders again. “You know I’m right.
“We can’t go to jail,” I stressed. “I don’t have money for bail!”
“Me either,” Richard said. “I’m broke until next payday. I bought a new gaming headset, and it cost me a cool three hundred.”
I whirled on Richard, the blood rushing in my ears. “This is not the time, Richard. We need to get out of here.”
Roxanna blocked the door, and I set my hands on my hips.
“We need a game plan.” Roxanna looked down at Deborah’s still body. “What is our game plan?”
“I don’t know, Roxanna Leigh.” I pointed to Deborah’s still body. “It’s kind of hard to think with Deborah’s body on the floor.”
“Don’t get snippy with me.” She threw her hands up. “I didn’t mean to taze her.”
“I know you didn’t.” I stomped my foot under the skirt of my ball gown. “But you did.”
“Whoa,” Richard said, putting his hands up. “You chicks need to calm down. You’re freaking me out.”
Roxanna sighed. “He’s right. This is not the time to freak out.”
“Are you serious right now?” I gaped at her. “Of course we should be freaking out. We assaulted her. She is going to ruin us!”
She pulled her mask from her forehead and down over her eyes. “Put your masks on. We’re getting out of here, and she’s coming with us.”
I stared down at Deborah. I didn’t have a better plan so I helped Roxanna and Richard pick Deborah up. Getting out of the house was a blur. Roxanna and Richard put Deborah’s arms around their shoulders and half carried, half dragged her down the hall and out a side entrance, while I kept a lookout. I don’t know how we made it outside with no one noticing us carrying her, but by some miracle we made it to the van.
Opening the back doors, they lifted Deborah into the cargo space. “What if she wakes up?” I asked.
Roxanna jumped inside the van and pulled a black duffle bag from behind the second row seat. She flashed a pair of plastic cuff restraints. “There’s always a bag of this stuff in our vans.”
“Cool,” R
ichard said.
“Holy crap,” I breathed. We were really doing this. Kidnapping. We’re kidnapping Deborah freaking Buchanan! I slammed the van door shut and turned to Richard. “You’re driving. We need to go now.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
As we drove off the Buchanan’s property, my mind raced with the repercussions. Trespassing, assault, kidnapping—the media would have a hay day with this one. I pictured the headline: Runaway Bride and her motley crew kidnap a beloved pillar of the community from a cancer charity event.
The walls were coming down, and we’d go down with it.
“Slow down!” I yelled at Richard, who whipped around a corner. “We don’t need to get stopped for speeding.
“I shouldn’t have brought the taser.” Roxanna’s voice shook.
I turned to look between the seats to where Roxanna clutched her handbag with the taser inside. The surveillance equipment behind her blinked green and yellow lights. Deborah’s unconscious body was back there in the small space between the wall of the van and the mounted chair in front of the tech station.
“It was an accident,” I said, but the words fell flat in the stuffy van. “Jeez, it’s like a casket in here.” I winced at my tactless choice of words. “Richard, you really need to slow down.”
“I’m sorry!” Richard’s voice was tinged with hysteria. “I’ve never kidnapped anyone before. I mean, I’ve done it a lot on video games, but not in real life.” Both of his hands were locked around the steering wheel, and he kept glancing at the rearview mirror. “I don’t think we’re being followed.”
My eyes darted to the side mirror. No headlights. Thank God.
“Where are we taking her?” I couldn’t stop shivering, and it had nothing to do with the cold. “We can’t bring her to my apartment.”
“We’re not bringing her to my basement, my parents will kill me.” Richard flipped on the turn signal to leave the Buchanan’s gated community.
“Just great. We have an unconscious evil witch in the back of a borrowed van.” I glared back at Roxanna. “We should have left her, Roxanna Leigh. Do you know how many years we’ll go to prison for kidnapping?”
“Quit yelling at me!” Roxanna pressed her palms to her temples. “I can’t think when everyone’s so loud.”
“Oh, no.” I shook my head vehemently. “You are not allowed to freak the hell out right now. This was your idea to kidnap her.”
“Okay, okay,” Roxanna said. “If you calm down, I’ll calm down. Let’s just think about this.”
“We are thinking about this!” I screeched. Oh jeez, I could not go to prison. “What are we going to do?”
“I got it!” Roxanna sat forward to lean between the driver’s and passenger’s seat. “We’ll take her to your boutique. There’s that empty room upstairs!”
I considered it. No one would notice us pulling up into the alley in an unmarked white van. No one would see us drag in an unconscious body. The businesses on either side of the boutique were closed. No one would hear a thing.
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s go to the boutique.”
“10-4,” Richard said, easing the van into a curve in the road.
We drove the ten minutes in silence, and I had no idea what my partners in crime were thinking about. Me? I wondered which attorney I would call when the police came knocking on my door. How long would it take before someone at the masquerade ball noticed Deborah’s absence? I doubted right away anyone would connect us to her disappearance, but still. We are so screwed.
I unlocked the back door to the boutique, and Roxanna and Richard carried Deborah inside. “I’ll get a chair. Take her upstairs,” I told them, and locked the door behind us.
I could hear Deborah’s feet hitting the steps as they carried her up to the second floor. I hurried to my office and flipped on the light. Adrenaline rushed through my body as I dragged the wooden chair from behind my desk, all the way down the hall and to the stairs leading to the second floor. I picked the chair up and carried it while my pulse raced.
Roxanna was right. Only Deborah’s confession would save us now. She has to confess. She has to give up that contract. Her confession would ensure her silence. We can’t go to prison.
I couldn’t go to jail! I didn’t deserve to over one mistake. Okay, over one huge mistake. Roxanna and Richard definitely didn’t deserve to go to jail, not when this whole plan had been my idea in the first place. The only one who deserved jail was Deborah. She was the guilty one. She was the one who’d started this mess. Who knew how many people she’d blackmailed over the years? I doubted I was her first. She was way too good at it. She needed to be stopped. We needed to bring her down.
When I reached the top of the stairs, Richard and Roxanna stood over Deborah’s body, lying in a heap on the dusty floor beside the black bag Richard had slung over his shoulder and carried inside. The only light in the room was from the street lamps shining through the bare windows. I set the chair down near Deborah’s head.
“I couldn’t find the light,” Roxanna said, staring down at Deborah.
“Richard, go down to my office and grab the floor lamp,” I instructed, and he hurried to the stairs. I glanced over at Roxanna. “Let’s get her in the chair.”
“She weighs a ton,” Roxanna grumbled. She stood behind the chair, holding Deborah up. “There’s scissors and more restraints in the bag. Grab them. We’ll tie her to the chair.”
We cut the restraints on Deborah’s wrists and tied her wrists to the arms of the chair, then secured her ankles to the legs. I was pretty sure we’d done it right; this is how they did it in the movies. Richard reappeared with the lamp and set it down behind Deborah’s chair. He used a flashlight app on his cell phone to find a plug-in nearby, and we dragged Deborah over to the lamp, which cast a sickly yellow glow in the room. Deborah’s black dress was covered in dust. Her head hung forward, and her once perfect coiffure was loose and strands of blonde hair had escaped.
“How long do you think she’ll be out?” I asked, staring down at Deborah.
“I don’t know,” Roxanna said. “I’ve never tasered anyone before.”
“Yeah, well, don’t you think you should have thought about that before you tasered her?” I asked.
“Quit yelling at me!” Roxanna yelled back.
“If we go to jail you are paying for my attorney,” I said and crossed my arms over my chest. “We are so fucked.”
“I’ll look up how long she’ll be out,” Richard said, already typing the query into his phone’s browser.
“We don’t have all night. We need to get her home before anyone notices she’s missing.” I stared at Deborah, the gears in my head clicking together. And then it hit me. “I know how we can wake her up.”
I rushed down the stairs to my office and took a coffee cup from the cabinet. I filled it with cold water from the bathroom faucet and carried it carefully up the stairs. Okay, so maybe a little part of me would enjoy what I did next. It wasn’t as if she didn’t deserve it.
Standing in front of her with the glass in hand, I looked to Richard. “You have that recorder ready?”
He pressed the record button and nodded. Roxanna and I locked gazes, and after a moment, she nodded.
“Here goes nothing,” I said, then threw the water in Deborah’s face.
She jerked in her chair, and we all jumped back at her crazed eyes. She took in her surroundings, then looked up at me, her face contorted with anger. “Are you crazy?” she seethed.
I crossed my arms. “No, I’m not. I’m sick of you, that’s what I am.” I leaned down into her face. “Let me make something clear. We’re not leaving here until you confess on this digital recorder exactly what you’ve done and all your lies. Do you understand?”
Her eyes were hard when she said, “I will do no such thing.”
“Then I guess we’ll be here a while, won’t we?” I spun around and grabbed Roxanna and Richard, pulling them to the far side of the room. “We need her to think we�
�re willing to do anything to get her to confess. Anything.”
Richard blinked. “You mean, like physically?”
I nodded.
“Oh man, I can’t do torture.” Richard shook his head. “I tried to watch one of those horror flicks where the psycho uses a chainsaw to—”
“We’re not really going to torture her.” Roxanna glanced over my shoulder at Deborah struggling against her restraints. “We have to scare the crap out of her or we’re going to get nowhere.”
We both looked to Richard. His eyes bulged wide. “What?”
“You’re the man. Intimidate her,” I said. Except, Richard didn’t look intimidating at all, and I didn’t see him acting it very well, either. We were screwed. Royally. In a prison-bound kind of way. Pressing my hand to my forehead, I pinched my eyes shut. “What the hell are we going to do?!”
“You know what, I am the man.”
I opened my eyes to see him shrugging out of his suit jacket. He took the voice recorder from his pants pocket and handed it to me, and I asked, “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to intimidate her. Like you said.” He dropped the jacket to the ground beside the black bag and knelt next to it. Riffling through the contents, he said, “It’s too bad you don’t have nunchucks.”
I was so glad we didn’t have nunchucks. He came up with a huge bottle of pepper spray and handed it to Roxanna.
She looked at the can in her hand. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“You know, aim it at her like you’re going to use it.” He shrugged. “Like wave it at the broad.”
Roxanna uncapped the can. “Okay, I can do that.”
Richard stepped toward Deborah, and I grabbed his arm. “You’re okay with…scaring her?” I hoped he was, because there was no way I’d ever pull it off.
His jaw was set in determination. “I was born for this.”
“Uh, yeah. Right.” I nodded because a confident interrogator was more effective, for sure. “You were born for this.”
When he turned to walk to Deborah’s chair, I looked at Roxanna who didn’t look as confident as she had all night. I shoved her toward Deborah and whispered, “You better pull it together. You’re the one who wanted to bring her here. Act like you’re going to use that pepper spray!”