David
Only one time before had John and Jeffery taken me out to their gym in the middle of nowhere. And as I drove around in the dead of night, I wasn’t having any luck finding it.
I hadn’t called Brent or the police to tell anyone what I was doing. I thought it best if I went alone. I did bring my gun along just to be on the safe side—a thing I knew the cops wouldn’t allow if I’d brought them in on this.
The detectives might not have even come with me if I had called them. They seemed to be pretty damn sure that I was behind my wife’s disappearance—either that I had done something to her or she’d just left me.
This was a thing I needed to do all on my own. Brent would’ve come along with me—I knew that. But I didn’t want to put him in danger. The man had a wife and kids to think about. He didn’t need to get involved in anything as dangerous as this—if I was right, and the men had taken Kaye to their hidden gym.
It had been about a year since we’d stopped there that one day. I had the main road figured out, but I didn’t have a clue as to what little road branched off it that would lead me to their place.
Struggling to remember any signs or landmarks that would get me to my wife faster, I racked my brain. As I passed a large tree with moss on the lower branches, it triggered a memory.
“I’ve seen that tree before!”
A little dirt road came up a few feet past it, and I turned onto it. My headlights poured down the road in front of me, not illuminating a single building as I headed down it.
Since it had been a driver that took us, I wasn’t sure if the road had been paved or dirt. I hadn’t paid that much attention to things that day. Much the same way that I hadn’t been paying attention to what was apparently going on in my home for a while.
With time, I had become complacent—only the last few months had changed that. It all started when I had a dream about Kaye. I could hear her voice, calling out to me, but I couldn’t find her. She kept shouting that he had her, and he wouldn’t let her go.
It was that dream that started what she called my jealous spree. But I had this instinctive feeling that someone was after her.
Had the bodyguards taken her simply to hurt me? Or did one of them have a secret desire for her? Was she even kidnapped?
Or had Kaye left with them all on her own?
I prayed she hadn’t. I prayed that she didn’t have it in her to lie to me, cheat on me, kill me—in ways only she could.
No matter if she had gone on her own with them or not, I was taking my wife back to where she belonged. Our home.
If she were cheating on me, then we would get counseling. I would do anything I had to in order to make things right between us again.
My cell rang, and I glanced over at it on the passenger seat. Brent’s name flashed on the screen. I picked it up to answer it, “Hello, Brent.”
“Why do I have the feeling that you’re not at home, David Black?” he asked me.
“I guess because you know me too well,” I answered.
His tone was somber as he said, “That I do. So, where are you?”
“In the middle of nowhere.” It occurred to me that it might be a good idea if someone knew approximately where I was going just in case anything happened to me. “I should’ve called you now that I’m thinking about it.”
“Yeah, you should’ve,” he agreed.
“I had an idea about the bodyguards. One time last year, they had to stop by a gym they set up outside of town. I’m off Route Four. There’s this huge tree that has moss growing on the lower branches. You take the dirt road that’s just after it on the right. At least that’s where I think the place is. I’m driving down it right now, but I haven’t seen anything yet.” Another even smaller dirt road came up on my left. “Whoa. I may have found it. There’s another little dirt road that goes off to the left. I’m taking it.”
“You shouldn’t have gone alone, David,” he lectured me. “What if something happens to you? What if you get shot or something?”
“I brought my own gun. And I’ll have the element of surprise, too. Plus, I’m one pissed-off husband with right on his side.” I spotted a black car that was pulled up underneath a tree. “Hey, I see a car that looks like someone is trying to hide. I think I’ve found the place, Brent.”
“Do yourself a favor and stop right where you’re at. Call the cops and let them handle things,” he cautioned me.
“I don’t want to wait.” I parked the car behind the one I’d found, and then got out to look around. “Okay, I’m going to have to call you back. I see something up ahead, but I don’t want to be talking and possibly alert them to my presence.”
“David, don’t do this,” he begged me. “Please, man!”
“I have to.” I ended the call, and then tossed the phone back into my car before closing the door and heading toward the only structure that I could see in the black night.
She has to be in t
Kaye
Wallowing in self-pity, I wiggled as much as I could to get away from John’s dead body. The idea of it was making me sick. The whole thing was making me sick.
In the pit of my stomach was the overwhelming fear that no one would be able to find me. All I knew was that I couldn’t hear a damn thing except for crickets. All that told me was that I was out in the woods—somewhere.
Who would come looking for me out in the woods?
No one, that’s who.
I was sure David would call the police. What I wasn’t sure of was if they would put two and two together and figure out who actually took me.
And even as I had that thought, another one formed. David might not call the police.
He may have thought that I left on my own. I had no idea what Jeffrey and John may have done. Maybe they’d packed a suitcase, filling it with my clothes and toiletries. Maybe they’d even went so far as to take one of the cars, as if I’d left on my own. Hell, they may have even typed a letter to David for all I knew.
My hope went away in a flash, and I cried even harder. As hard as I cried, it only sounded like whimpers. My throat was sore and dry as hell from the stupid rag that had been shoved in my mouth.
Everything hurt on me—even my heart that knew this might be my ending.
Never had I thought that I would die this way. Tied to a fucking chair, covered in a deranged man’s blood, and as hopeless as I had ever been.
I’d been pretty damn sure that after our fight David had called up Brent, and the two of them had gone to a bar. He loved to drown his sorrows at this little pub in town.
What if David was passed out drunk, not even knowing that I was gone?
That could certainly be the case after all. He could’ve tied one on, Brent could’ve seen him safely home, and then he could’ve crashed on a sofa in any one of the many living areas in our home.
He might not even be aware that I’m not there at all!
My thoughts were just serving to compound my hopelessness even more. I was trained to think positively, to not give up. But I saw no hope in my situation.
The only thing I had going for me was that the two assholes who had taken me had killed each other. At the very least, I didn’t have to worry about them doing a damn thing to me.
Unfortunately, that didn’t help me a whole hell of a lot. If one of them had been left alive and not in such terrible shape as John had been in, then I could’ve talked them into untying me. Or so I thought anyway.
Lying on the floor on my side and facing a dead man, looked like how I was going to stay for however long it took me to die. And then someone, someday would find our bones all intertwined and most likely think we were into kinky shit, and that I was down with it.
I hoped no one would be that damn stupid, but I didn’t have a lot of hope about anything.
My fate had changed. Once I was just a hospice nurse who kindly cared for a wealthy dying man, and he’d left me his fortune. Fate had been good to me then.
Fate had also made sure David and I met. Sure, it was pretty terrible when I found out that he’d only married me to get the money that he thought was rightfully his. Being the grandson of the man who’d given me everything he had, I could see why he would do such a thing.
I had always been so empathetic. It was part of the reason I was a great nurse. I could put myself into just about anyone’s shoes to see things from their perspective.
But I couldn’t do that with Jeffery or John. No, I could find no empathy or sympathy for either of them.
In my opinion, they’d gotten better than they even deserved. Death was far easier on them than the penal system would’ve been. They’d cheated me out of everything: my family, my career, my life—and seeing them punished for what they’d done to me.
They’d taken it all away from me. And they told themselves it was because of love.
“You fucking idiots!” I yelled as loud as I could. The fury consuming me spilled out, and I was red hot with rage at the two men who’d ruined my life.
I’d had a pretty damn great life up until a few months ago. And even the months when I thought my husband was going a little crazy weren’t so bad.
The mess I was in now—this was bad. This was far worse than anything I could’ve even dreamt up. Lying on the floor with a dead man wrapped around me wasn’t a thing I could’ve ever seen coming my way.
My body sagged, drained of all the energy I’d spent on yelling and being angry. “I’ve got to conserve my strength if I want to make it out of this thing alive.”
And then I realized that hope wasn’t gone entirely. There had to be some spark of it left somewhere deep inside of me for me to have that thought.
The morning would come. Hopefully, there would be light to help me see things more clearly.
It was awfully hard to form a plan in the pitch black. Morning would come, and I would see a way to get myself out of the mess I was in.
I had to believe that!