Chapter Twenty
Chapter
Twenty
Olivia bit back a groan. Her head was foggy from
whatever they’d given her after the stun gun, but before they tossed her in the
trunk of Martin Gladen’s Escalade. Stupid Jessica had put a hypodermic needle
into her shoulder before shoving her inside.
She had spent her whole life avoiding drugs, and now she
knew why. Wine did not make her feel this way. Her beloved margaritas did not
make her feel this way. Well, when they weren’t laced with drugs they didn’t.
“Don’t make a sound. They think we’re still asleep,” a
familiar voice said.
Fuck. She hadn’t been alone. Scott. She had been kidnapped.
That was bad. She had been kidnapped and someone decided to bring her asshole
ex-boyfriend along. Even worse. Couldn’t she be left with the tiniest bit of
dignity?
Now she was thankful for the drugs and wished they’d lasted
a bit longer.
She opened her eyes. She was lying on a bed, and she could
feel someone was behind her. Really close to her. The asshole was practically
spooning her. And she didn’t like where her hands were. They were zip tied
behind her back and… She hoped that was like his hip or something.
“I don’t know how long it lasts,” a woman was saying in
another room. Her voice was muffled through the closed door. “I’m not a
doctor.”
Olivia could see the door and a dresser beside it. She
seemed to be in a small bedroom, likely the guest room.
“You’re the one who thought they needed a dose of something.
I didn’t want to drug them. Hell, I didn’t want to bring your ex-boyfriend
along at all. You planned that.”
Damn it. Her men were going to spank her ass in a not fun
way. She knew that whiney-ass voice. Gladen. It was stupid Martin Gladen, and
she had been so stubborn about him. Garrett had been trying to get her to talk
to her dad about the situation or communicate with the man in some way that
would make him feel comfortable until they were ready to move.
She refused.
Her ass was going to be so red.
“I didn’t, but I should have known that dog would follow
after her,” Jessica replied with venom.
“Why did you have two stun guns then?”
Good question.
Jessica didn’t seem to have an answer for that.
“Olivia, I’m going to get you out of this,” Scott whispered
behind her. He was so close. Too close. She could feel his breath on the back
of her neck. “Jessica has gone utterly mad since I left her. She can’t handle
the fact that I love someone else.”
She couldn’t roll her eyes hard enough to react to those
words. Not that he would see them, but the universe should take note. “Can you
back off?”
“I’m tied up. I can’t hold you. Olivia, don’t be afraid.
Think of my arms around you.”
She was afraid. Afraid she would throw up if he didn’t stop
with the soft, ingratiating tone. Like she was a child who would be paralyzed
by fear. But he was all she had right now.
“I have to know where she put the evidence.” Martin’s voice
came through again. “I know it hasn’t gotten to Barnes yet or he would have
rained hell down on me. We didn’t find enough on the computer. She must have
hidden the rest somewhere.”
“Well, we might have found it on her phone if you hadn’t
panicked,” Jessica pointed out.
“They were on to me. I saw that truck and I thought I could
put some suspicion on those two assholes. I should have remembered how dumb
these people are. They couldn’t have found the phone or they wouldn’t have let
them go. Now I have to worry about someone else finding it.”
“You need to worry about Barnes because he’s going to know
something’s gone wrong when he can’t find his daughter,” Jessica pointed out.
“But he has no reason to suspect me. As far as Barnes knows,
I’m a valuable member of his collective. Trust me—that man has plenty of
enemies he’ll think of before me.”
“You don’t think she’s talked to anyone?” Jessica asked.
“Who would she talk to?” Martin shot back. “No one likes
her. Everyone knows she’s only in charge because of her last name. She holds
herself apart from her colleagues because she thinks she’s better than them.”
She didn’t think she was better. They were mostly men, and
she preferred women friends. Also, they were mostly older than she was. They
were her father’s friends. As for the insult about nepotism, like she hadn’t
heard that before. Also, hypocrite. Gladen Farms was started by his grandfather
and handed down to him.
She talked to people. Garrett definitely knew. She wasn’t
sure he would suspect Gladen, though. Unfortunately, the chief suspect her guys
would want investigated was currently lying behind her. Dumbass.
“You couldn’t have called the cops?” she whispered.
“Well, if I called the cops, they might have arrested me.
They’ve been setting me up. Jessica isn’t the sweet girl I thought she was.”
“Imagine that.” She’d told him. He hadn’t listened.
“What do we fucking do now, Jess?” Martin was still ranting.
“She could be asleep for hours. Do you even know what was in that shit you gave
her?”
“It’s ketamine since the GHB didn’t work the way I wanted it
to,” Jessica replied. “Calm down. Having Scott here will actually be helpful.
They’ve obviously been having an affair this whole time. We can threaten to
hurt him, and Olivia will tell us what we need to know.”
That was a poorly conceived plan since she would probably
just give them tips on how to make it hurt more. She wouldn’t break a nail to
save that asshole.
She took a long breath. She had to make them think she was
asleep for as long as possible. Keane wouldn’t simply roll his eyes and think
she walked away. He would know something was wrong. He wouldn’t hesitate. He
would call the police and then either him or Garrett would call her dad, who
would call in his old friend Ian Taggart. Who would find her and then be really
sarcastic after he saved her.
She had to hold on.
And not vomit.
“I didn’t give them too much. I was careful. I gave them the
same dose you would give a German Shepherd,” Jessica said.
Well, that explained why she was awake. She weighed more
than a German Shepherd. Had she gone to a vet? Cut-rate kidnappers. That was
what she got. She wouldn’t be able to go back to The Hideout ever again. Half
the people there had been kidnapped, and mostly by experts. Devi Taggart had
been kidnapped like three times, and she’d gotten carried away on a private
plane to Europe. All Olivia got was the trunk, and she was pretty sure she was
still in the county.
This was humiliating.
“I think I might be able to shimmy out the window if I can
get up without alerting them,” Scott whispered.
“We don’t even know where we are.”
“How far could we be? I can see a clock from here. It’s only
been a couple of hours.”
There was a groan from the other room. “We need to get her
phone back. I wanted to go through it. She could have the evidence saved
there.”
Olivia went still. The words they said earlier made sense.
They thought no one had found her phone, but Kelly Morgan had dusted it for
prints and then given it back before she left the station the night before.
She’d found a new bag but it was small, so she’d put her phone in her back
pocket, and she was wearing a long, tunic-style shirt. It covered her ass. More
importantly, it covered her phone.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t exactly get to it. She wriggled
her hands, trying to lift her shirt.
“Hey, calm down, sweetheart,” Scott said. “Don’t make the
bed squeak. I promise I won’t let them hurt you.”
“It’s not me they’re planning on hurting, dumbass. Did you
not hear them? They’re going to torture you in the hopes that I’ll break at the
sight of you in pain. They don’t know I dream about it at night.” Though less
and less these days. Her dreams had been taken over by Keane and Garrett.
“You could tell them what they want to know,” Scott replied,
sounding a bit more desperate now.
“And have them kill us faster? Do you honestly think they’re
going to let us live? They can’t.”
Then she felt it. A vibration across her left butt cheek.
Oh, she could feel it because that whole part of her body was still sensitive
from taking large cocks inside it the previous night. It should be a rule. No
kidnapping after anal sex.
Thank the universe she’d turned the ringer off. She’d done
it the night before because she hadn’t wanted anything to interrupt her time
with Garrett and Keane. Now it saved her from being found out. She wasn’t sure
how those two murderous morons had missed the fact that she had a cell phone on
her, but it was going to cost them. Her mother tracked her phone. The minute
her mother found out she was missing, she would pull up her phone and find that
little dot. It was the trade-off for having to wear something her father
slipped a GPS tracker in.
“What is that?” Scott asked. “Holy shit. Olivia, do you have
a cell phone?”
The argument was reaching a crescendo on the other side of
the door. Something about how each one had ruined the other and blah blah blah.
“Yes,” she said as quietly as she could. “I put it in my
back pocket. We just have to hold on. Don’t let them know I have it. They can
track me here and save us.”
“The police?” Scott asked. “Good. They’ll see I didn’t have
anything to do with this. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay, and
your father will see I saved you.”
The nerve. “You didn’t save me. Their lack of thoroughness
is going to save me.”
Although she figured nothing would save her backside. Her
dad would likely cheer her men on.
“I came for you,” Scott insisted.
Another round of vibration. They were definitely looking for
her. They were probably sending her texts that told her to stay put, wait for
them.
Or Gigi was sending her a million emojis and wanting to talk
about last night’s episode of Below Deck.
Was her father having a heart attack? Was her mother crying?
Were Garrett and Keane figuring out that she wasn’t worth all the trouble?
“I risked my life to save you,” Scott insisted.
“You walked into the grocery store. I’m pretty sure if you
had known what would happen, you wouldn’t have,” she shot back. Could she get