Chapter Seventy #2
I couldn’t say if he saw the movement, or if someone simply cut him off in traffic, but Ritchie slammed on the brake, making the contents of my bag spill all over the seat and floor.
I was about to reach for my phone, fuck the consequences, when it slid up under the driver’s seat.
Damnit.
I felt the hysteria rise up, needing to tamp it back down. I couldn’t lose my cool. I had to stay focused. I could still get myself out of this.
I needed a weapon.
I had… perfume. Which would work in his eyes if he looked at me. There was a pen. Another eye-type weapon. Then… my keys.
My keys.
With the tracking device.
There was a slight sense of relief at seeing that, at knowing that, eventually, Brock was going to know where I was.
The problem was… I wanted to be alive when he found me.
So I had to try to get myself free.
Without a proper weapon, I did the only thing I could do.
I flew forward and wrapped my hands around his throat, pressing as hard as I could, since I had no idea where I was supposed to press to make him pass out.
Undeterred, Ritchie turned the car into a lot, and slammed on the brake.
Surely, that was what made my vision spin.
It didn’t quite explain why my head was starting to feel fuzzy, though. Why my heart, that should have been hammering with my anxiety and fear, seemed to be going slower and slower.
What was going on?
“How was that coffee, Miranda?” Ritchie asked as he pulled out of my suddenly weak hold.
I couldn’t stop it. My gaze flew back toward the coffee in the holder. The coffee I’d thought Mitchell had brought me, so I’d gone ahead and had several big sips.
He’d put something in my drink?
Had that been how he was able to get me lax enough to slit my wrist the last time? Had I opened the door because I’d known him, invited him in? Or had I left with him, gotten coffee with him? Perhaps under the guise of making amends?
I could have fallen for that.
Then, once he had me drugged, he could have easily overpowered me.
It would explain the alley too, right? If I’d left willingly with him. That would be a convenient place to shove me, to slice into me, then leave me to die.
A choked whimper escaped me as another wave of dizziness coursed through me, making nausea swirl through my belly and up my throat.
“You’re starting to feel it, aren’t you?
” Ritchie asked, smiling as he put the car into park and turned to look back at me.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t give you too much.
I want you to come back to me in a little while.
Once we get where we’re going,” he added, shooting me a smirk as I tried to move across the seat toward the door again, but my body wasn’t moving like it should have.
I was getting slow, clumsy, and, God, sleepy.
No.
I couldn’t sleep.
But there seemed to be no fighting it as the moments wore on.
The last thought in my mind, though, as my face lolled into the backseat, was that Brock was going to come for me.
I just hoped he wasn’t too late.
Consciousness came to me slowly, seeming only to touch on one sense at a time.
I heard first, some whooshing sound, like a loud fan, maybe. Behind that, the sounds of traffic, some sort of thumping rock music, and my own breathing. Which, arguably, seemed louder than everything else.
My eyes refused to open, my lips heavy and stubborn, but I felt cool air wash over me, kicking up my hair, making a shiver course through my slow, lazy body.
The fan, maybe?
Oscillating.
Then there was the tightness around my upper chest and around my hips.
Bindings, maybe.
Scent was next.
The problem was, I couldn’t place the scents I smelled. Something I knew, sure, but hadn’t been exposed to in years. And just under that smell was something strong, something that made my nose feel like it was burning.
Where the hell was I?
How long had I been unconscious?
Why were my eyes still refusing to open, and my body so weighted and numb?
My brain was still fuzzy, my thoughts feeling like they were treading through molasses to fully form, to start making any kind of sense.
After what felt like an hour of trying to convince my eyelids to open, they finally started to, and the light in the room at least gave me a small clue at how long I’d been unconscious.
It was late fall.
The days were shorter.
So it was sometime between noon and four-thirty or five. That wasn’t exactly a narrow window, but it was something.
Had I been gone long enough for Brock to worry?
Had he tracked down the car yet? Was he on his way to save me?
“If you think that new investigator of yours is going to find you,” Ritchie said, making my head loll over to find him sitting in a papasan chair near a wall of windows that were painted in different colors, making the world outside impossible to see, “you’re mistaken.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I left the car in that lot,” he said, making my heart feel constricted in my chest.
Because in that car was literally the only thing that made it possible for Brock to find me.
I mean, if I hadn’t thought to suspect Ritchie, what were the chances that Brock would?
“Cmmll,” I mumbled, brows pinching at the slurred sound of my voice. “Cmmlltll,” I tried again.
Cam will tell him was what I was trying to say. Cam will tell him that we didn’t have a lunch date.
When Brock got home and didn’t see me there, when he couldn’t get a hold of me via my phone, he would absolutely reach out to Cam, since he believed I was with him.
Cam would clear things up.
Brock would find some way to circle back to Ritchie. I didn’t doubt him for a moment.
The problem was if he would be able to locate me quickly enough. Before Ritchie did something crazy.
I understood my role here.
What woman hadn’t heard about how she was supposed to handle a situation where she was taken?
You were supposed to try to humanize yourself to them while you also tried to sympathize with them and their motivations for wanting to hurt you.
But my damn voice wasn’t working.
How was I supposed to try to distract him and drag all of this out if my tongue was fat and useless in my mouth?
Maybe if I focused more, my brain would fire right, and then my lips and tongue and voice box would work in unison.
Okay.
Focus.
The room.
It was slightly unfinished with its brick walls and cement floors. But they weren’t the typical gray. Or, rather, they weren’t only the typical gray. They were splattered in shades of pink, yellow, green, and blue.
Paint?
Yes, paint.
That was the smell that I’d noticed earlier.
The other scent, the strong, headache-inducing one, that was paint thinner for the brushes.
My gaze lifted, finding easel and large canvases all scattered around.
They were just… splotches. Abstract.
They weren’t my style, so I immediately thought they weren’t great.
But had they been done by Ritchie?
Was this his… studio?
I did vaguely remember Cam mentioning trying to encourage Ritchie’s hobbies since he still hadn’t “found his path in life” like Cam thought he personally had.
Was this how he’d encouraged it? By renting him out a studio to tinker in?
Even partially-finished studio space in the city had to be expensive. Which was a testament to how much Cam cared for his boyfriend.
I couldn’t help it.
My heart cracked a bit for Cam, for this truth he was going to need to face, whether I lived or not. How he would blame himself. Especially because I was taking the heat for a decision he had ultimately made. A dream he had crushed.
If not for Cam insisting on putting an end to it, I probably would have gone through with the process, but only put the bare minimum amount of money into, so no one ever really saw the ad. Just to appease a man who meant a lot to the man who meant a lot to me.
“Cam,” I murmured, not really intending to, but at least it came out clearly.
“What about him?” Ritchie asked, twirling something around in his hand, and it took me all of a second to realize what it was.
A knife.
Could it be the same one that had cut me?
Had he held onto it like a souvenir?
How was he going to use it on me this time?
Surely, he wasn’t just going to quickly slit my wrist again. He wouldn’t have bothered to drug and bind me if that was the case.
Did that speak to his sanity slipping?
Was that better or worse for me when it came to stalling for time?
“I…I… is he okay?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?” Ritchie asked, shrugging it off.
I wasn’t really conscious of thinking the thoughts before they were spilling out of my lips.
“Because he was the one to tell me to fire you.”
There was no taking it back once it was out.
The best I could do was try to use it to my advantage.
Maybe it would confuse him, split his rage.
It was possible I just put Cam in danger too. But if Ritchie left to try to get Cam and bring him back as well, it gave me a chance to get up and get away, get help for myself and for Cam.
“Liar,” he hissed, his eyes igniting.
“I wasn’t happy with the ad,” I admitted. “But I was going to use it. Cam told me that we couldn’t run it. He said it would hurt the brand,” I told him. There was no false note in my voice because I was telling the truth.
Ritchie glared at me for a long moment.
“No. He would never.”
“He did. Why do you think he was there when I fired you? I don’t usually even do the firing at the company.”
“No… he wouldn’t do that to me,” he said, shaking his head.
It felt wrong to do this, to poke at someone’s clear mental health issues. But this was life and death for me.
“How soon after getting fired did you get this fancy studio?” I asked, looking around. “Looks like a guilt present to me.”
Ritchie’s own gaze moved around, and I could see the truth in his gaze, could see the timeline lining up.
“He said he believed in my art,” Ritchie said, and I had to fight against feeling bad for the sadness in his voice.
I couldn’t empathize with him.
That would make it harder to do whatever I needed to do to get out of this situation.
“Does he have any of it in your apartment?” I asked, knowing that he didn’t. Because abstract wasn’t Cam’s style. I’d been to many an art opening with Cam as my date. I knew what he liked. This was not it. He would do everything he could not to have it hanging in the apartment.
“Yes,” Ritchie said, chin jerking up.
“Really? Where?” I asked, having been to their apartment many times. “In the master bathroom? Where no one else would have to see it?” I added, really driving the knife in.
For a second, devastation crossed Ritchie’s eyes as he realized that Cam had been lying to make him feel better. Instead of actually loving his art.
To me, it was actually kind of sweet of Cam. To try to show support as best he could even though it wasn’t his cup of tea.
To Ritchie, though, it seemed like the ultimate betrayal.
The devastation was quickly replaced with anger, and I braced myself for the brunt of it.
It wasn’t long before it came…