Chapter Three
Kala came awake to the nauseating sensation of turbulence. Her eyes opened and for the briefest second she thought she was on the plane that would take her to the family cabin in Colorado. They normally drove, everyone piling into her dad’s big SUV. It was five hours to Amarillo where they would stay, eat steak because…her dad…and then wake up and six more hours to the cabin.
But this year she and Kenzie had a martial arts competition, and her mom had stayed with them while Dad started the vacation. They’d taken a plane to Alamosa where Dad met them, and then she’d known why they called it the Rocky Mountain Scareways.
She hated turbulence.
She wasn’t on a plane to Colorado.
Why did everything ache? What had happened? The fucking Russian. He’d…had he? She couldn’t remember because she’d been unconscious. Unable to protect herself. She didn’t even know… She didn’t know if she was a virgin anymore.
Bile rose but she forced it down. Take stock. She needed situational awareness, and she would only have a couple of minutes before they realized she was awake.
She quietly forced a deep breath down. She was by the window, though the blind was drawn. This wasn’t as nice as the private plane her dad sometimes used. It was more like a small commuter jet. So there was only one person beside her. From her vantage point she could see what appeared to be a man wearing jeans and sneakers. Not fatigues.
“I could have had much more fun if you give me more time,”
a familiar, hate-filled voice was saying. She could barely hear him over the hum of the engines.
“She’ll kill you if she ever finds out,”
another man said. “You need to stay away from her. You know she’s a kid.”
“She’s not,”
Dimitry insisted. “She’s a whore like all Denisovitch women, and they’re only good for one thing.”
Was the ache in her body a consequence of her time with Dimitry? How much had she lost? Tears pulsed behind her eyes, but she forced them back. It didn’t fucking matter. It didn’t happen. If she didn’t remember it, then it didn’t happen. Besides, who cared? No one did. Surely not Cooper.
She couldn’t think of him right now. Couldn’t think about the piece of herself she’d meant to give him, the one he’d rejected. The one someone had stolen from her.
She was going to kill that fucking Russian.
She was never going to tell anyone…anyone. Better they thought she got beaten up. She sniffled and tried to quietly move her limbs. Every movement felt slow and she ached. Everything hurt.
Kyle. She finally looked up and Kyle was in the seat beside her.
Well, of course he was.
Dimitry stood up, his big body unfurling from the aisle in front of her. He turned, and his eyes flared when he saw her. His disgusting lips turned up in a smirk. “Ty khorosho spala? Ya znayu, chto ya–da.”
Had she slept well? He insinuated he had. Like he’d enjoyed his job and needed rest after a long night of…raping her?
She’d thought the word.
She’d been reckless and impetuous and all the things she’d been accused of being and everyone would nod and be sympathetic but deep down they’d always known she would be here. They’d always known she would get in trouble and lose pieces of herself because she wasn’t smart enough to keep them.
“Dimitry, sit down and leave the girl alone. I’m not going to tell you again.”
One of the assholes was in charge. The big guy with brown hair and dark eyes. “We’re about to land. You okay, kid? We have a medic if you feel sick.”
Sick. She wanted to die. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole because this was all her fault. She’d been the weak link. All she had was her strength. Would anybody even put up with her if she was weak?
“Fuck you,”
she replied simply. She didn’t need to say anything else to these assholes.
The guy sighed and sat back down, telling Dimitry to do the same.
She sat there wondering if Kyle was dead. Probably not. His chest moved. It was good to know her cousin could sleep in the middle of his own kidnapping. Was it technically a kidnapping if he’d walked into the trap? She was the kidnappee, and he was the dude who’d been dumb enough to let it happen.
When she thought about it, it was Kyle’s fault. Kyle had shitty taste in women. Mostly. MaeBe was all kinds of awesome, but she had to question his every choice since this Julia person was obviously a monster.
She felt an ache go through her as the plane hit the landing strip. She didn’t even know where she was. Where were her parents? She wanted her mom. She wanted her mom to wake her up and tell her she’s late and she has to go to practice, and she would start the whole day over and this time she would stay home with her sisters and brothers. She would stay in the house and never let herself think about Cooper McKay again.
Kyle’s eyes came open, and there was a moment of startled recognition in them, a panic as he looked around and finally settled on her.
Yep. He’d walked into the lion’s den for her. “I blame you.”
He should have saved himself. Everyone would hate her now. Her aunt and uncle would be so pissed she’d put Kyle in this position. She didn’t even want to think about how her parents would feel.
At least if she died, Cooper wouldn’t have to look at her again.
Cooper would never touch her. She wasn’t sure she would let anyone touch her. Ever again.
“Me?”
Her cousin’s brows had risen. “I’m not the one who snuck out of my perfectly safe house to visit my boyfriend.”
The words made her stomach turn, but they were true. At least the sneaking out part. “He’s not my… Well, not anymore because he’s an asshole like all men. But this is about you, isn’t it? At first I thought it was someone who was pissed at my dad, but then I woke up and you were here. Unless you’ve turned supervillain. Have you, Kyle?”
Her cousin snorted. “No.”
“Then that psycho ex of yours couldn’t get to Carys or Lucas or David, so she kidnapped me.”
It was the only possible explanation. “And you’re the dummy who fell for it.”
Her cousin got the aggrieved expression on his face a lot of dudes got when she pointed out simple life truths. “Yes. I’m the dummy who decided to save your ass.”
“You can’t save my ass if you’re beside me in prison.”
She leaned in, her voice going low. “There are only five of them. I think we can take them.”
Now he got the shocked expression she saw a lot from the people around her. “No. We’re not going to take them. We’re going to sit on our asses and wait for MaeBe to come up with a brilliant plan to save us.”
“Or my parents to blow up enough shit that this person of yours shoves me back out in the world and asks them to go away.”
Her dad was going to be mad, but…her mom. Her mom had to be so scared. “They’re going to be so pissed at me. It might be better to die.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t joke right now.”
“I’m not necessarily joking. Dad I can probably handle. He’ll try to inject me with some sort of tracker, but he’ll chill after a while,”
she explained. “My mom will never forget. Never. She’s the one who saved me from the tracker the first time around. There was a lot of talk about bodily autonomy, but she will let that go now. She’ll hold my ass down and put the collar around my neck. Or they’ll lock me in my room. Forever. I guess they know I ditched all their GPS devices. Like I couldn’t find that in my shoe. I know all their tricks. They’re going to kill me.”
The plane rolled to a stop and the goon squad started to stand, getting ready to move out. One of the guys she’d punched the night before stood in front of her.
“Hope your wife’s got insurance on you because my mom is going to kill you,”
Kala said, raising her voice.
The man turned, his dark eyes on Kala. “Keep talking. I would love an excuse to spend some time with you.”
Kyle hustled, getting up and putting himself between them. “You’ll go through me first.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be much of a problem.”
The man smiled but there wasn’t any humor to it.
“Do you know who the little bitch is?”
A dark voice rumbled from behind her, a familiar deep Russian accent flowing with menace.
The guy in front of Kyle shrugged. “Don’t really care.”
“She’s a Denisovitch bitch. It took me a while to connect the two, but she’s the second cousin of the head of the syndicate. Whatever this woman is paying us, do you understand what the other syndicates would do to get hold of her? We could make millions selling her.”
It was good to know it wasn’t merely sexual assault the asswipe was into. Trafficking was on the menu, too. She was in for some fun, fun times.
And then Kyle was pressing her into the seat, making her every muscle ache, and there was the sound of a world exploding. At least it sounded like it to Kala. Fear poured through her and her hands started to shake. Gunfire. He’d shot the Russian. He’d pulled his gun and put a bullet in him, and she didn’t care the asshole was dead, except… He was the only one who could tell her what happened.
It was her second dead body in less than twenty-four hours.
She was going to die. Tears clouded her eyes.
“And now I have to share less money, so in a way he was right.”
The American dude seemed to be talking to Kyle, but he was in front of her so she couldn’t be sure. “Do you want to say anything? I’m going to warn you, I’m not afraid of her father or whoever the hell her cousin is. I’m auditioning for a job, and I’m going to do it right.”
“Should I call you John?”
Kyle asked like they needed to know the dude’s name.
Only one thing was important at this point. “There’s only four of them now.”
They could totally take them. And then she would kick Dimitry’s dead body to make sure he was dead.
He could be lying. Why would he lie?
I’m not going to be sick. I’m not going to be sick. I’m not going to fucking cry.
A banging sound cracked through the plane, almost as loud as the damn gunshot had been, and it pretty much scared Kala just as much.
Another asshole walked through. So they were at least back to five.
“What the hell happened?”
The new guy frowned as he looked over the cabin of the plane. “Why did you kill the Russian?”
The pilot had stepped into the cabin and nodded the new guy’s way. So six. She blamed Kyle.
“The Russian wanted to take the little girl and sell her to one of the Russian syndicates.”
The guy Kyle called John huffed out his reply.
“I’m not a little girl.”
Kala whispered the words, but they made her sick inside. She wasn’t a little girl at all, and she might have had something precious taken from her.
Something she could never talk about.
“You need to be a girl who keeps quiet.”
Kyle’s low voice held a note of desperation. “Your bravado is going to get both of us killed. Stay behind me. We’re not going to let them separate us.”
Would they even have a choice? Kala turned slightly, wondering if she could tell where they were. The blind was down. Would they stop her if she opened it?
“He wasn’t getting with the plan,”
John was saying. “I thought I’d save you the trouble and fire him. You told me to watch out for the kid. I didn’t like the way he looked at her.”
She felt Kyle stiffen beside her and looked up to realize they had a newbie.
Julia Ennis. Kyle’s evil ex. Proof her cousin had terrible taste in women. MaeBe was a lucky accident.
She looked normal. Long blonde hair. Fit body. There was something about her face that was too sharp. As though her hard edges couldn’t be contained by mere personality. This was the woman who had dragged Kyle so low.
So low. Because she “loved”
him. Because she was obsessed with him. Because deep down it was simply what a woman like her did.
Some nasty questions played at Kala’s brain, but she shoved them away. She didn’t have to answer them now. There was plenty of time to wonder is she was even still a virgin much less ponder if she deserved all of this.
“And now you have one less person to share the pay with,”
Julia said with a dismissive wave. “Well, he’s yours to clean up. After. For now I want you to take the young Miss Taggart to the limo. Don’t take your eyes off her. She’s smarter than she looks.”
Kyle stood, putting himself between Kala and Julia. “I’m not letting you take her. You promised me I could stay with her.”
“Well, she’s not getting far, and John seems to know how to handle anyone who doesn’t understand how I want my underaged prisoners treated.”
A long sigh came from Julia’s chest. “She’s going to go sit in the limo so we can talk. I’m not going to send her off somewhere. I have a room ready for you at my house, and I will allow you to share it with her. Maybe you can keep her under control. I have no idea what the Taggarts have been teaching their kids, but that one is practically feral.”
She might be feral from here on out. Why the hell not? It wasn’t like she fit in when she followed her own instincts. “You should remember that.”
Julia glanced around Kyle’s big shoulders, looking her way. “She reminds me of me at her age. Except I was better with manners. Her father should beat her more.”
Reminds me of me. Reminds me of the woman who knew how to drag a man down.
There was more conversation, but all Kala heard for a moment was Cooper’s voice.
Sometimes when a person is drowning, they end up dragging the person trying to save them down, too.
“Excellent. Why don’t you and John take Miss Taggart out to the limo while I talk to my fiancé?”
The words jarred Kala out of the miasma of her misery. She had to be better than this. Maybe in this case, she had to be exactly what everyone thought she was. Unfeeling. Uncaring. Out for herself. Unafraid. Utterly unafraid. “Oh, my god, lady. You are delusional. He’s not your fiancé. He’s practically married to MaeBe.”
Kyle’s head shook. “No, I’m not. Mae’s never going to forgive me for leaving her. We don’t have a relationship anymore.”
She was screwing up, but then wasn’t that what she did? She tried to shake it off. “Well, if that’s true, you screwed that up. MaeBe is awesome. Kyle kind of sucks. He makes everyone in the family go to his lame funeral and he didn’t even respect us enough to actually be dead. At least I got an Xbox out of it.”
Julia ignored her sarcasm. “It was inevitable that any relationship Kyle tried would fail. He was already in the most important relationship of his life.”
Kala’s only refuge was sarcasm. “Yes, with his Xbox. He loved that thing, and now it’s mine.”
She could practically hear Julia growl her way. There was a dark look on the woman’s face that seemed to force Kyle to move.
“I need you to promise me she won’t be hurt and you won’t separate us for more than a few minutes.”
Kyle sounded so reasonable.
Julia put a hand on her cousin’s chest, an entirely possessive gesture.
She put her hand on Cooper’s chest when they were alone. Like she could feel his heartbeat.
What if she was fooling herself and what seemed like love was mere possession? Everyone talked about how obsessively possessive she could be. She’d heard people talk about how she wouldn’t let anyone near Lou. How she horded her best friend like a dragon with gold.
Dragons weren’t exactly the good guys.
“I think you want me to get her back to her parents at the first opportunity. But yes to everything you asked,”
Julia was saying. “She will come to no harm unless new John here doesn’t want his job.”
“I don’t want to hurt some teenaged girl.”
John moved down the aisle. “Come on, kid. Try to remember I’m the one who took you down.”
“Only because you had backup.”
Kala forced herself to move, taking in every ache. Wondering how she got them.
Wondering if they would always be there, simmering under her surface. A nightmare she could feel, sense like a shadow always at the edge of her conscious. But one she couldn’t catch and kill.
“I still have backup.”
John held out a hand, offering her the stairs. “If we get back soon, I can make us pancakes.”
“Like I would eat poison pancakes.”
Despite the rolling in her gut, she had a reputation to uphold.
“They’re not poison.”
John managed to sound aggrieved.
Kala walked on, head held high. But her soul…her soul was so low. And she’d done it to herself.
* * * *
Cooper was miserable. For days it seemed he’d been locked in utter and complete hell, not knowing what was going on.
He knew it had only been a day or two, but she still wasn’t home and no one wanted to talk to him. No one could talk to him since he was grounded and had barely been out of his room. And he’d lost his cell.
His parents were pissed, though they seemed more sympathetic today than they’d been the night it had happened.
That night. If he could, he would take it all back. He would do whatever she wanted. If he’d thought he wasn’t ready to be Kala Taggart’s boyfriend, he absolutely wasn’t ready to live in a world where she wasn’t.
He had to go back to school tomorrow. They’d let him stay home Monday because he’d woken up, realized she was still gone, and promptly thrown up and wouldn’t eat anything. It had convinced his parents he needed at least a day. But tomorrow he would have to go, and all those friends would ask where she was. Not because they wanted to know but because they wanted to avoid her.
What was Kenzie saying when people asked? Did they call Kala in sick or had they gotten the authorities involved? He was pretty sure they wouldn’t call in the police. The Taggarts were an authority in and of themselves.
Would anyone ask? Not caring seemed like the worst outcome of all. That she could be gone and no one outside her family would be concerned.
He had no idea what she was going through, and she probably thought he didn’t care.
There was a knock on his door and his mom came in.
“Hey.”
She was dressed for the office, though he knew she hadn’t gone in. She looked tired, like he felt. His dad had been at the MT building nonstop since Kala and Kyle were taken. He was working with Uncle Adam and Aunt Chelsea on logistics. Whatever that meant.
His father hadn’t even bothered to tell him their weekly flight lessons were canceled. His dad had been taking him for lessons since he was fourteen. Next year he could get his license, and he’d always meant to take Kala up, to show her the world he loved so much.
He might never get the chance.
“Hey.”
He put down the math text he hadn’t been focused on at all. Words didn’t make sense to him right now. Numbers definitely didn’t.
“They think they know where she’s being held,”
his mom said, sitting at the edge of his bed.
“They do?”
For the first time in days, he felt a surge of hope. “Where? Do they know if she’s still alive? What are they doing?”
His mom reached out, putting a hand on his arm. “MaeBe thinks she’s tracked her down because of a pizza order.”
She had the worst taste in pizza. Another thing he’d made fun of her for. “Anchovies. No sauce. It’s gross. How does her pizza habits… Someone was monitoring the orders for the area. Wow. That was smart.”
“I believe Mae figured it out,”
his mom replied. “I wanted you to know. I’ll keep you updated. Charlotte is in close contact with your dad.”
“Does Kenz know? Someone should tell Lou.”
He didn’t want anyone left out.
“Kenz and the others are at their Uncle Sean’s for now. He’ll let them know what’s going on, and I imagine Tash and Lou are texting constantly.”
She sighed and reached into her pocket. “And I can’t leave you alone in this. I can’t. I know your father is still mad, but I think you’ve been through enough without having to deal with this alone.”
She passed him his cell phone.
He took it. He wanted to call… He wanted to call her. He wanted to talk to her, but no one was going to answer that line.
“You’re still grounded, but you need your friends right now more than you need a lesson,”
his mom was saying.
“Where is she?”
He needed to know.
“A town called Winchester in Virginia. Apparently Julia Ennis has a house there. From what I understand they’re going to raid the house tonight and attempt to get her back.”
“I want to go. I won’t screw anything up, but I think I should be there when she gets out.”
His mom’s jaw tightened. “Cooper, you have to understand that we don’t know what she’s been through. She needs her parents right now.”
“She needs me. She needs to know I take it all back. Everything.”
“Sweetie, you’re having a trauma response. You had your reasons for not wanting to push the relationship further.”
Dumb reasons. Reasons like he was an asshole who wanted to be a golden child so his parents would never regret adopting him. Reasons like he wanted everyone to like him so his parents would never regret adopting him. “I don’t care. I want to be with Kala.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. Especially now. Kala can be difficult in the best of times, and these aren’t the best of times. She’s going to need therapy. Putting her in a volatile emotional space isn’t going to help,”
she argued. She stood up, glancing down at her own cell. “I should call your dad and get an update. Look, with any luck at all she’ll be home in a couple of days. Take this time to think about what you want to say to her.”
She started for the door.
“If I’m with her, would it bother you?”
Not the question he really wanted to ask. He needed to be braver. “Would I embarrass you?”
His mom’s brows knitted together as though she was trying to figure something out. “Coop, why would you think that? I love Kala. I love you. I think one day you’ll be good for each other, but you’re so young.”
“You and Dad were young, too.”
“I met your father in college. Yes, we were young, but there’s a huge difference between twenty and barely fifteen,”
she pointed out. “And honestly, it still fell apart.”
“Only because of what happened to you.”
He didn’t like to think about it. He knew his mom and dad had divorced after she had a terrible thing happen when she was working for the FBI.
“Cooper, things happen all the time. It wasn’t truly the kidnapping and sexual assault I endured that broke us.”
She seemed to blink an awful lot. Damn. He hadn’t meant to make her cry. “It was how we reacted to it. This is life. We cannot control some of the things that happen to us, but we do control how we handle them. You need to let Kala figure out what she needs because her whole world changed in the blink of an eye. You need to listen to her and support her. Do you want to talk to someone? I’m always here, but sometimes it can be easier to talk to someone who isn’t your parent.”
Therapy. She was offering him therapy. She thought he was weak. Maybe he was. Damn it. He knew there was nothing weak about it. She’d always told him there was strength in talking about the pain people went through. Even Uncle Ian had a therapist. So why did he go there? Why did he think he needed to be perfect?
He knew. He knew but he never said it because if he did, he knew he might not like the answer. Or he might see the hesitation in his parents’ eyes.
“Cooper?”
He sniffled. He was crying again. His shit friends would make fun of him for it.
Kala would hug him and vow vengeance on whoever had made him cry.
“If I wasn’t good at sports and popular at school, would you be embarrassed to be my mom? Like would you think you should have picked another kid?”
His mom’s jaw dropped, and tears slid from her eyes as she moved back to him, sitting down and wrapping her arms around him. She hugged him tightly. No hesitation from Eve McKay. “I would never want another kid. Never. You are my son, Cooper. I don’t care whose womb you came out of. You are mine and your dad’s. I don’t care if you never play baseball again. I certainly don’t care if some kids don’t like you. Sweetie, I’m so sorry. You seem happy.”
“I am happy.”
He shook his head. “Well, I’m not right now. I’m just saying I’m happy you’re my mom, but I worry.”
She smoothed back his hair like she had when he was a child. “I love you and Hunter with every fiber of my being. The same way I love your sister. Your father and I didn’t adopt you because we wanted a perfect kid. We did it because we wanted to love you. There are no expectations except we want you to try your hardest and be kind. That’s all we ask.”
She kissed his forehead. “I love you. You made me a mom, Cooper. You made me a better person, and there is nothing you could do that would make me not love you.”
He let her rock against him, a familiar rhythm from childhood he found infinitely soothing.
“Do you think about her?”
his mom asked after the longest time.
He knew who she was talking about. “No. It’s you I want proud of me. She doesn’t know me and she never will. I’m okay with never knowing her name. This is not me yearning for my birth mom. It’s me going over that night in my head and wondering if I could have done it differently. If I hurt you by loving her.”
“No.”
She shook her head. “Absolutely not. You know what, I am interfering where I should let things play out. Not the sex part. You are not ready for sex and neither is she, but the rest of it…”
She sighed. “I’m being a therapist and not your mom. If you want to be Kala’s boyfriend, I will support you. I told you. I love her, too. But you have to be prepared. She is going to need more than love for a while.”
“I’ll give it to her. Anything she needs,”
he vowed, leaning against the woman who’d changed his life utterly when she decided to adopt him. He knew the adoption had been closed and his birth mom didn’t want contact at all. He was cool with it. He didn’t need her. He had his mom and dad.
And he had his answer. He was being insecure, and he needed to work on it.
He would. He would do it for himself.
He would do it for Kala.