by K. C. Crowne
But there was no fighting the effects of the drug, and before I could even think of a way to get his hand off me, I was starting to fall asleep. I tried to fight it with all that I had in me, but it was no use. The inky blackness was taking over, and I knew I was losing the battle.
My last thought before the world slipped away was of Nick.
Please hurry, Nick. Please!
Chapter 30
Nick
My heart raced in my chest as we got closer to the location. I wasn’t sure what we were going to find when we got there, but I knew I wasn’t going to let this fucker keep my money, and he wasn’t going to get Liz, either.
The address he had told me to meet him at was just up the block. We were close. I had gotten Greg to trace where the calls were coming from, and we knew the building. Between Greg and David, and the two other security guards that I hired, I knew we were going to have our bases covered.
I just had to make sure Liz was safe.
Of course, the thought did cross my mind a couple of times that it would have been better to get the police involved, but there was no way I could do that. They would have their sirens on, and it could turn ugly fast. Now, we had a way to ambush these men and get the upper hand in the fight.
I wasn’t sure if they were going to be armed, but I did know how to fight with my fists, and I was furious enough I figured any of them were going to be lucky to be alive by the time I was done. I couldn’t believe we were actually doing this, but I felt confident we were going to walk away the winners.
We knew that they were in an apartment building, but since they had kidnapped someone, I felt it was safe to assume they were in the basement unit. Otherwise, they were going to risk someone hearing her yelling for help. I had heard her scream when I was on the phone and considering how he yelled at her to shut up; I had a feeling no one else in the building was able to hear what was going on.
As we got closer to the building, my heart rate picked up even more. I wanted to know if Liz was even still alive at this point. How could I truly trust a criminal like him to keep his word? If we showed up and Liz was already dead, I would never forgive myself. And I would kill the bastard with my bare hands or die trying.
After parking the car a safe distance from the house, we headed in that direction, sneaking as best as we could. Two of us were going to take one window, while two more were going to sneak around the back and storm that one. I would personally be pounding on the door to distract them.
We checked in with each other to make sure we all knew what we had to do, then we sprang into action, heading for the house with all the courage we could muster. I knew we were likely risking our own lives to do this, but I didn’t care.
The woman I loved was in danger, and she was likely carrying our child. I was going to fight for her until the end. I was the reason she was here, and I wasn’t going to leave her to rot. I would do anything and everything I had to to get her out, even if it meant I could end up dead. As long as Liz was safe, it would all be worth it.
I walked up to the house and took a deep breath; then I knocked loudly and boldly. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and my heart skipped a beat when a man opened the door. He looked at me like I was an idiot, but then I heard someone else call out from in the room.
“It’s the rich guy. Rico!” he shouted.
“What the fuck!” another voice answered, but we all knew it was time to make a move. I didn’t even have to signal to my companions. Together, they started breaking in the windows as I rushed the door. I jumped the guy who was standing in front of me and started throwing punches before he had the chance to swing back.
I could hear the sound of the glass breaking, and there were shouts from the other men in the house. I didn’t know how many we would be up against, but I knew that I had to take out the guy that they called Rico. He was the man I’d spoken with on the phone. I recognized his voice as soon as he swore.
I froze for just a moment as I looked into his eyes. I knew him. He had been one of the applicants for the brand manager job and I’d chosen Liz over him. So that’s what this whole thing was about? He was pissed that I’d given her the job over him. But he didn’t know what pissed was. I was going to fucking end the asshole.
He was in the doorway, a gun in his hand, and I was on him in an instant. There was so much chaos taking place in the house; it was hard to keep track of just what was going on. But it didn’t matter to me. I was in such a rage that I was hitting Rico with all the power I had in my being.
He was fighting back, but he clearly didn’t know that I could fight, too. He threw me against the wall, but I swung my head back, hitting him square in the face. He cried out, grabbing his nose. I could see the blood already pouring down onto his shirt, and I figured that I had broken his nose with the blow.
But I wasn’t done with him yet. I was on him in another instant, knocking him to the ground. The gun flew out of his hand in the fall, and we both fought to get our hands on it first. I knew if he got it, we were all doomed. He was pissed, and he was clearly violent.
The fact that he had a gun proved to me he was willing to do anything he had to in order to get his money, and that meant he really would make good on his threat to harm Liz. I was afraid he already had. Though there was a lot of shouting, and the punches that I’d taken to the face left my ears ringing, I didn’t hear Liz anywhere.
I was scared he had seen us coming, and he had made good on this threat to harm her, and more rage filled my heart. I wasn’t going to stop until there was no breath left in this man. He had threatened to hurt the love of my life, and I wasn’t going to let him walk away.
I wasn’t sure what happened at first, but I realized it was David who was pulling me off him.
“You don’t want to end up in jail for killing this asshole!” he was shouting to me as he pulled. The sound of sirens was in the air, and I looked at him with questioning eyes.
“Someone upstairs heard the fighting and called the cops,” he said. “They’re on their way now, so all we have to do is make sure these guys stay on the floor and let them take care of the rest.”
“Where is she?” I snapped at Rico. His face was bloody from the fight, but I knew my nose was bleeding as well. I didn’t give a fuck about that or anything else in the room. I had to know where Liz was, and I would strangle the life out of him if he didn’t start talking.
I could deal with the cops if they walked in to find a lifeless body, but I couldn’t deal with him refusing to talk and letting something happen to Liz. For all I knew, she wasn’t still in the apartment. Or he could have taken her and hidden her somewhere else until he got his money.
And, unless he started talking, there was no way I’d ever be able to find her.
“Where is she?” I screamed in his face. But he merely smiled at me, and if it hadn’t been for David holding me back, I would have hit him again. I wanted to knock all the teeth out of his smug face. I wanted to keep beating him until no one could even recognize who he was.
I didn’t believe he only had a few minor charges against him, not one bit. This was a man who had no heart, and I wanted to make sure he never again hurt anyone again.
The police came bursting into the room at the same time that one of my guards started shouting to me that he had found Liz. I didn’t stop to hear what the police were saying, and neither did David. We ran to the other room, bursting through the door my guard had broken down.
Liz was tied to the bed, her body limp and her eyes closed. She wasn’t moving, and I immediately wondered if we were too late. She didn’t appear to have any visible marks on her, but she wasn’t conscious, either.
“She’s been drugged,” David said as he put his hands around her neck, checking her pulse. “She’s been drugged, the fucker.”
“I’m going to kill him,” I swore under my breath. I wanted to head back out into the other room and finish the job, but there were already police swarming our room as well. They took one look
at Liz on the bed and went to work, barking orders at us to stay back and let them do their jobs.
“That’s my sister!” David was shouting. “They kidnapped and drugged her! And she might be pregnant.”
He was trying to be heard above the noise that was coming from the other room, but the police were too busy making sure Liz was alright to bother listening to him. Though we had found her, we knew we were going to have to wait until we had the chance to talk to someone before we knew what was going on.
“She’s going to the hospital!” one of the deputies said to the other. “Get the car ready.”
“We’re coming with you,” I announced. I didn’t care what they had to say about it, and neither did David. We were going to drive separately if we had to, but we were going to be there for her. I wasn’t going to leave her side again until I knew for a fact she was alright.
“You’re going to have to give your statement before you leave,” one of the officers said. “This is a crime scene, and you are all part of it until you are cleared to go.”
I sighed. Following him to the other room, I gave him the statement of what had happened. Other officers were talking to Greg and the guards, and David had to talk to someone, too. It was hard for me to concentrate without knowing what was going on with Liz, but I was doing my best.
She was carried unconscious out of the bedroom, and I knew they were on their way to the hospital with her. But I still took the time to give my statement to the officer before I left, eager to get in the car and follow. David was right there with me, but my PI and the others said they were going to head home after they’d been cleared by the officers on the scene.
They had done their work for the day, and they weren’t going to crowd us at the hospital. I thanked them, but I was in too big of a hurry to talk for long. David and I were on the road in an instant, following the cruiser to the hospital. The fact that they hadn’t waited for an ambulance to take her had me worried, but I tried not to let those thoughts permeate my brain. I had to concentrate on getting to Liz.
The car was silent as we drove along. I had so many emotions at war within my brain and body that I could barely breathe, and I could tell by the set of David’s jaw, he was struggling as well.
As we drove, I silently prayed to God that Liz was going to be fine. She had to be. I couldn’t live without her.
Chapter 31
Liz
My eyes flew open, and I looked frantically around the room. My heart raced, and I had to talk myself out of the panic attack that was threatening to overwhelm me. I wasn’t home, but I was safe. I was in the hospital, and the doctors were there to take care of me. They were making sure I was okay, and that the baby was okay, too.
I had been through a lot, and when I arrived at the hospital, I’d had some bleeding. At first, they were worried that it was a sign I had lost the baby, but it turned out to be nothing more than implantation bleeding. Unrelated to what I’d gone through, and totally normal.
The baby was okay, and I was okay. But we still had to stay in the hospital overnight for monitoring. They weren’t sure about the effects the chloroform would have on me and felt it was a good idea for me to stick around.
I had to speak with a therapist about the things that happened to me over the weekend, and though I just wanted to forget about all of it, he encouraged me to relay to him all that I could. The men who had kidnapped me had been taken to jail, and they were looking for all the evidence they could to get them locked up for a very long time.
It was a relief to hear that they weren’t going to be on the streets any longer, but I still had to deal with the PTSD of what had happened. My therapist let me know that it was normal for someone to suffer from many symptoms after what I had been through, and to try not to bottle anything up. It would aid in my healing if I let it out.
“The more you understand yourself and what you have been through, the more you can accept it as not being your fault and move on with your life, the better off you are going to be in the long term,” he told me. “You can expect to wake up feeling like you are back in that room, but you aren’t. You are safe now, and you just have to tell yourself that.”
So, that was what I did. When I woke up in the hospital, the first feeling I had was that I was back in that room. Those men were going to come in and threaten me, and I wasn’t going to make it out alive.
It took a few minutes for me to realize that I was, in fact, safe, and I was finally going to get to see Nick and David. The nurses told me that they had been there all night waiting to see me, making sure I was okay, and my heart swelled with thankfulness for the two of them.
Now that it was all over, I didn’t blame Nick for any of it. I was the one who had agreed to the idea, and I was the one who stayed when I knew I was being stalked. It wasn’t his fault that I had left the security guard, either. I was the one who had done that, too.
I blamed myself for making those choices, and I wanted him to know that I wasn’t angry at him any longer. I had been scared, but I had made it through all of it. David was safe, I was safe, he was safe, and most importantly, the baby was safe.
I wasn’t sure how he was going to react, but I knew I was going to have to tell him. That was unless he already knew. The nurses ran blood tests on me, and they confirmed it as well with an ultrasound. I was pregnant. If they told him that I was, then he would come in with the knowledge already in his head.
A nurse walked through the door and smiled at me. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay,” I said with a weak smile in return. “Trying to get through this.”
“You poor thing, you’ve been through so much. I’m so glad to hear that they caught those animals,” she said with a shake of her head. “And nothing else happened to you while you were there.”
“I’m just glad that my baby is okay,” I told her. “I was so freaked out when I learned I was pregnant, but when I was put in that situation and thought that something might happen, I knew without a doubt I was going to do everything I could to make sure they were safe.”
“You aren’t far along at all. I’m guessing that you just found out?”
“I did, right before I was kidnapped,” I said. “Talk about a lot to take in all at once.”
“I would laugh, but I’m so sorry that you had to deal with that, I don’t think I have it in me,” she said with a compassionate shake of her head. “Do you need anything?”
“I just want to see my visitors,” I told her. “Both of them.”
“I’ll send them in,” she said with a smile. “But it’s going to have to be brief. I don’t want you to overdo it. You need your rest.”
“I promise I’ll be good,” I told her.
She walked out of the room, and I sighed. It was going to be hard to figure out what I was going to do next, but now that I was going to be a mother, I knew I was going to have to make some solid decisions. I couldn’t be so risky anymore. I had to make choices with the baby in mind, no matter how tough it was going to be.
Within a few minutes, Nick appeared in the doorway. He looked nervous as he walked in, but he smiled at me with his flashy smile.
“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” he said. He walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, but I shook my head.
“This wasn’t your fault,” I told him. “No matter what choices we made, it was that awful man’s fault for taking me and putting us through this. Nothing we did made us deserve any of this.”
“I was so scared you were going to wake up and hate me. Shit, I was scared you weren’t going to wake up at all. When I got that phone call,” he shook his head, and his voice drifted off, but I put my hand on his.
“I was terrified, too. But I hear that they were all captured?” I asked.
“They aren’t going to be getting out of there for a very long time, if at all,” he promised me. “I’m going to make damn sure of that, and I don’t care what it costs to do it. I might as well use the money he was going to charge me fo
r ransom to make sure he gets locked up forever.”
I smiled a weak smile. “Do it. That would be the best revenge I could think of.”
There was silence in the room for a moment; then he looked at my belly.
“When did you know you were pregnant?” he asked.
“The second day I was sick and got better in the afternoon, I thought it might be possible, but I didn’t want to take a test to find out,” I admitted. “I didn’t know what I was going to do if it was positive.”
He put his other hand over mind, sandwiching my hand between his. “You know I would never do anything to hurt you or this baby, right?”
He spoke softly, but I still had tears form in my eyes. I shook my head and looked away. “I wasn’t sure what you were going to say when you found out. We were supposed to be fake, and now we’re going to have a baby together. How the hell was that going to work out?”
“Liz, I would do anything for you,” Nick said. “Anything. I know that we’ve been through an awful lot the past few weeks, and I know that you are dealing with a lot right now, too, but I want you to know I’m going to support anything you choose to do with this baby, and if you want me to be in his or her life, I’m going to be there for you through it all.”
“You have to be one hundred percent invested,” I told him. “You can’t get bored with this when you don’t want to have a real relationship anymore and abandon us.”
“I would never do such a thing to you or our baby,” he promised me again. “I am going to be here for you no matter what.”
He was about to continue when my brother came in. I could see by the look on his face that he was a mixture of relieved and pissed, and I knew I shouldn’t be surprised.
“Are you alright?” he asked when he saw me. “I’ve never been so terrified in my entire life.”
“I’m okay now,” I said with a nod. I waited, and sure enough, he brought up the news, too.