by Sophia Gray
Sage immediately set about trying to undo my bindings, but she made no headway and had to scramble away when Trenton came back inside ten minutes later.
“Lunch,” he announced cheerily, and he provided us with fast food like it was a feast. He stayed and ate with us—Sage had to feed me because he refused to untie me—and talked about how great their future was going to be.
Sage did her best to sound excited, and she did a decent enough job at it. The poor girl wasn’t an actress, but Trenton didn’t seem to notice. As for me, I didn’t say a damn thing.
But when he left again, I called Sage over. “My cell. It dropped on the floor after Trenton hit me with the gun. Did he take it?”
“In the aftermath, I put my foot on top of it and shoved it underneath the bed. I forgot all about it.” She was already on the floor, digging around. “There,” she said triumphantly, holding it up above her head after she climbed back out.
“Good.” A lucky break for once. Watch. The battery will be dead. “Call Grant.”
She pushed buttons on it then hesitated. “You really…”
“Yes. It’s not what you think.” My stomach twisted. Maybe it wasn’t what I thought either. Then again, what did I think? I had originally only slept with Grant to feel good. I figured it out just be a one-time thing. Even then, I’d figured Grant probably slept around a lot, and Trenton claimed that, too. It wasn’t hard to believe it. Did Grant care enough about me to come?
Of course he did. He wanted to find Trenton and Sage, too. If he found them, he’d find me. But first he had to learn where we were and that I had been taken.
Sage was staring at me, the phone in her lap.
“I swear,” I added, “we were just—”
“I’m glad,” she said quietly. “You deserve to find someone. From what Trenton said…Never mind. Can’t trust a damn thing out of his mouth.” She pressed one more button and held the phone up to her ear.
Trenton burst in. He spied the phone, and his face fell. He grabbed it out of Sage’s hand. “Why do you have this? Who else do you need?” His eyes turned stormy. “You weren’t about to call the cops, were you?”
“I was gonna call Corinne,” she lied. “We’re gonna get married, right? I have to have a maid of honor. You know it’s gonna be Corinne, and we have so much planning to do. Flowers and the reception and—”
“You know we’re gonna have to elope. I might be getting some money, but it won’t be a lot. Not enough for a wedding and reception and for us to survive.”
“Even if we elope, we still gotta have witnesses,” Sage said. “Let me just call Corinne and see when she’s free.”
“You weren’t gonna call the cops?” His gaze shifted toward me. “Or Grant?”
“Do we really have to go through with this?” she asked quietly. “Do you really have to hold my mom for ransom? Can’t we just leave and—”
“You know they’ll follow us.”
“We can use different names,” she cried.
Different names? My God, they were in a mess of trouble if she felt the need to suggest that!
He stared down at the phone. “You called Corinne.” His face was one of such hope and love that I had to blink. Wow. This guy really was off his rockers. He was nuts.
But he was truly in love with Sage, as twisted as that love was.
“No. Wait. That’s a missed call. You dialed Grant.”
“My finger slipped.”
“Babe, you’re starting to piss me off.” Trenton began to pace in the room, clutching my cell so tightly in his hand I was afraid it was gonna break. “I let you have your phone because I knew you would call your mom and lead her here.”
She flushed.
My eyes widened. Had she tried to steal her cell back from him? I hadn’t even thought about why she had waited so long to text me. Maybe Trenton had taken her phone away, and then she “stole” it back to text me.
But it seemed like it had been a test, and even though she had texted me and had led me here, it still seemed like she failed.
“I wanted you to prove yourself, to show you loved me and really wanted to be with me, but all you wanted to do was leave.”
“No, Trenton, that’s not true. I—”
“Yes, it is. You were crying so much. Nothing I could say or do made you happy anymore. Don’t you still want to be with me? You said forever.” He looked so crestfallen. Was he playing her, playing us, even as we were trying to play him? I didn’t think he was acting.
But even if he did love her, this was all so wrong. You didn’t get into drugs to make money if you wanted to have a long, lasting relationship with someone. No. You found a real job and paid the bills and paid the rest of your dues. You crawled your way up the ladder. That was how you made a name for yourself. That was how you lived.
Love, that was a bonus, but that also needed work. Hard work. It wasn’t about being with just anybody. It was about being with someone who challenged you, who made you see the world in a different way. It was about give and take. It was about more than just fucking.
Thinking about love made me think about Grant. We hadn’t known each other for that long, but in a lot of ways, I felt like I had known him for a long, long time. We were different, but we weren’t too different.
I wanted to spend more time with Grant. I wanted to know all of his hopes and dreams. More than that, I wanted to help make his hopes and dreams come true. I wanted them to be aligned with my own hopes and dreams. I wanted him to help me out of this situation, but I also wanted him in my life.
A terrible situation had thrown us together, but that situation would’ve been that much worse if we never would’ve crossed paths.
A chance encounter…or maybe not. I didn’t really believe in coincidences. Maybe fate had brought Grant and I together.
I cast a sideways glance at Trenton and Sage. Maybe fate had brought them together, too, but to what end? So Trenton could kill us? So Trenton could end up dead from the other drug dealers? Or so Sage could hit rock bottom and learn and grow and finally be the woman I had always wanted her to be?
Only time would tell.
Too bad time might be the one thing we were running out of.
Chapter 16
Victoria
My nerves were on fire. “Forever,” I said, my voice trembling with agitation. I took a calming breath. “Forever is a really long time.”
“Yeah. So?” Trenton grimaced. “You never wanted me with Sage in the first place, let alone forever.”
I cocked my head to the side and glanced at my tied wrists before looking at him again.
He flushed. “I…”
“Forever shouldn’t start out this way,” I said quietly. “Let me go and—”
“No.” He shook his head. “I want to, but I can’t.”
“Please.” Sage threw her arms around his waist and laid her head on his chest. “Just let my mom go. I’ll stay. I swear. I said forever, and I mean it.”
“Your finger didn’t slip. You wanted to call Grant. You wanna leave.” He shook his head. “Grant will come, all right. He’ll bring the money, and then you can go.”
Her gaze locked with mine. “You’ll allow my mom to come to the wedding, won’t you?” she asked.
Trenton flushed. “I don’t think—”
“She’s my mom!” Her eyes brightened. She was really starting to get into this acting thing. Sage clapped her hands. “I know! Let’s get married now!”
What in the world? But you needed a wedding license. They didn’t have one, right? Please tell me they didn’t have one.
Trenton shook his head. “We can’t—”
“Sure, we can! I have a nice white dress back at the apartment. I can go and grab it. Take a long shower. My mom can do my hair. I’m sure we can find a worker at the courthouse to be our second witness.”
“You’re not leaving,” he growled.
“Right. It’ll save time if you go and get it while I shower.” Sage giggled.
“There’s no reason to wait.”
“You just want me to leave so you two can try to escape. I’m not stupid, Sage.” He gently pushed her away.
“Can you blame me?” She crossed her arms, and her eyes flashed. “Yes, I was crying. Yes, I was scared. You were scared, too. You’re still scared. That’s why we’re still here! The money won’t change anything. Us…” She grabbed his hands. “We’re all that matters. Not Mom. Not Grant. Not any of them. Let’s just go—”
“Damn it, Sage. You know we can’t.”
“We can! We—”
I cleared my throat. I’d heard enough. “I can write you a check for one hundred thousand. That enough for you to start over somewhere?”
Trenton gripped Sage to his side. “We’d be followed, and we’d be killed. We gotta pay them off.”
“We,” I repeated. “They know about Sage?”
I wasn’t quite sure who the they were, and I had a feeling I didn’t want to know.
“Don’t worry about it. Just stop talking about money. Stop talking about leaving. We’re staying put, and that’s final.” He released Sage and walked over to me, squeezing my chin so hard it hurt. “I would stop putting ideas into your daughter’s head if I were you.”
“But—”
“But nothing.” He released his hold on me so fast my head jerked to the side.
“Trenton,” Sage started.
“Don’t Trenton me. This will all work out. I swear it will. Just let me do what I gotta do, all right? Then we won’t have to worry about a thing. We won’t be followed, and we can get married, and we can be free to do whatever we want.”
I swallowed hard. He wasn’t getting Sage. He wasn’t going to get his way. He was desperate enough to kidnapping and ransom. What would he be capable of once he realized Sage was playing him?
“Let’s watch some—” His cell rang, cutting him off. Trenton mumbled a curse and left the room, banging he door shut behind him.
“Go to the window,” I instructed. “See if he’s out front or if you can make a break for it.”
Sage shook her head. “Don’t you think I would’ve left earlier if I could’ve? This place is a dump. It’s so old that it doesn’t have electronic keycard access. He locks the door from the outside. He switched the lock around when we got here.”
What a psycho.
“Well, not right when we got here. Once he couldn’t handle my…” Sage sniffed. “My crying. Oh God, Mom, I’m so sorry. I should’ve…I should’ve listened to you. I should’ve realized…I just thought he loved me, and I loved him and…”
“It’s all right,” I murmured. “It’s all right.”
It took me some time to console her. Once she finally stopped crying, I could hear footsteps outside and a mumbled voice. Trenton wasn’t leaving anything to chance. He was right outside.
“You don’t have your cell on you, right?” I asked.
She shook her head. “He took it away once he realized I made contact with you. I thought he hadn’t realized I took it, but he knew. He knows. Mom, what are we gonna do?”
Good question. Not that I had an answer for her.
I glanced around the room, desperate for anything that my help, and my gaze fell onto the room phone. “Does that work?”
“Nope.”
“Of course not,” I mumbled. “Did he rig it?”
“I think so.”
We were locked in without a phone. No way to call for help. No way to warn Grant that Trenton was desperate, so desperate that he couldn’t be trusted. No way to let Grant know Trenton had a gun. No way for me to get free. No way to talk our way out of this mess.
What were we gonna do? And would we survive whatever was to come next?
Grant, if you’re coming, be safe. Be smart. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Don’t you dare play the fucking hero and come here by yourself. We have to play our cards right. We have to be smart. We can’t become like Trenton. We can’t be desperate.
I cleared my throat. “We’ve gotta have a plan…”
Chapter 17
Grant
There was one quick detour I had to take before I could go after Victoria and Sage, and it wasn’t the bank. Trenton wasn’t going to get one cent from me. It wasn’t that I wasn’t willing to pay up. I had the money, and I would pay double that to get Victoria back if that was the only way to get her back.
But it wasn’t the only way.
Courtesy of the men in the car, I now knew for a fact that Trenton’s problem laid with the brutes at Cowboy’s Lasso. Trenton was only a symptom. The root of the problem lay there. It was always best to go after the problem at its root.
By now, my phone had died, but it wasn’t as if I needed to call Victoria again. I knew where she was. True, Trenton might call back, but he could leave a message. I wasn’t too concerned about that right now.
It was just after noon when I arrived at the bar. I strolled inside, and I couldn’t help feeling like I had walked into an old saloon, the kind where people would have shootouts. Well, I was carrying my gun, so if it came to it, I could draw.
“We’re not open yet,” a waitress said as she buzzed around tables, fixing the salts and peppers.
“I’m not here for food.”
She gave me a second glance and slowly smiled. “What are you looking for?” she flirted.
I grimaced. “Your boss.”
Her lips tugged into a pout. “He’s not—”
“He is.” I took a step toward her.
She backed away, slamming into another table. “He’s not here,” she insisted.
“Then where is he?” I growled.
“I’m right here.” I glanced over to see a man who looked like he had once weighed a decent amount but had lost it really fast so he had excess skin. He was short, with beady eyes, and he kept sniffing, his nose red. He’d come out from the back and walked around the bar to where the seating area began. “What do you want?” he asked.
“You the owner?” I demanded.
“So what if I am?” He lifted his chin. “Dolores, take five.”
“You sure?” The waitress scampered out of there faster than a jackrabbit.
“We gonna have a problem?” the owner asked.
“Depends.” I glowered at him. “You gonna cooperate?”
“Only with friends.” He crossed his arms. Despite the weight issue, he had some muscle on him, but I could take him. I spent an hour at the gym five days a week.
“I’ll be your friend.”
His lips twisted into a sneer. “It’ll cost ya.”
What the fuck was it with him and Trenton wanting my money?
“I’ll buy you a beer.” That was all I would offer him.
He laughed, the sound deep and echoing in the empty bar. “I prefer something else to be honest with ya.”
“Oh, a fruity drink?”
Again, the owner laughed, but this time it sounded a little cold. “A wise guy, huh?”
“Or wise ass. Take your pick.” I shrugged.
Now the laugh seemed more genuine.
“You prefer the hard stuff,” I surmised.
He nodded.
“Cocaine or heroin?”
His eyes clouded over. “Get the fuck out of here before I—”
“What? Call the cops?” I stalked around the tables and booths and only halted when I stood directly in front of him. “You and I both know that’s not gonna happen.”
He reached for his side.
I reached for mine.
The owner slowly moved his hand, lifting it. “Now, now. Take it easy, there.”
“I’ll take it easy once I got what I came for.”
His eyes narrowed so much I could hardly see them. “What exactly is it you want?”
“Nothing really.” I kept my hand on the handle of my gun but didn’t put it out. I didn’t want to fire it any more than he wanted to be shot. When it came to threats against myself, I tended to not react with violence, but if you
came after my family, well, that was another story. I would use violence if pushed enough. I wasn’t quite pushed enough at the second, but that could change in an instant, and I would be ready if this guy crossed the line.
