Chapter Thirty Six
Somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains
Drip, drip, drip.
The sound of running water was like elephants dancing on my aching skull as I finally woke up on the ice cold ground of somewhere.
My first thought was the last one before I had unceremoniously been knocked out in the back of that whack SUV after being kidnapped:
That bitch had stabbed me in the neck with a hypodermic needle!
Despite my aching head and clearly shitty situation, I silently vowed that, If I ever got the chance, I was going to make her pay for doing that to me.
As I lay on the ground, I started to take stock of my situation, trying to remember my father’s words from when I was younger.
He had been crazy about safety—especially when it came to being kidnapped. Apparently he was convinced that because I was so cute and because I was the child of such public figures, I was almost assuredly going to be kidnapped, so I needed to know what to do.
But the joke was on him, because it took until I was fully grown for it to actually happen.
First rule of being kidnapped, Lennie, he’d told me. Try and figure out where you are.
I could remember his serious face that looked so much like Carter’s except for his big hazel eyes and twitchy beard that used to tickle my cheeks when he kissed me.
Opening my eyes took some effort but I managed it.
The room I was in was dark and dank, definitely some kind of cellar or basement because it was made up almost entirely of cement blocks save for the rickety-looking wooden steps that I was sure led up to a locked door.
My wrists were both zip tied to a radiator pipe that was warm to the touch and I put my cheek against it, letting it warm my chilled skin and wake me up more as I stared up at the singular naked lightbulb that looked about two seconds away from going out.
Surroundings, check.
Two, Lennon, my father said as he held up two fingers, my mother chuckling from her place on the couch next to him as he reached back to tickle her sock-covered foot. Try to understand who took you.
Kidwell, obviously. But she was just being paid. She had said I would meet her benefactors, and while I definitely didn’t want to meet them, I would need to in order to negotiate with them.
I filed number two away for later.
Number three, and this is important. You have to learn how to free yourself from all restraints, my father had told me and what had followed was a long afternoon of learning how to slip out of handcuffs, zip ties, and all forms of rope restraints.
Something I had hoped I would never have to use, and yet here I was.
The first thing I would have to do was get this pipe off of the wall.
Thanking my lucky stars that these kidnappers had picked such a piece of shit house for their base of operations, I planted both feet on the wall and began to push, gritting my teeth as I felt the pipe begin to move.
Feet moved in the house above me and I froze, waiting until they stopped before I continued with my task.
Then, without realizing it, the pipe popped free of the wall, sending me careening back into the floor with a loud bang!
The footsteps overhead started up again and moved in the direction of the basement stairs.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered, thinking about my options.
I didn’t want them to see that I’d managed to get free. That would just make them restrain me even tighter or do something even worse to me.
Glancing down at the pipe, I realized that it had come off at the joints and an idea came to mind.
Popping the joints back on enough that they looked connected but not enough to actually connect them, I slumped against the wall and pretended to be asleep again.
“I swear I heard something man,” someone said as several sets of feet tramped down the steps.
“Nah, that agent lady said whatever she gave her would keep her asleep until after the president dropped out of the race. There’s no way she’d wake up that fast.”
“Besides,” another voice said. “That furnace over there knocks all the time, it’s an old house.”
“You sure she’s not awake?” someone nudged me with their boot hard and it took everything in me not to flinch.
“Nah she’s basically a ragdoll, see?” A fist gripped my hair by the root and lifted my head up painfully and I forced myself to remain limp despite the stinging pain in my scalp. “Dead asleep.”
Thankfully they dropped me after that and I slumped against the wall again.
“Let’s go back up, football’s on and I don’t want to miss the kickoff.”
“Why, so the Cowboys can lose another game?”
“Don’t jinx them like that, man!”
“Pfft, they jinx themselves just by stepping onto that field!”
“Asshole!”
As soon as the door slammed shut I let out a shuddering gasp and pulled the pipe from the wall, holding my still zip-tied hands to my screaming scalp.
Once the pain finally faded into a dull ache, I slipped the pipe out of the third zip tie and focused on breaking the ones that were holding my wrists together.
In the hours that they had been around my wrists they had rubbed the skin painfully raw and I hissed as I manipulated my hands to see if I could slip out of them.
Nope too tight.
Looks like I was going to have to try my least favorite method.
Taking the long end of the zip tie between my teeth I tightened the zip tie even more, humming to myself as it dug into my already sensitive wrists.
Then, I lifted my arms high above my head.
You’ve got to use all of the force in your little body, Lennie, my dad’s voice whispered in my ear like he was right next to me. It won’t work otherwise. You want to be free.
Sucking in a deep breath, I brought my fists down with as much force as I could muster and separated my elbows.
The plastic thankfully separated and I was free.
My wrists burned and bled as I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from crying out.
“Okay, you’re okay,” I whispered to myself, my voice shaky. “What’s next?”
I couldn’t go up into the house. That was clearly a bad idea.
There was a teeny, tiny window that was covered in grime on one wall and when I went over to it I found that it had been nailed shut, so that was out.
My mother would find me eventually, and if she didn’t, the guys definitely would. I felt it in my bones that they would stop at nothing to get me back.
Feeling deep inside of myself, I touched the bond that I had locked down tight. There was no way they would be able to feel me this far out—wherever this far out was—but it felt wrong to keep them locked out of my end of the bond now.
So I sat against the walk and slowly chipped away at the walls until they were gone and my end of the bond was whole again.
It was a nice distraction, almost meditative enough to quell the rising panic I was feeling as I stared at the derelict basement around me.
A wave of a soothing sensation washed over me, so potent that I was worried that I was going into shock from the events of the day.
Then another, and another.
It took me another minute to realize it wasn’t me who was doing that at all but Brooks, Maverick, and Zeke’s ends of the bonds sending me comfort. Which meant that they were close by.
I sat up suddenly, excitement filling me. My alphas had come for me, just like I’d known they would!
But what if they got hurt?
I didn’t know how many men were upstairs, nor did I know what sort of weapons they had.
Lesson number four, sweet girl, my father said one afternoon while we sat together at Camp David while he tried and failed to fish at the lake that was frankly overstocked with fish. There are times when a distraction is called for and you might need to create such a distraction…
Glancing over at the furnace that the men had been talking about earlier, I scanned the room for something else to use before my eyes landed on the red gas canisters in the corner.
Wrapping my fist around the locket that Zeke had given me, I sent a quick prayer up to my dad, hoping this wasn’t a completely crazy idea, and got to work.