Taking the steps two at a time, he did something he almost never did. He prayed. Gordon thought he’d experienced pain during the past two years, missing her with all his heart. But it was nothing compared to the hell he’d enter if she decided she wanted nothing to do with him now. How could he even go on?
Jenna worked her way through a forest of cucumbers, slicing them paper thin for a delicate pickle to accompany thin smoked salmon on a crisp cracker. She heard the shower kick on upstairs, the old pipes always a source of information in the rambling building. Despite herself, Jenna pictured him naked under the spray. His body more mature than when they met, Gordon still had enough sex appeal for ten men. She’d known from the second he disappeared that she’d never replace him.
How could she replace him? But she’d had to get him into his own room or all they’d do was fool around. Enchanting as that might be, she needed to keep him at arm’s length until she learned what was what.
She’d believed last night would have gotten him out of her system, but no. It had been all she could do not to rip her blouse off, or better yet his shirt, when he came in. By now, the water would be bouncing off his impressive ass.
Tightening her grip on the knife, Jenna started on another cucumber. From upstairs drifted the strains of “Copa Cabana.” Some things never changed. Gordon’s choices of oldies but goodies in the shower came very close to sending her flying up the stairs to join him, to tear off her clothes and step into his open and soapy arms for a good, wet time.
But that would be a bad idea for so many reasons. He’d promised not only to help her—and with no time to spare, his help would be more than welcome—but to finally explain why he’d left, why he’d staged his own death, and maybe even where the hell he’d been all day.
Because it seemed that whatever mystery hung over the love of her life, it was not over yet. With the cucumbers all sliced and waiting for the pickling liquid on the stove to come to the boil, Jenna opened the upper cabinet, looking for dark rum. Shoot. Why had she thought there was a full bottle up there? Maybe one of her part-time employees had enjoyed a toot on her? She sure hoped not.
With no time to run to the store, the premium gold tequila she’d purchased would do just fine. If she’d remembered to bring it into the house. Muttering under her breath, Jenna set out for the bike. She passed a silver sedan with Nevada plates. Who among her guests came from Nevada? She couldn’t think of any, but she’d find out when she went back inside. The rear area was only for staff parking. Guests parked along the private drive in front.
The Harley was absolutely covered in sticky purple flowers. She felt a twinge of guilt but brushed it aside, unzipped the bag, and withdrew the tall slender bottle. Maybe she’d have a shot. For her nerves. Bending to close the bag again, she heard a footfall on the gravel behind her and started to turn then lurched forward at a sharp strike on the back of her head. As darkness closed around her, she cried out, but would anyone hear?
Chapter Eight
Gordon came downstairs dressed in clean jeans and a black T-shirt. The shower helped clear his head a bit, but nothing would make him feel really good until he’d told his saga to his wife. Jenna would then decide he could stay or she might give him his walking papers. The ball was entirely in her court. But he would do his darnedest to ensure a positive result. He’d explain carefully the circumstances that drew him away from her and what he’d been up to since. Also what it had taken to bring him back and how much he valued their night together. He wanted thousands more, but he’d always be grateful for last night.
Entering the kitchen, he looked around for Jenna, but she was nowhere to be seen. A huge bowl filled with cucumber slices sat next to the stove where a pot steamed, smelling of vinegar. He peered inside and found only about an inch of liquid left, so he turned it off and wandered down the hallway to the front room.
A few guests strolled through, another couple sat on one of the sofas, feet up on the coffee table. Jenna would put a stop to that, but she wasn’t in this area, either. He went into the kitchen and peered outside, but her car hadn’t moved. It didn’t take Gordon long to go over the inn from top to bottom, with no results.
And nobody admitted to having seen her since breakfast. A finger of anxiety threaded its way up his spine, but he suppressed it. Just because he couldn’t find her didn’t mean anything untoward had happened. But since no other buildings stood near the inn, she’d hardly walked to a neighbor’s.
Returning to the kitchen door, he noted the sedan in his parking place was gone. Maybe she went out with someone she hired for housekeeping or something. But Jenna would never leave the property with something cooking. She’d lecture anyone who’d listen on the topic of fire safety.
With a sudden urgency, Gordon went into his—Jenna’s room. He opened the closet and peered inside, but her purse was there, hanging on its hook. If she’d left the property without it, she hadn’t gone willingly.
Grabbing his cell phone from his pocket, he made a fast call to Scott followed by one to Chief Mac. Their meeting needed to be moved from later in the afternoon to right now. Preferably here. Everything in him screamed something was wrong. Jenna had been busy cooking, waiting for him to come downstairs and explain himself to her. Where would she go?
Finishing his call, he headed for his bike. While he waited for the others to arrive, he could at least move Bianca out from under all those purple flowers. It was just something to do instead of putting his fist through a wall. Chief Mac had sounded as worried as Gordon felt, the first time he’d ever heard such tension from the man who walked into burning buildings to save someone without batting an eye. Then he saw it. Taped to the handlebars, a folded piece of paper. With his heart in his throat, Gordon opened it. He didn’t need to see it to know the ugly truth. She’d been taken.
But why? The answer lay in the typed note.
We have your wife. We want the guidance software. Someone will call you to give you the upload information. If you contact the authorities or fail to follow instructions, your old lady dies. And the wedding goes ka boom. Your first order is to sit tight and wait to hear from us.
No way would he sit around and wait for orders from the hackers. Gordon punched the garage door. It hurt but he didn’t care. Everything he’d done, everything he’d given up, all the pain he’d caused Jenna, for nothing.
How the hell did they know he was alive and still in possession of the software? Had they just found out he lived or had they known all along? Pacing from the SUV to the flower-covered motorcycle and back again, he tried to settle his mind and think.
Had they threatened the wedding to lure him out of hiding? Obviously. They could have just taken Jenna at any time, but apparently the sadistic bastards took pleasure in going after his entire family. But they had to have found out recently. Why would they have waited?
How they knew didn’t matter, he supposed. But he needed to find out. Did The Omega Team have a leak? Since only four people there had the knowledge of his survival, it would mean one of the partners, Jacqui…or Caroline. Scott only came into the picture when he’d joined her a week before. Grey, Athena, and Jacqui dealt with matters even more top secret than this, and they’d all been incredibly supportive. They had lent the resources of the team to him and Jenna. Unless they were utter psychopaths, they could not be the problem. But Caroline? The former drill sergeant who had been undercover for two years as a wedding planner? Grey had never been 100 percent sure the case was closed, and kept her on scene. His instinct was proven right when an Omega Team operative intercepted a message indicating a threat to the wedding. Now, he believed the message had been deliberately set up to be caught.
He could think of no other options, but it didn’t feel right, and he always went with his gut. Still, as soon as they arrived, he’d find out. If it was her, he couldn’t be responsible for his actions.
Gordon would search out everyone involved and kill them slowly for daring to take his wife. In addition to workin
g in his cave, he’d taken private lessons in a number of interesting things like hand-to-hand combat and mixed martial arts from a guy in his building whose PTSD not only kept him from leaving the premises but also had him convinced he was still in a war zone. He gladly trained his neighbor so they could defend the building from encroaching armies.
Gordon MacKay was no longer the mild-mannered geek who’d pretended to die for his wife’s sake. Instead, he’d done his best to become a man worthy of her.
Jenna tried to focus. Her eyes ached nearly as bad as the back of her head where someone had apparently tried to crack her skull. She only hoped they hadn’t succeeded, because the pain and accompanying nausea indicated they might have. Closing her eyes again, she squeezed them tight, willing them to work properly when she opened them again. To her great relief, she could see just fine. A dingy motel room. Maybe the place out by the highway? Unless she was even farther away from home.
Of course, the location mattered less than the fact that someone had kidnapped her and bound her to a straight-backed chair with a strip of duct tape over her mouth. From where she sat, she could see herself in the cracked mirror over the particle board dresser. What a picture. Her blouse was unbuttoned partway down, her hair matted around her face. Luckily, she still wore her jeans and hoped that meant she hadn’t been sexually assaulted while unconscious. No rapist would put her jeans and shoes and socks back on, would he? She’d go with no.
The pounding in her head made it difficult to concentrate, so, rather than wonder how or why she’d been brought here, she’d focus on how to escape. Her wrists were duct taped to the chair arms, her ankles to its legs. A belt of some sort around her waist prevented her from bending far enough to pull the tape from her mouth. Yanking and tugging seemed to make no difference. It just yanked on the tiny hairs on her forearms and the skin on her ankles. While far less painful than her head, the binding made her even angrier.
Despite her intent to concentrate on practical matters, she couldn’t entirely shut out the strangeness of her kidnapping. She owned the inn…rather, the bank did. She wouldn’t own the building for another fifteen plus years even with the extra she paid on the mortgage every month. She reinvested all her profits in the business. She didn’t come from a rich family. The money from the lawsuit helped when things were tight, but didn’t constitute wealth. Only two events were currently going on in Cedar Valley. The double wedding…but why kidnap the caterer? And Gordon’s return. Why hadn’t she insisted he explain everything about his situation before allowing him in her bed?
She’d enjoyed their night together, but was it worth her life?
Sighing, she tried to move the chair. If she could get it to shimmy in the direction of the door, she might be able to grasp the handle. She had to be in the motel by the highway. It appeared to be a low-budget sort of place, and the faded polyester bedspread and faint odor of cigarette smoke backed that up. The least her kidnappers could have done was ask for a no smoking room.
Rolling her eyes at her image in the mirror, she dealt the frightened-looking woman with wide eyes and bowed shoulders a mental lecture. I will stay calm. I will get out of here. I will find out what the heck my husband has been up to before I let him in my pants again.
Drawing a deep breath, she gave her hips a jerk, and the chair moved. An inch or so, but it was a start. If only she had the time to make it to the door, she thought her chances of escape were good. After all, even if the bad guys—girls?—came along, anyone else outside would help. Right? Please!
But, at her current speed, the door might as well be in China. She worked her way over the square of flooring in front of the vanity outside the bathroom to the carpet surrounding the bed. The ancient shag pile caught the chair legs, slowing her even more. And each minute lurch in the right direction used tremendous effort. Could she achieve success within a reasonable period of time? How long would the kidnappers leave her unsupervised before checking on her?
Housekeeping! If she could hang on long enough, someone would come to vacuum and clean the bathroom, replace the threadbare towels hanging by the tub. The bright gleam of hope carried her for a moment until she realized the Do Not Disturb sign was not in place on the inside of the door. No doubt the criminals had more experience than she in these matters and would have simply hung it on the outside.
No maid.
Rocking back and forth, Jenna continued her work, beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead and rolling into her eyes. She shook her head, but the salty droplets stung and burned. She hadn’t worked this hard in…ever. If preparing food for a thousand people had seemed hard, escaping from a tacky motel room scored ten times higher on any scale of effort.
The food. Every minute she sat in this damn chair, she got further behind. By not scheduling helpers until the next day, she’d assigned herself a minute-by-minute task list with little room for delay or error. What the heck else could go wrong?
Through an opening in the thin curtains, Jenna watched a vehicle pull up and park in front of the door to her prison. Two of the seediest characters ever to come near Cedar Valley exited. The man wore a white T-shirt, or one that had once been white. Its current shade resembled weak tea dotted with stains. His jeans hung low on his hips, belly hanging over and bared by the too-short shirt. In contrast to the man, who she judged to be in his late forties, his companion was a snappy dresser. Her heavy makeup made her look at least thirty, but without it, she’d probably be revealed to be at least ten years younger. She waited for the guy to come around the car and let her out then stood on tiptoe and whispered something in his ear. He roared with laughter that carried into the room then pulled the girl against him, yanking her skirt up to squeeze her bare bottom right in the middle of the parking lot.
And she didn’t seem to mind, rubbing her breasts against him like a needy, whorish cat.
Jenna began to think she wasn’t seeing kidnappers, and the pair’s strolling past her room without stopping confirmed the fact. A prostitute? She’d not only been kidnapped but stuck in a motel frequented by really tacky prostitutes and their customers. Were the guys who had her here renting the place by the hour?
Maybe the local ladies of the evening rented one by the month and shared it. The wedding guests who’d booked rooms here were in for a treat.
By the time she processed who they were, the opportunity to do anything to get their attention had passed. The disappointment was tempered by the fact she couldn’t think of anything to make noise anyway. If she managed to rock the chair enough to upend it, she’d be in a worse position, and how much sound would it make on the carpet?
Jenna fought the urge to give up. Her eyes burned from the perspiration, arms and legs and back ached from her efforts, and her headache grew increasingly more painful. If she had concussion, all this bumping around could not be improving it.
Digging deep into her psyche, she pictured Gordon. Whatever he’d gotten into that led to this debacle, Jenna would not die without finding out. But nobody knew where she was and nobody, including her back-from-the-dead sweetie, would be riding in on a white horse or a Harley Davidson anytime soon.
She’d counted on Gordon for a long time, over a decade. When anything went wrong, there he was to help her out. She’d always known she could count on him until…she couldn’t. Even then, she’d believed it was due to circumstances beyond his control. No one could be angry at a guy for dying when a tomato truck crossed the center divider and killed him.
Except she had been. Nobody but the other Cedar Valley dead resting in the cemetery and, once, a startled gardener who happened upon her visiting Gordon’s grave knew how she’d cried and raged. Everyone else saw the sad, usually calm Widow MacKay, the façade she maintained to keep from going completely over the edge.
As she rocked past the first of the two double beds, Jenna remembered how she’d watered the graveyard grass with angry tears, day after day, week after week…month after month. And how awful she’d felt for her rage at Gord
on, who’d loved her. Who’d lost his life in a horrible, squishy mess.
Had she on some really basic level ever wondered if he was still alive? No, probably not. She just hadn’t been able to get past the angry stage of grief. And because she’d been stuck, she’d not been on a single date. Barely lifted her head from running the inn and making more improvements on it to even go to coffee with a friend.
When she closed her eyes, she saw swirling stars and fought to remain conscious. Settling the chair on all its legs for a moment, she searched for the strength to go on but found none. Her mind, unlike her exhausted body, continued to process. The beginnings of understanding flickered.
Of course she’d jumped Gordon’s bones the second she saw they were not just a skeleton in a coffin. She’d believed him dead, but never let him go. Never lost faith in him.
Tears spilled down her cheeks with the realization she didn’t care why he’d left. The Gordon she knew for would never willingly hurt her, and nothing about his reincarnation suggested he’d changed. Jenna Gibson MacKay had traveled through hell to find him, and she’d be damned if one night would be all they shared. Panting, she prepared to try again, ready to die trying to reach him if she had to.
Then her gaze lit on the phone. And she felt massively stupid, but twice as relieved. Unsure how she’d talk on it, she wriggled her chair closer.
Chapter Nine
Gordon sat opposite Chief MacKay at the Foothill Inn kitchen prep table, waiting for Caroline to arrive. Although the note made it clear the kidnappers knew about Gordon, it was unclear whether they were aware of the other Omega Team operatives in town. Caroline had been inundated with potential future customers, along with Kat and Brigit who wanted to recommend her services to everyone they’d ever met.
Caroline planned to announce a wedding “emergency” that required her immediate attention but had to wait until the actual brides left or they’d insist on coming with her. She felt confident she could get rid of them quickly. Scott lingered in the back room, continuing to monitor all the camera feeds for something to lead them to Jenna.
The Omega Team: Hidden Asset (Kindle Worlds Novella) (MacKay Destiny Book 8) Page 5
