If the situation I was in were less dire, I'd admit to myself that waking somebody from a warm, comfortable sleep at five in the morning is the very definition of sadist.
It had been a long run, more than twelve miles, which I'd done surprisingly easily when my wall had always been hit at ten. Something about the number made me freeze up, convinced I couldn't run ten miles and I certainly couldn't run more.
Cole had taken me half that far again, in other runs. We'd been playing on the way back, racing each other a little here and there.
On the way back.
I stumbled again and the men dragging me swore and jerked me to my feet.
Cole had kissed me out there in the desert. There had been nothing mocking or malicious about it. He hadn't hurt me afterward, hadn't made me suck him off or get on my knees in the rocky dirt. He hadn't made me run back naked, he hadn't punished me for anything.
There had been a kiss. His mouth brushing mine, his hands splayed across my back to push me closer to him.
And then the run back to the house.
Where the black SUVs had been parked and the men in black fatigues had stood with their guns drawn on Cole's security, one of them already face down in the dirt and bleeding from a shot to the shoulder.
Cole had been standing when Vincent and Kie drove me away in the first of three cars before we reached the airport. Cole had still been standing.
But he was ringed by men with guns.
I wouldn't let them see me cry.
2
Annie
Once we were free of the airport, the tinted windows of the SUV would be up, sealing me away from anyone on the street who might offer help, from the view of any police who might see us. Once we were free of the airport, I'd be unable to get any clues about where I was. Probably blindfolded. That would make me carsick but it was better than the alternative of being drugged again.
So even then, being dragged down the stairs from the plane, I was gathering as much information as I could.
During the short number of minutes it took to drag me from the open plane, down the stairs, across the tarmac, one man on each arm and an armed guard behind, I heard traffic close by, a major freeway around the airport from what I could tell. There were planes landing one after another and taking off with the rolling thunder of large jets. That felt like a city.
It was early March and the sun was warm but the air was damply cold. I couldn't smell anything other than airport and traffic, nothing definite that spelled out anything specific, but there was a warmth to the wet air that wouldn't have been present in the Pacific Northwest and there was a taste to it, something soft and salty. A little wind, too, enticing rather than the stern, flesh-flaying winds of Nevada.
Best guess? Somewhere on the coast. Narrowing it down, probably California and not Washington or Oregon. I could watch the way the sun moved, but of course that required time and some notion of which way was which until the sun did something definite. Right now it was overhead.
That made me frown. If I tried, maybe I could figure out the timeline. Sunrise in southern Nevada at the beginning of March was about ten minutes after six a.m., but there was a kind of twilight before for half an hour. So Cole probably had me out on the trails at five-forty-five latest. We'd done a twelve mile run, with that short and strange and sweet interruption and –
Ten minute miles. A two hour run. With interruption. If we left at five-forty-five, we'd have been back around eight.
Which would stand me in good stead information-wise if I needed to guess at the time and even then I'd be wrong and even then it was a big so what? Private jets could fly faster than commercial because they supplied their own fuel and to a very real extent, could decide how fast they wanted to burn it.
I could be on the Gulf of Mexico. I didn't know.
That thought made me want to cry. Wanting to cry when I was in trouble wasn't like me and I panicked, afraid that whatever they'd given me might have awakened the addiction again.
That was stupid. That was panic. That wasn't happening.
What was happening was the guy with the gun shoved it into the middle of my back and said, "Try walking."
Nobody stopped him from holding a loaded automatic weapon on me. That told me more than I thought I wanted to know.
So I walked between my guards to the SUV and let them load me into place.
Please find me. Cole. Please.
Bring me home.
* * *
The property we approached was enormous, set into the Los Angeles hills and as protected as any superstar from movies or television could want. Definite privacy. What was it with billionaires, sick desires and land that stretched on for miles?
Where nobody can hear you scream I paraphrased to myself, the tag line from some old science fiction movie I'd probably seen with Mark.
The thought didn't come with an accompanying rush of longing for my long suffering fiancé. Mark had stayed with me through several long term undercover stints and through my addiction and what he believed to be my returns to rehab.
Rather than to Cole.
Or into shit like this.
When my life was in danger I often wanted the strength of my father, not to mention his experience as a cop. Or now –
Cole.
They hadn't blindfolded me or brought up such tinting in the car as to make the outside world disappear. That's why I knew where we were, in the Hollywood hills, way too much nothing between us and the nearest star for me to bother screaming.
I’d expected something during the ride. Handcuffs, but those had been removed. A taser set against my skin to stop the slightest twitch. Drugs. Threats.
Nothing. Kie sat on one side of me again and Vincent on the other. There were armed guards in the car and armed guards in the car following and nobody was bothering to talk and though it shouldn't have worked, it did: My fear was ratcheting up by the minute.
Since that first dinner party with the auction, when I'd stood up and said what was happening was stupid and did any of the other women want to walk out with me and cross the twenty miles of desert or so to Vegas and get help? Since that catastrophe Vincent hadn't hurt me.
Kie had. And this time, despite the kidnapping, neither of them had hurt me and I had to believe Cole was still alive and unhurt.
My heart still pounded and I was still waiting. Just because they hadn't touched me didn't mean they wouldn't.
The house was huge. No wonder the property was so extensive. Huge and white with columns and a weirdly flattened roof. It made it look like a bank from the 1930s or something equally improbable.
Locked iron gates swung open to let the cars through. They were operated by a remote inside the car. Probably Vincent had one also. Kie, not so much.
I ran an eye over the gates. Iron bars, nearly impossible to scale. The fence went up a good eight feet. Some counties prohibit such high fences but you can see right through one that's just iron bars so why not? If I was going to run from here, I'd have to have a way to get over the gate.
The drug was wearing off. The headache was receding. The cottony confusion was exiting and my thoughts were more clear. The fact that they didn't care that I knew where we were could be a bad thing or mean nothing at all. It could mean they were never going to let me go or were even planning to kill me.
Or it could mean that nobody was going to believe a thing I said if I got out of here, either because they would have returned me to being a junkie or because Vincent had shitloads of money.