“Damn it! I said I didn’t want to hurt you!” He gripped her shoulders and pulled her to her feet, his hands surprisingly gentle compared to how rough she expected a kidnapper to be. She focused on the door, feeling her knees give out as she strained to pull away.
“Let. Me. Go!” Her voice came out louder than she thought. Her throat swelled like it was filled with cotton.
Wrapping her in an embrace, Jesse kept her upright. His chest smelled of stale cologne and sweat. It was similar to Brad’s smell after he finished working out at the gym, and she almost gagged with the realization that she might never see him again. Or maybe it was something else. That smell could make her do anything she was told.
“Let you go? No, no, we can’t do that.” He steered her to the bed, but she didn’t fight. She couldn’t. She was limp and heavy like a wet towel that would never dry. “Stay here on the bed.” He helped her lie down on the flower-patterned blanket and picked up his poetry book that he had dropped. “Eric will kill you if you try to run again.”
Kill her? He hadn’t said it sarcastically, and she believed him. A smudge of dried blood stained the pillow. She held her breath as she rested her cheek on it. Jesse sat on the opposite bed to watch her. She fought the desperate urge to curl into a ball and cry, but it was too late. Tears were already forming. A cold burst of air from across the room made her jump. The door closed. Oh, crap. That was probably Eric.
“Is she awake?”
Jesse nodded as a man walked between the beds. His jeans were dirty and wrinkled around the knees.
“She doesn’t remember anything, Eric. It looks like this was all for nothing.”
“What?” Eric leaned down to look her in the face. He had dark brown eyes. His mouth was drawn into a taut line. “Sit up.”
She obeyed and squeezed her knees to her chest. He was older than Jesse. She guessed maybe forty. The oddest thing of all was how nice he looked, almost handsome. He was clean-cut except for the black scruff on his jaw. His thick, carefully shaped sideburns were knifelike.
“What did you see in the parking lot?” he asked.
It was hard to make her voice come out. She was sure he wanted a specific answer. He wanted her to say something about the car and the headlights.
“I don’t remember very much,” she said and looked up just as his fist met her cheek. She hadn’t expected that.
“You don’t have to hit her!” she heard Jesse yell as her head collided with the headboard. She kept the scream bundled inside her throat. If she let it out he would hit her again, she was sure of it.
“You said you wouldn’t hurt her.” Jesse glared at Eric.
“Shut up.”
Naomi pressed two fingers to her numb cheek. Her face felt broken. She couldn’t tell if she was crying. She had to stay calm and give them what they wanted. That was the only way out of this mess. If there was a way out without getting herself killed.
“Like hell, you don’t remember.” Eric curled his upper lip into a snarl. “Even if you don’t, it doesn’t matter now. You’ve seen us.” He pulled her off the bed, past Jesse, and into the bathroom.
“What are you doing?” Jesse asked.
Eric glanced down at the poetry still gripped in Jesse’s hand. “Ditch the damn book and help me out. Go get the scissors.” He wrapped a cold hand around Naomi’s neck and leaned her over the sink with a fierce shove. Her tears dropped into the porcelain sink. She was crying. Great. So much for staying brave. Of course, she had never thought of herself as particularly brave. This was not a situation in which she would shine.
Her lip was bleeding, turning her tears pink as they slipped down the drain. She wondered why these men didn’t just kill her. Not that she wanted them to, but keeping her alive meant they were going to do something with her, and that was what she didn’t want to think about in any amount of detail.
“Here.” Jesse stepped into the bathroom and handed Eric a pair of office scissors, the kind with the bright orange handle. Her dad had a pair of those in his office. She remembered cutting her own hair with them when she was six. Her nanny had spanked her so hard she couldn’t sit down for the rest of the day.
Eric snatched the scissors from Jesse and pushed her head down farther. He parted her hair in the middle. It was so long it coiled into the basin of the sink like two golden snakes. She stared at it, somewhat relieved. At least he wasn’t planning on stabbing her. She hoped. She repeated the same phrase in her head over and over—
stay calm, stay calm, stay calm.
Her body relaxed.
“Don’t,” Eric said when her knees wobbled and her body went limp. He shoved her against the counter before she fell over.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled into the sink. The little resolve she had left was unraveling quickly, and she couldn’t tie it back together fast enough. All she wanted to do was curl up into a ball and cry.
He finished the first section in four strokes and moved to the other side. He yanked. He tugged. He had obviously never cut hair before. When he gripped her shoulders and forced her to straighten, she stared at herself.
Her hair was gone. He had cut it a few inches above her shoulders. She gripped the counter so hard she thought her fingers might break. What was this? Why? Why any of this?
“Take off your sweater.”
After wiping the last of the blood from her lips, she pulled off her hoodie. It was the one Brad had bought her at the mall a year ago. She handed it over, hoping he wouldn’t ask her to take off anything else. She would freak out if he did. If Brad ever met this man, he would break his neck.
“Take your earrings out.”
She lifted a hand to her ear. “Why?”
“Because I said so, that’s why.” He leaned forward as he spit the words at her.
The earrings were a Christmas gift from her parents. Or what they wanted to call a gift, taking her to the jewelry store two days before the holiday to pick them out. Two diamond studs, a full carat each. Had she been kidnapped for ransom? Her parents had a lot of money, but that didn’t seem to be what these men wanted.
Eric slipped the earrings into his pocket. “It would be a hell of a lot easier to kill you, but I don’t want to do that if I don’t have to.” He shrugged. “It’s your choice. If you try to escape, I’ll kill you. If you want to live, stay with us and do exactly what we say.”
She took a step back.
“You’re not a fighter,” he said, rubbing the knuckles of the hand he had hit her with. “That’s good.”
The rest of her strength unraveled as she realized the truth of what he said. Of course she wasn’t a fighter. If she was, she would have kicked him in the balls by now, or slammed her elbow into his stomach, or bitten his arm. Anything but do whatever he said. She lowered her eyes.
He filled a plastic cup with water and set two pills on the counter. “Take those.
They were blue and round, bitter and tart on her tongue as she swallowed them. She convinced herself they were only to make her sleep because she didn’t have any will left to resist. She took another step back and glanced at the toilet. She needed to pee.
“You need to go?”
She nodded, and when he didn’t move she realized he was going to stay there the whole time. He cleared his throat and turned around.
Could she do this? She had to.
Unzipping her pants, she pulled them down and sat on the toilet, her face growing hotter by the second. Her urine hitting the water was the loudest, most embarrassing sound she had ever heard. She squeezed her eyes shut. She felt naked. The only person who had ever seen her naked outside of childhood was Brad, and now this idiot man could turn around and watch her pee and there was nothing she could do about it. Where was Brad? What had happened? Why was going to the bathroom taking so long? At least the man wasn’t watching. His name was Eric. Was it wrong to think of him by his name? How long would she have to do that?
Finally, she finished. “I’m done,” she said after zipping up her jeans. She flushed the toilet.
He led her back to the bed. “Lie down and stay quiet.” He watched her crawl under the blankets and curl into a ball.
On the other bed, Jesse looked up from his book. Naomi closed her eyes and turned away from him before she could decide if his compassionate expression was well-intentioned or not. At least they hadn’t tied her up, but what would they do to her once she was asleep? She hugged herself and breathed slowly for what seemed like hours. Blank slate. She had to push her mind somewhere safe, somewhere empty. Then the men started to talk.
“How much did you get?” Jesse asked.
“Three-fifty. Better than we thought. Your friend says there’s a push for gold overseas. We’ll head home tonight once the pills knock her out.”
Their words were starting to slur and fade in her head. Great. Why now when she could maybe pick up something useful from their conversation? She probably wouldn’t remember any of this. Stupid pills. She should have pretended to swallow them, but a part of her wanted to fade away and never wake up.
“Did they get everything ready? You’re sure you want to go through with this?”
“Of course I’m sure. I left the choice up to Evie, and this is what she wants. It’ll work out. It’s my own damn fault. I didn’t see her in all that fog until it was too late, and who the hell knows if she’s telling the truth?” He cleared his throat and it sounded like a train wreck inside her head through whatever drugs he had given her. “We’ll need to clean up in here before we leave. Fingerprints, hair, everything. We can’t leave anything behind. She’s all over the news now. Is she out yet?”
A hand touched her arm. Her body jerked, but she couldn’t open her eyes.
“Getting there.”
The hand lingered on her elbow, warm and pressing. It slid up her skin, a gentle, trembling stroke. Then it was gone.
II
KAREN JENSEN LOVED HER OFFICE. SHE loved the thick, leather-bound law volumes lined neatly on the bookshelves. She loved the smell of coffee from down the hall. She especially loved the windows behind her desk overlooking the city and the ocean beyond that. It was often dark when she left for work early in the morning and always dark when she went home late at night. Traffic moved down below, but she was so far removed from it that it couldn’t possibly bother her. Anna, her secretary, always let her know ahead of time if there was an accident or construction and which route would get her home fastest. Anna was a lifesaver.
This morning as Karen entered her office and flipped on the light, she sensed something was wrong. Anna had already arrived. That was odd; she usually didn’t show up until nine. Karen glanced at her watch. It was only eight. She peeked into the adjoining office where Anna was hunched over her desk, one hand supporting her chin as she drowsed in front of her computer monitor.
“Anna, what are you doing?”
The girl jumped and spun around in her chair. “Karen!”
Anna was twenty-eight, thin, alert, and quirky—a breath of fresh air every time Karen looked at her. The girl could talk faster than a spinning top, but Karen liked that. She liked her wildly curly, chestnut-brown hair and dramatic hazel eyes that flickered about like two moths trying to find their way out of a room.
Today, however, Anna looked anything but quirky. Dark circles sagged underneath her eyes. Her hair was limp.
“Karen,” she repeated, and rolled her chair back from her desk. Her face drained of color as if she was seeing a ghost. “What are you doing here? I thought you wouldn’t come back for weeks, or until Naomi is found. I thought—”
“Forget what you thought.” Karen waved her hand. “There’s nothing I can do about Naomi right now. The detectives are on the case. The press is having a field day, and I’ve got clients with cases that aren’t going to wait just because I have a personal crisis going on in the background. I already missed yesterday.”
“Personal crisis?”
“Yes, isn’t that what this is?”
Anna blinked. “Yes, and you should be home.”
“Doing what? Crying? Fretting? What is
that
going to solve? Anna, be realistic for two seconds.”
Karen straightened her shoulders and tried to force her thoughts away from yesterday morning when Brad had shown up just before breakfast. Naomi was missing. She had been missing for two days, but Brad was too afraid to tell anyone he couldn’t find her. He had stood on the front porch with his hands shoved into his pockets, his blond hair falling in his eyes as he confessed that he had hit Naomi in the face the night before she disappeared, and maybe that’s why she was gone. Karen knew her husband, Jason, would likely scream at the boy for ten minutes if he heard such a confession, so she kept that quiet when he arrived home to a house full of police officers asking questions. But it all came out later, anyway.
“I
am
being realistic.” Anna’s voice interrupted her thoughts.
So much for not thinking about yesterday. Karen gave Anna a cold look and headed for her desk. She didn’t have time for this. She sat in her chair and looked up at Anna, who seemed to be fighting the urge to put on the crusty glare usually reserved for her ex-boyfriend when he called her at work.
“Anna,” she said in a calm voice, smoothing the wrinkles out of her blouse and adjusting her pearl necklace. “The police are trying to find Naomi. Nothing more can be done right now. We spent yesterday searching our area with the police, and I’ve hired my own private detective to work with them as well. I’ve seen enough in the courtroom to know how pointless it is for me to get involved with the investigation right now. I’d only be a nuisance. This early on she could show up any second. She’s almost eighteen, and she only wants to exert her independence. I’m sure that’s all this is.”