The Billionaire's Secret Flame

by Elana Johnson

  “Why would they do that, sir?”

  He rounded on the clearly inept cop. “Because they’ve been planning her kidnapping for a long time.” His anger roared through his like wildfire, two thousand degrees Fahrenheit and completely unstoppable. “You have to go now. Run the plate. Find the vehicle. Put out an alert. I’m telling you the truth.”

  The older police officer looked at his partner. “Run the plate.”

  “TR-75981,” Andy said again. “It’ll be registered to me, Daniel Donald Anderson. But my brother James Gerard Anderson bought it six months ago.”

  The cop moved around the car and ducked back inside. Andy turned his attention to the other cop. “You guys should go. They went east.” So much time was passing. How often did the ferry run?

  His phone rang, and he saw Sami’s name on the screen. “This is her.” He swiped on the call and put it on speaker. “Sami, honey? Are you all right?”

  “Honey?” His dad’s voice came through the line, chilling Andy all the way to the bone. “Didya hear that, Jimmy? Honey.”

  “Someone lied to us,” his brother said.

  “Bring her back,” Andy said, praying his mistake didn’t cost Sami her life. “Right now.”

  The officer leaned forward as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Forbidden Lake didn’t have a lot of crime, and another pinch of guilt hit Andy as he realized what he’d brought to town.

  Trouble.

  Thugs.

  He clenched his teeth. He should’ve called Sami the moment he’d heard from Tony on Sunday afternoon. Insisted she come to the penthouse and stay with him. Gone and gotten her if she refused.

  “You’ll get your honey back,” his dad said. “The question is how many pieces she’ll be in.”

  “Don’t you dare touch her,” Andy said. “Name your price.” After all, he knew exactly what this was about.

  He kept his eyes on the cops, the second one having joined them a moment ago.

  “We’ll call you in an hour.” The line went dead, and Andy felt like his heart had stopped too.

  An hour later, he paced in the office of the Chief of Police in Forbidden Lake. Sami’s parents had come when he’d called them, and her mother sat in the corner, silently weeping while her husband kept one arm around her and both eyes on the conversation in the room.

  “Set up a place to meet,” Officer Quinn said. “Tell him you need a lot of time to put together the cash. Whatever it takes to keep him on the line and give us time to get our men into position for the meeting.”

  Andy nodded. They’d been over the plan already. At least everyone believed him now. “I want them in prison,” he said, glaring at Officer Quinn, though the man had been nothing but helpful since the phone call.

  “The Federal Marshals are on their way here,” he said. “They’ve crossed two state borders and committed petty theft all along the way.”

  “If they touch her….” Of course they’d touched her. She’d been drugged and carried to the SUV, their slimy hands all over her. Andy had it all on tape, which he’d asked Karen to email to the police.

  She had, and the evidence against his family couldn’t be refuted. Tony hadn’t been checking in on his father and brother as much as he should’ve been. In fact, he’d gone so long that he hadn’t even known Jim had bought the blue Explorer.

  He’d apologized a few dozen times and sent the money back he’d collected over the past year. Andy had been furious, but he knew better than most that he couldn’t change the past. What was done, was done.

  What he needed to do was figure out where to go next. What to do. How to get Sami back

  His phone rang, and he lunged for it. Officer Quinn grabbed it from the corner of his desk and held it out of Andy’s reach.

  “Talk slowly,” he said. “Tell them there are no police involved.”

  Andy nodded, took the phone, and answered it.

  “Get rid of the cops, bro,” his brother said.

  “There are no cops,” Andy said, his voice confident and strong. “You tell me how much and where, and I’ll be there.” He turned away from Officer Quinn, already knowing he was talking too fast and demanding too much. He was supposed to ask what they wanted first. Demand to talk to Sami before he agreed to do anything.

  “If she has a single hair missing from her head, I’ll take out ten grand. If she’s bleeding, I reduce it by half. Now let me talk to her.”

  “You’re not calling the shots—”

  “Let me talk to her now, or I’m hanging up, and you’ll never find me again.” Andy must’ve managed to put enough malice in his voice to convince his brother he’d walk away from the woman he loved, because after a long pause, Jim said, “Fine. You get ten seconds.”

  Shuffling and scuffing came through the line, and then Sami said, “Andy, I’m fine.” But she didn’t sound fine. She sounded tinny and high-pitched and scared.

  “Where are you?” he asked, begging her to use some sort of code, though they hadn’t worked anything of the sort out. He’d only talked to her about the danger she was in generally. Nothing specific.

  He should’ve suspected kidnapping and ransom. He’d been so blind. So stupid. Allowed himself to feel too safe.

  “Yes, there’s food here,” she said. “We’ve ordered it before. My favorite is the mo—”

  “Enough,” Jim growled as Andy tried to catch the last word. They’d ordered from so many places. Almost everywhere in town that delivered. How many of those were there? Dozens.

  “We want one hundred million. By noon.”

  “There’s no way I can put together that much money by noon,” Andy said, his mind still stuck on “mo.” It sounded like “ma,” like the beginning of mom or month. What food could that be?

  “How long do you need?”

  Andy laughed without happiness. “For one hundred million dollars in cash? A couple of weeks. Do you know how much money banks have in their safes? Not much, Jim.”

  “We don’t have a couple of weeks.”

  Officer Quinn gave Andy the thumbs-up, which fueled his courage. “I can’t get that much in even a couple of days.” And the thought of Sami being with his family for much longer made his vision cloud and his fury ignite.

  “Dad says you can go back to paying us every month.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Andy said, watching several cops don helmets and head out, Officer Quinn telling them something as they went past him. Their eyes met, and Officer Quinn made a motion with his hands to indicate Andy should keep them on the phone as long as possible.

  “He wants to meet to discuss terms,” Jim said.

  “I’m not meeting you unless I see Sami,” Andy said. “So bring her with you, or this is done.”

  Jim was obviously communicating with their father somehow. “You must really not even like her,” he said. “She said she was just your boss, but wow. When you called her honey, I assumed she’d been lying to us.”

  “She means nothing to me,” Andy said, almost choking on the words. “You should’ve done better research.”

  A long pause went by, and Officer Quinn approached.

  “Jim?” Andy asked. “I need verbal confirmation you’re going to bring Sami to the meeting, or I’ll get on the next plane leaving town.”

  “What’s that?” Jim asked.

  Officer Quinn clicked and tapped, and half a second later, Andy peered at his computer screen and said, “The next one leaves for Chicago in thirty minutes. I can be on it.”

  “You’re at the airport?”

  “And I can go anywhere from Chicago,” he said. “You’ll never find me.”

  “We found you here,” Jim said.

  Officer Quinn typed something into his search bar, and Andy leaned closer. They’re near the airport. We have airport security locking everything down and grounding all flights.

  Andy strode toward the exit, Officer Quinn on his heels. He suddenly knew exactly where they were keeping Sami, and he spun ba
ck to the officer, taking the phone from his ear. “Mozza ball soup,” he said. “That’s what Sami was saying. They’ve got her in the back of The Italian Place. It’s right by the airport.”

  “I’ll alert my tac teams.”

  Andy put the phone back to his ear in time to hear his brother say, “We’ll find you just outside terminal two, near the café there. Twenty minutes.”

  “I’m already there,” Andy said, though he wasn’t, and he probably couldn’t get there in twenty minutes.

  The line went dead, and he and Officer Quinn sprinted for the cruiser parked outside.

  “Federal marshals have been updated,” the cop said. “They’ll meet us there.” He glanced at Andy as they took off, the lights flashing but no siren blaring. “Let’s make a plan for the meeting. Tell me where, and I’ll get my men in position now.”

  “The café outside terminal two,” he said. “And they’re right next door, which means we need men there now.”

  Officer Quinn picked up his radio and started issuing commands while Andy leaned his forehead against the window and prayed he could get Sami back as quickly as possible.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sami fought against the woozy effects of whatever they’d drugged her with. It hadn’t lasted long, but her brain still felt sluggish. She didn’t like the feeling, which was why she never drank either.

  She shivered, the air in the walk-in freezer in the back of the restaurant kicking on again. A couple of people had come in and out of the unit, not even knowing she was there. Jim and Dad—Jim never called his father anything but that—obviously knew someone here, and no one was alarmed by their presence.

  They’d snuck her into the freezer though, her hands in cuffs and her feet slipping on the red tile kitchen floor. Jim had adjusted her cuffs so she was now attached to one of the storage racks in the back, and her teeth chattered as she tried to wiggle her way out of the restraints.

  Desperation clogged her throat, and tears burned her eyes. She seized onto the warmth and used it to fuel her brain. She had to get out of here.

  Jim had been talking on the phone for a few minutes now, obviously not a very smart criminal. Hadn’t he seen any of the TV shows where the police just needed a few seconds to trace a call’s location?

  And she’d almost gotten mozza ball soup out. Andy was smart. He’d know where she was by now.

  But she didn’t want to be frozen to death by the time anyone got here. The Italian Place was only about twenty minutes from the office, but they’d driven around for much longer. At least Sami thought they had. When she’d started to come out of unconsciousness, she’d heard Jim and his father talking about how no one was tailing them, and that if the cops were going to come after them, they would have by now.

  The back of the Explorer didn’t have seats; only bare floor. It was uncomfortable, and she’d moved, alerting them to her condition. They’d asked her if Andy was her boyfriend, and she’d denied it. “We only work together,” she’d told them, thinking of the website. “I’m his boss.”

  Then he’d called her “honey” on the phone. She ground her teeth together and glanced around, sure this freezer had something she could use to get out.

  Stupid Andy, she thought, standing up as far as the handcuffs would allow. He didn’t get to break up with her to “keep her safe,” and then call her honey on the phone. What was he thinking?

  She couldn’t help thinking that yes, she’d been in more danger than she knew. But he’d told her he had a private investigator in Chicago, keeping an eye on the situation.

  Obviously not, she thought as she scanned the highest shelf she could see. It held racks of pork ribs, some out of a box, and some still taped inside. The box looked like it had been cut open somehow, and she wondered if that tool was here, in the freezer.

  The door to the freezer opened again, throwing light inside before the overhead bulb kicked in too. She dropped back to a crouched position, behind a stack of boxes with chicken breast in them, out of sight.

  She closed her eyes so they wouldn’t lose their ability to see in the dimmer light when the door was closed.

  Someone muttered to themselves as they looked at the shelves opposite her. Her foot slipped at the same time they dragged a box from somewhere, and the noise she made as she went down on her tailbone went unnoticed.

  Her jaw hurt from how tight she clenched it. Her wrists hurt, because now they were strung too high for where her body was on the ground. And she had no idea how she was going to get up without the use of her hands.

  Finally, the person left, and the freezer was plunged back into near darkness. A weak light did stay on above the door, and Sami opened her eyes and tried to focus.

  Slowly, she looked at the shelf to her left. Just food—mostly frozen meat and pasta sauce. Nothing that could help her get these dang handcuffs off. Nothing she could slip in her pocket and use as a weapon when Jim and his dad came back.

  Or maybe this was the endgame. Death in an industrial freezer.

  Sami refused to accept that. She strained against the cuffs as she twisted back to the rack she was attached to. Bending her head under her arms allowed her to see the bottom shelf, and there, several inches down, was a pen.

  Could she get out of these cuffs with a pen? It didn’t seem possible, but the hope ballooning in her chest told her she had to try. It took some maneuvering, but she got her head back above her arms and her feet in front of her. She carefully pushed off her left shoe and extended her leg along the bottom shelf, feeling for the pen.

  Her toes, cold as they were, found the pen, and she managed to half grab, half roll it back to her. It was the kind of pen she could click in and out, but the real prize was the metal clip at the top of it.

  She had no idea how to get out of handcuffs, but she knew nothing on that pen was going to go in the tiny keyhole. Refusing to lose hope, she gripped the pen between her toes and lifted it to her mouth.

  From there, she got it into her fingers pretty easily. She separated the clip from the pen and put the writing part on the shelf near her hands. There had to be another way to get out of these cuffs.

  She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to think through any movies or shows she’d seen. They all seemed to find paperclips or bobby pins—which were more similar to the slim piece of metal she now held.

  So what did they do?

  She focused on the cuffs and decided she’d try to put that clip into any slot or opening where it would fit. It felt like years had passed, and her lips were starting to go numb when she noticed a fairly decent slot going in where the jagged part of the shackles went together.

  Her mind could suddenly see the pieces of the handcuffs. If she could get that metal between those teeth, they wouldn’t be able to grab each other. She could get these cuffs off.

  Jamming the metal into the slot, she pushed, accidentally pushing the cuffs tighter around her wrist. She sucked in a breath, sure she’d done something wrong. She tried to pull the pen clip back out, pushing on the shackle as she did—and it opened.

  Stunned, she blinked at her now-free hand.

  She’d done it.

  With her left hand now free, she quickly picked up the pen clip from the floor and freed her other hand.

  Shivering uncontrollably now, she slipped her shoe back on and stood up, staying low to peer out from behind the boxes. She grabbed the pen—the only weapon she had—and hurried over to the door.

  It was impossible to hear anything on the other side. Jim could be standing there, ready to enter.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “You have to get out of here before you freeze.” The door had a big red button on it, and while she normally shied away from pressing such things, now she did.

  An alarm didn’t sound. Nobody dropped down from the ceiling in all black clothing.

  The door simply unlatched. She pushed it open further, trying not to draw any attention to the corner of the kitchen where the freezer stood. With the
blessed warm air rushing in, she slipped out and dodged behind a prep counter.

  While it wasn’t dinnertime on Saturday night, the kitchen seemed to be busy. Of course it was. The Italian Place enjoyed close proximity to the airport, and it was easy to get to for anyone with a layover in the small airport.

  She couldn’t see or hear Jim nor his father. The door they’d come in from the back was easily twenty feet away, across the back of the kitchen, in plain sight. She could also head out into the restaurant through a swinging black door directly in front of her. But that took her past everyone working in the kitchen.

  Sami watched the door, deciding to make a run for it next time someone went out into the restaurant. Someone going out had their back to her, as well as prevented someone else from coming in at the same time.

  A man moved as if he’d go out, and Sami moved too. She didn’t care if she was heard. She could be out the door before they reached her. The tile was slippery, but she didn’t slow down.

  The door was so close. So close.

  She grabbed the handle and wrenched it open, almost expecting everything to be dark outside.

  Strangely, it wasn’t.

  Blinking into the daylight, she ducked away from the blue SUV she’d ridden in to get here and crouched behind the nearby Dumpster. Her heart ricocheted around inside her chest, and she knew she couldn’t stay here.

  She had no phone, no way to communicate, and there was nothing between her and the airport.

  She’d have to run for it. A shout on the other side of the door got her going, and she’d only taken about eight strides before something banged behind her.

  Don’t look back, she told herself. Just go.

  Jim shouted, and Sami focused on a black truck that had just pulled into the drop-off lane at the airport. It was easily a few hundred yards away, and Sami’s idea of exercise was throwing Rusty a ball in the park.

  Fueled by adrenaline or the warmth of the day outside—which was laughable, but completely true compared to the freezer—Sami pumped her arms and legs, telling her lungs they could breathe later.