“It is. And accurate, as near as I can tell you at this point.”
“Good, that gives us time to prepare.” Ice looked over at Levi. “That’s shorter than we thought but maybe better than we deserve. We’ve got a lot of security plans in place because we’ve been expecting this—and we do have a skeleton crew of us here.”
Terk nodded. “Is Stone around?”
“Yes, Stone is definitely here.” She smiled.
“And I presume the satellite is up and running?” Terk asked them.
“Always,” Levi said, stepping in. “We have all the entrances and exits covered. We’ve enlarged our coverage area a bit, and we’ve got hidden cameras around, approaching the area. I’ve got offers going to buy a few more acres around our place, so we can expand our security a bit farther,” he shared, “but, so far, I haven’t managed to get any bites yet.”
“That would be a good move.” Terk stared off in the distance. “This won’t be the only attack at your place.”
“Nope, it’s not the first and sure won’t be the last,” Levi agreed. “Considering that families are expanding here, it’s not a bad idea to continue to expand our holdings as well.”
“Did you consider buying one of the properties next over?” Terk asked. “It’s coming up for sale.”
“Which one?” Ice looked at him.
Terk frowned, got up, and moved to the map in the middle of the dining room table. Then slowly turning the map, Terk pointed with his finger. “That one.”
“MacGyver’s place,” Ice noted.
“Yes, that’s the name.”
“Any idea why he’s selling?”
“He’s got cancer. The family won’t want to keep it after he’s gone, so he’ll sell it first.”
At that, Levi got up and walked out of the room. Ice nodded. “He’s good friends with MacGyver.”
“Sorry but also good. It’s perfect timing too.”
“That would be great, if we can come to an agreeable price,” Ice said.
“He’s got a large property.”
“Yes, he does. Quite a few acres.”
”That would be a very helpful holding to have,” Terk added.
“Agreed.” She hesitated. “Terk, is there anything else you’ve intuitively picked up on that we should know?”
“I’m not sure. Everything feels odd here.”
“Well, take some time to adjust.” Then she turned her attention to Celia, looking over at her keenly. “Are you feeling okay? Do you need to lie down?”
Celia waved her hand. “I’ll be fine. This is pretty fascinating to watch. Do you always believe what he says?”
“Always.”
Terk looked at her. “Are you ready to tell me what happened to you?”
“More than what Ice already told you?”
“While I did hear some things from Ice, I find that it’s always better to hear things in someone’s own words.”
“Well, I don’t remember very much,” Celia stated flatly.
He frowned. “Were you drugged, do you think?” he asked, then turned to look at Ice.
“Yes, she did have quite a cocktail in her system, when we brought her into the compound, and we’ve been doing as much as we can to get that cleaned out. We have already cleared some of the issues, but obviously stress is a huge factor. Plus, being pregnant limited our treatment options.”
“Of course,” he murmured. He studied Celia intently.
She shifted uneasily, stiffening, then she glared at him. “Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped. “I haven’t done anything.”
“Do you have any foreign connections?”
She looked like she had been struck by a thousand watts. “Why would you even ask that?”
“Where were you six, seven months ago?”
She flushed, then glared again.
He just gave her that flat stare. He knew when people were hiding something, and, although she had every right to be upset over what had happened, he had to be sure nothing was hidden from him. Trust had to work both ways.
“I was in London at the time.”
At that, he sat back. “Doing what?”
Celia looked at Merk and then Ice. When her gaze landed on Terk, again a flash of hostility crossed her face. She turned her head. “I was there for an interview.”
“And then what?” he asked, his gaze unwavering.
“I’m not exactly sure. I did a bunch of work in England,” she said thoughtfully. “And then I traveled to France. … Nothing seemed to be any different or out of ordinary. Nothing seemed to be difficult. It was all good. Normal—until I was kidnapped.”
“When did you realize you were pregnant?”
“When I woke up here. I don’t think I realized it even while I was walking here. As far as Ice could tell, I’m approximately six months along.” Her glare upped in wattage. “And, no, I don’t know how this child was conceived or what happened afterward.”
He could see her pain, the fear of finding out the truth of what happened to her. … “Zero signs?”
“This entire conversation is making me uncomfortable.”
“That’s fine.” He continued to study her. “You can blame me all you want. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re carrying my child and that I want to know exactly how that happened and how you are connected to these attacks.”
“I’m not. I’ve got nothing to do with it.” She stood and held her belly protectively. Her words were literally venom now, and her eyes shot daggers. “And it’s not your child. Maybe you should explain to me why you think it is and how I got that way?”
*
Celia just wanted to get away. There was almost a magnetic spell around that man, but he was also dangerous as hell. Her hands cradled her belly. While she waited on Terk to respond, she repeated the mantra in her head, We’ll be fine, a mantra that she had been working on ever since she found out the crazy turn her life had taken. We’ll get through this. We’ll be fine.
Though, in reality, she wasn’t sure how she was ever supposed to be fine, given this nightmare she was in. She had hoped that, when she saw Terk, she would recognize him and would have remembered something about him and that somehow this would all begin to make sense.
But there wasn’t anything. Nothing at all.
How was it even possible? He said he was the father of her child, but she could only look at him suspiciously because she’d never met him before. So how had he impregnated her? She could only imagine the ways such an event could have come about. None of them filled her with joy, nor gave her any measure of comfort. She had absolutely no idea who the father of her child was because she had no way of knowing when or how she got pregnant in the first place. A fact that just blew her away.
“So you’ll ask me questions but not answer mine?” Celia asked Terk.
She didn’t live in a world of casual relationships, where people routinely had unprotected sex and got pregnant out of the blue like that. She was always extremely careful, and her last breakup had been just ugly enough that she wasn’t even close to being interested in another relationship and hadn’t been for a long time. Yet she’d been kidnapped, held captive, impregnated, wired up with C-4, and released in an unknown rural area.