Did I have time to break the doorframe?
I looked at the door, touching the hinges. If I could get the hinges free… I hobbled back into the kitchen, searching for tools. All I could find was a set of knives in a drawer by the stove. I grabbed one and hobbled back, nearly tripping over the carpet. The tip of the knife wouldn’t even fit into the open space at the bottom of the hinge, and if it did, I wouldn’t be able to fit any more of the knife inside to force the damn pin upward.
I worked on the frame around the door for a minute, trying to pry it loose like I’d done with my cast, but like my cast, the damn thing was glued on there, and then it had a dozen nails that held it in place. It would take me all day to get the stupid thing off!
I stepped back, sweating a little. I wiped at my brow, my eyes sweeping the room. My life for a damn screwdriver! But then my eyes fell on the darkened windows. Glass broke. If I could smash one of these windows, I’d be out of here in an instant!
I hobbled to the closest window, a long, low, framed window beside the door. Using the hilt of the knife, I slammed it against the window. Nothing. It just bounced off. I hit again, harder, but once again it just bounced like the thing was made of rubber. I moved closer, pressing my face practically against it, running my hand along the curves and bubbles of the cool pane. It was painted black, which was why it blocked out the light so perfectly, spray-painted. And it wasn’t glass.
I beat my hand against it again, feeling the soft material bounce against me. It was some sort of plastic. Unbreakable.
“Damn it!” I cried, slamming my hands against the window, only to have them bounce right back, the bones vibrating until they hurt.
I stepped back, looking at the frame of the window, looking for a vulnerable spot. Could I pry the frame off, find a way to break the plastic out away from the wall? But once again it would take hours to pry the wood away with just this little knife.
I hobbled back into the kitchen, searching everywhere for some sort of tool. There was nothing but a few cooking implements, a few pots and pans. It wasn’t even a fully stocked kitchen. It was pretty obvious this place was designed just to house two people, just to hold me and my captor for however long this ordeal was meant to last.
I checked all the windows, searched every room—which included just the kitchen, living room, bedroom, and bathroom—even got down and looked under the couch, searched for some sort of access to the roof or the space under the trailer. Nothing. There was no way out of this trailer except for the front door.
I was dripping with sweat by the time I realized it had all been futile. I went to the bathroom to wash my face, running cool water over my hands and then splashing it on my face. I ran my fingers through my hair, a little disgusted by how greasy it was. I needed a shower.
A shower… the key to the door was in Oliver’s pocket. I’d seen him slide it there last night when he came in, saw him take it out today. If I could get close to him, maybe I could get that key and slip out the front door when he lay down to sleep tonight.
A plan quickly unfolded in my mind as I heard the rattle of the locks being undone. I quickly began to unbutton the strange dress I’d been wearing, shimmying the thing from around my hips.
“Valerie?”
I hobbled over to the tub and twisted the dual knobs, watching the water come rushing out of the long faucet. There was a shower head, a lever to pull. I did and was rewarded with water cascading over my face and shoulders.
“What are you doing?”
I looked up, pretending I hadn’t heard him return. “I wanted a shower,” I said, crossing my arms over my cotton bra. “I feel dirty.”
“You shouldn’t try to do that without some help. You could slip and fall.”
“I don’t think I need a man to help me shower. I’ve been doing it for a long time.”
“Yes, well, you haven’t been doing it with a cast on your leg.”
I looked down, touching the top of the bandage. “What did you use to make this, anyway? It seems pretty solid.”
“It’s just cloth, with a little epoxy to keep it in place.”
“Epoxy?”
He shrugged almost as if it was every day a person used industrial-grade glue to secure a bandage to a woman’s body.
“What have you been up to since I left?” he asked instead of answering my other question, bending over to pick up the dress I’d discarded from the floor. “There’s a crack in the doorframe that I don’t think was there before.”
I pulled myself up onto my one good foot, using a little too much force. I couldn’t stop the forward motion and nearly slammed myself into the far wall. He caught me, dropping the dress as he threw out an arm to break my momentum and pull me back into his body. I was breathing hard, a little thrown from the near fall. It hadn’t really been intentional, but it couldn’t have worked better if it had been.
“This is why you shouldn’t be trying to shower on your own.”
His breathing seemed to be a little rough as he pulled me even closer against him, his big hand pressed flat against my ribs. It slid downward almost of its own accord, slipping over my flat belly and down to my narrow hip. I felt his thumb brush the top of my panties, rolling the elastic over just a touch.
“I wouldn’t mind if you helped,” I said, forcing the words out.
“Yeah? How much help would you like?”
His thumb hooked itself under the edge of my panties, tugging them lower as he bent his head to watch the show. I closed my eyes, reaching up to touch the side of his face. I twisted slightly, offering him my lips as his fingertips joined his thumb, slipping under the edge of my panties and over the protrusion of my hip. He ignored my lips for a moment, watching as the bulk of his hand forced my panties down and away from my body, exposing the soft curls of hair that were meant to be hidden from the world. His breath was definitely a little rough now, the feel of it bursting against my shoulder in quick puffs almost exciting despite everything.
I drew his jaw toward me, moved so that our lips were just a hair’s breadth apart. He brushed his nose against mine, touching both sides of it with his before he stole my lips, hungrily possessing them like they’d always been his to have. His other hand moved over my ribs, urging me to turn toward him, which I did at the same moment he invaded me, pushing my lips apart until I had no choice but to welcome his invasion. My arms had a mind of their own, sliding around his neck, one hand pulling him closer to me as my palm slid up over the back of his skull. And his hand, that hand that had already been under the material of my panties, was pressed against my bare ass, the material of those thin panties giving way so easily, sliding down until they were no longer functioning in the role they were meant to play.
It had crossed my mind that he was a man who’d spent time in the military and then prison, that he must be a man who didn’t get satisfaction as often as he wanted. I’d even been naïve enough to believe that he might not be as experienced as most men his age. I was definitely wrong on that last count. The man knew exactly what he was doing, knew exactly how to touch a woman, what to do with a tongue, how to explore with eager fingers. His touch was firm but gentle, his need obvious, but not overwhelming. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been touched that way, the last time I’d been kissed so completely.
Every woman should be kissed thoroughly. I’d heard that in a movie or read it in a book once and I’d never forgotten it. I never truly understood it, but never forgot it.
I thought I might have understood it now.
There was hunger in his kiss, a need that I could feel all the way down to my toes. I ached in a way I’d never ached before, this weakness in my knees making my thighs open in a way they’d never done for another man. And when his exploring fingers made their way to that moist little center…
I groaned, my hands sliding down to the hem of his shirt, tugging it out of my way as my need to feel his skin, to feel the muscles I’d seen flex and move what seemed almost a lifetime ago beca
me overwhelming. He pulled his hands away long enough to allow me to get his shirt part of the way free of his body, his own movements taking it the rest of the way.
He was so tall he had to tilt his head to look down at me, his knees slightly bent when he stole my mouth again, coming back like I was the source of some nutrient he couldn’t get enough of. He tasted of sugar and oatmeal, of coffee, of the heat of the day and the slight mint of his toothpaste. He tasted of masculinity and eroticism, of pleasure yet to come. He tasted of everything wonderful and perfect about human interaction.
His hands smoothed themselves over my ass. He picked me up, pressed me against the coolness of the many layers of paint on the wall of cabinets across from the toilet. I wrapped my legs around him after kicking away my panties, locking my ankles so that he couldn’t let me go without a bit of a struggle. His bare belly pressed up against the core of me, his hard muscles rubbing against things that craved friction. He bit my lower lip, drawing the flesh between his teeth, nibbling with such precision that I could feel it clear to the pit of my being.
I pressed my fingers against his skull, pulling him down to my throat, to my hardened nipples. The nibble he offered me there was even more intense, taking my breath from my lungs like an accomplished pickpocket lifting someone’s wallet.
I ran my hands over him, wanting more, wanting so much more. My hands slid down over his chest, down his back, over muscles that flexed and popped, that vibrated with the same excitement that burned inside of me. I wanted to touch him everywhere, wanted to hold him in my hands and offer him the same pleasure he was offering me. I slid my fingers under the waist of his jeans, under the elastic of his briefs. He was wearing a belt with a buckle that was more than my brain could handle at that moment. So I stuck my fingers in his pockets, searching for the thickness of his manhood, for the heat that made my core ooze with desire.
“Fuck!” he cried, jumping back, jerking my hands free of his pockets. “I should have known!”
“What?”
He shook his head, snatching his shirt up from the floor. After a second’s hesitation, he grabbed my dress, too. “Take your fucking shower!”
“Oliver, I don’t—”
“You think I’m stupid?” He came back, forcing his face up against mine, so close that he might have kissed me again rather than speak. “This was all just you trying to get the key to the front door. Like you could really get it from me without my knowledge, like you could get out that door and five feet from this place without me knowing about it. I’m not as fucking stupid as you seem to think I am!”
“That’s not what this was, Oliver!”
He shook his head, slamming out of the room, the door rattling in the frame as he did. But then he came back, opening the door again.
“No more privacy. You’ve just proven that you can’t be trusted!”
He walked off again, leaving the door wide open and my knees knocking.
I lowered myself to the toilet, balancing on the edge of the lid. What the hell had I just done? I’d wanted to escape, wanted my freedom, but I’d lost my way at some point. Was it his kiss, or just a stupid desire that I could fulfill anywhere else when this ordeal was over?
Had he just admitted that he was holding me captive?
Chapter 13
Scott
After over eight hundred miles in the car together, more than eighteen hours, we’d arrived at the American Consulate to find the damn place locked up tighter than a fucking drum!
“Lunch,” the guard said.
“What the hell?”
I ran my fingers through my hair. Nearly twenty-four hours and no one was searching for Valerie. Had I made the wrong choice to come up here? Should I have forced the cops down in Oaxaca to listen to me? Would they have if I’d stayed?
I tugged my phone out of my pocket, scrolling through the numbers for the one that would connect me with the powers that be at GME. It was time to bring in the big guns.
As I went to push the button, a text message alert reminded me that we’d been in and out of cell service since leaving Pochutla, causing delays in the arrival of such things. This message had been sent late last evening and the message didn’t sit well with me.
“What are we going to do?” Taylor asked, her eyes red-rimmed from her intermittent crying all the night before.
“We’re going to wait until we can get inside,” TJ informed her.
“We are,” I agreed. “What else can we do?”
I turned away, pressing the button to connect to GME. A female voice answered, all sweetness and light.
“This is Scott Powell. I need to speak to Damon.”
“Mr. Aldous is not in the office at the moment.” The sweetness left her voice. “Can I connect you to someone else?”
“Where is he?”
There was an odd pause. Then a clearing of the throat. “He’s not here. Only Angela is around and she probably won’t be for long.”
My heart sank. I knew the investigation would progress in my absence, but I didn’t think it would go that quickly. Then again, missing money from a nonprofit was a serious issue. I shouldn’t be surprised that our founder, Damon Aldous, would be the first to fall.
“Get Angela.”
When her warm voice filled my ear, I was almost relieved. Until it registered what she was saying.
“You need to get your ass back to the office, Scott. This thing is getting out of control and we need all hands on deck.”
“The investigation?”
“They’ve traced some of the transactions to a bank account in the Cayman Islands. There is only a handful of us who know our way around the Cayman Islands, and you’re one of them. You need to get back here and answer some questions, son.”
“I can’t. I’m in the middle of a mess of my own.”
“The clinic in Pochutla can run itself. We’ve got enough staff hired on.”
“Sure, but my sister was down here helping and she’s gone missing.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. “What do you mean, missing?” Angela finally asked.
“I mean Valerie is gone. She vanished off the side porch of the clinic.”
“She disappeared from the clinic? Goddamn, Scott! How could you be so stupid? What do you think is going to happen when the press gets hold of that little bit of information? The investigation will become headline news and we’ll all be roasted, not only for the missing money but for her disappearance, too! You’re destroying GME singlehandedly!”
I sat hard on the sidewalk. “To hell with GME!”
“This is our livelihood, Scott. This is everything. You said it was everything to you!”
“I’m sorry, Angela, but my sister is missing. That’s all that matters.”
“Then why the fuck are you calling me?”
I could almost see her sitting behind her massive oak desk, her hair perfectly coifed in her standard bun, her glasses hanging around the tip of her nose. She wanted everyone to think she was a cold-hearted bitch, but she was actually the kindest, most gentle woman I’d ever met. It was her bleeding heart, her sympathy for children that had led to the creation of GME. It was her baby, her idea, her world. She traveled with the rest of the crew as often as she attended the hoity-toity dinners and charity events that raised money for the organization. I knew the words that had just fallen from her sweet lips weren’t genuine.
“I don’t know if you were listening, but all operations have been suspended,” she continued. “Other than the clinics that are already up and running, we’re done. The investigators are looking through everything, searching everything. They are insisting that we not continue business as usual until they can determine what happened to all that money.”
“Angela, I know that—”
“The Attorney General’s office has investigators here right now. There’s nothing I can do, Scott.”
I lowered my head, chewing my bottom lip as the meaning of what she’d just said settled
through the fear and exhaustion that was fogging my mind. “Okay,” I finally said. “I’ll take care of it myself.”
I disconnected the call, holding the phone between both hands for a long moment as I tried to figure out what my next move should be. Taylor came and sat beside me, running her hand along the center of my back.
“We’ll get her back.”
I nodded, not sure that was really what I wanted to hear. “No one’s looking for her. Everyone we should have been able to turn to has refused to help. I don’t know what more we can do.”
“We’ll talk to the people here,” TJ announced.
“We should call her dad,” Taylor said. “He’ll know what to do.”
I was reluctant to nod my head, reluctant to accept that as an answer. “I told him I’d keep her safe. He’ll be angry with me.”
“He’ll be even angrier if he could have done something and we didn’t call him.” Taylor slipped her hand into mine, forcing me to hold hers. “He’s a man with some influence. He can have an army down here looking for her in an instant.”
“She’s right,” TJ said. “That might actually be our best option.”
I pressed my cell phone into Taylor’s hand. “You make the call. He might take it better coming from you.”
I glanced at TJ as she almost gleefully took the phone. He wouldn’t meet my gaze.
Chapter 14
Valerie
It crossed my mind to get the bandage wet. If it was wet, maybe the damn thing would just fall off my leg. Unfortunately, all it did was make it heavier and more uncomfortable than it’d been before.
Another dress was waiting on the toilet lid when I climbed out of the shower, a pretty, flowered thing that was nothing like the few dresses that hung in my closet. I wasn’t a flowy, feminine kind of girl. I was the kind who wore pencil skirts and blazers only when absolutely necessary, preferring slacks and a light blouse the rest of the time. But I put the dress on, feeling like it was a small opportunity to placate Oliver, but I left my bra and panties on the bathroom floor. A girl could only wear the same underwear so many days before it was just gross to put them back on!
Caballo Security Box Set Page 8
