Billionaire Decoded (16 page)

Heather sagged into the arms of one
of her attackers. Blackness threatened to overtake her. She tried to fight,
tried to hold them off, but with her head exploding with pain, her vision
blurred, and her limbs weak and uncoordinated, she felt herself being lifted
and then shoved into the back seat of the sedan, where finally, blessedly, darkness
enveloped her and she sank into unconsciousness.

*

Heather opened her eyes, but she
could see nothing. Darkness enveloped her. Her head pounded. She felt sick to
her stomach and was afraid that she was going to throw up. She was lying on her
side, her hands tied behind her back and her feet bound. Her first instinct was
to cry, but she blinked back tears and tried to figure out where the hell she
was. She wasn't in the sedan. It was quiet. She didn't sense anyone around her.

It was so dark! She tried to
struggle into an upright position and finally managed, ignoring her dizziness,
every cell in her body tense with alarm. A van? Was she the back of a delivery
van or something? As her mind slowly began to focus and her vision cleared, she
bit back the pain throbbing on the side of her head as she tried to look
through the windows. It was either pitch black outside or the windows had been
covered with a blanket or something. She felt sticky wetness at the base of her
neck, and knew that bitch Alyson had struck her hard enough to split her skin
open and cause her to bleed.

What the hell was going on? Was this
about Brecken? Was Alyson really
that
crazy?
Was she really going to kidnap her, possibly even kill her because she was
jealous? Heather couldn't believe it. Never in her life would she have thought
she would find herself in such a situation. The last thing she remembered was
Alyson telling her she was pregnant. With Brecken's child. Her heart sank. She
felt like a fool. A naïve, gullible fool.

She had allowed money and the perks
that Brecken had promised to sway her to take the job at his firm, even when
she had felt a niggling of uncertainty. She should've listened to her gut,
trusted her instincts. Dug a little deeper. Now, here she was, injured and tied
up in the back of a van God only knew where. Had she been left here to die? To
starve to death? To die of thirst? Was this how she was going to die?

She tried to work herself free of
her bindings, but the plastic cuffs only tightened and dug deeper into her
skin. Disjointed thoughts raced through her mind. She wanted to see her parents
again. Brecken could fix this; she knew it. In the next instant, she muttered
into the darkness.

"Screw Brecken!" So much
for being completely honest with her. So much for telling her everything that
she needed to know.

She gazed around, looking for
anything that she might use to escape. With her hands tied behind her back, she
didn't think she would be able to do much of anything. She managed to scramble
onto her side and then wiggled her way toward the back of the van. She began to
kick at the doors with her feet. Maybe, if she were lucky, someone would hear
her.

With every kick of her feet against
the metal doors, her head pounded anew. She began to cry out, to scream, hoping
that someone could hear her. She didn't know how long she kept kicking at the
door and screaming, but soon, she felt drained of energy. Her kicks began to
lack strength. Her voice grew hoarse. She began to cry, her fear rising until
panic threatened to overtake her. She tried to tell herself to calm down, but
found herself breathing so heavily she was afraid she was going to
hyperventilate and pass out.

"Calm down," she muttered
to herself. "Calm down. Take a breath. Calm down." She kept repeating
those words until she felt her heart rate slow, just a little bit. She had to
think. She had to focus. She wasn't going to get anywhere if she panicked. She
needed to stay calm. She tried to listen for any sound outside of the van where
she was being held.

There, what was that?
It sounded like equipment. The sound had come from a
distance. Moments later, she heard the sound of a ship’s echoing horn. That
didn't help her any. When the wind was right and the night was quiet, she often
heard the ships in the harbor. Then, as she calmed her breathing still more and
forced herself to take a deep breath to force oxygen into her lungs, she
smelled it: the brackish scent of the bay. She was near the harbor.

But where? In the warehouse
district? If she could manage to get out of the van, she might be able to find
help. She knew that ships were offloaded all night long. She twisted around, trying
to look through the windshield. There, off in the distance, she saw a light
from a lamp. It was fully dark. She had no idea what time it was. The air felt
damp and chilly. Her fear, the surge of adrenaline, and the dampness in the air
made her shiver.

She had to calm down, to think of a
way to get out of here. Maybe she could manage to scramble into the front
seats. Honk the horn. Someone would surely hear and come to investigate. She
had just begun to start crawling her way toward the front of the van when she
heard the sound of voices. She froze as the back door of the van suddenly
opened.

Two dark shapes scrambled into the
back of the van, reaching for her. She twisted onto her back and began to kick
with her feet, screaming.

"Don't touch me! Get away from
me!"

Her feet made contact with
somebody’s shin. She heard the grunt of pain. She felt a brief surge of
satisfaction. Maybe if she aimed a little higher, she could catch one of them
in the balls. And then she heard the chuckle. That bitch. Alyson.

"Stop fighting, Heather,"
she snapped. "You're tied up and you've got nowhere to go, nowhere to be.
What's the big deal?"

Heather continued to fight against
her captors as once again they reached for her. She lashed out with her feet again;
making outraged grunting noises in her throat as she struggled against them.
Suddenly, she was on her feet, lifted between two men. Alyson stood at the back
of the van, peering inside.

"You think you can take Brecken
away from me?" Alyson demanded. "You don't know who you're up
against, you little bitch."

Heather, though terrified, felt a
surge of anger and disgust well up inside her. "You're the psycho
bitch," she muttered.

The two men stepped down from the
van and then dragged Heather after them. In the next instant, she felt a sharp,
stinging slap against her cheek. She snapped her head back, blinking back tears
of fury and pain. She was so mad she was shaking and couldn't help the warm
tears that flooded her eyes.

"You don't know the half of it,
honey," Alyson said. She reached forward and grabbed a handful of
Heather's hair.

Despite her effort not to, Heather
gasped in pain at the yank. She rued the day that she had ever listen to her
friends and filled out the application to work for Shaw & Burks. If she had
known things would turn out this way, she would've run away laughing. Instead,
she now found herself in a dire situation. There was no telling what lengths
someone like Alyson, who was obviously unbalanced, would go. That thought
frightened her more than anything else. Alyson was unstable. Erratic. And,
there was no doubt that she would do whatever she had to do to get Brecken
back.

In the next moment, she was
blindfolded and gagged. She struggled against her captors, listened to Alyson's
taunts, her mind screaming denials, her heart pounding with terror. How was she
going to get away? Were they going to kill her? Could Alyson really be so
unbalanced the she would go to such extremes?

Her ears rang. She felt the edges of
consciousness slipping away. No! She couldn't faint. She couldn't allow herself
to be taken. She had to fight. Even though her struggles were proving
fruitless, she wasn't going to make this easy on her captors or on Alyson. She
screamed, the gag preventing words from coming out, but in her scream, she
implied her rage.

She wished she could do something,
anything. With their hands tied behind her back, she could do nothing. She was
vulnerable and defenseless. She wanted to scratch Alyson’s eyes out, but she
couldn't even do that.

She was roughly manhandled until she
bumped into something hard and metallic. She was slammed forward, her upper
body pressed up against hard metal, her cheek pressed against something cold
beneath it. Then, she heard a latch. It was a trunk. She felt herself being
lifted off the ground and screamed in her throat. She was ignored. Shoved into
the trunk. She had just managed to lift her feet above her, to strike out at
anything when she felt another hard slap against her cheek.

"Shut her up," Alyson
snapped. "I'm through with this."

Her legs struck out at nothing. Air.
And then, she heard the car trunk slam shut. It smelled like oil and gasoline.
She laid on something hard. The tire jack? No, not that big. A tire iron. She
shuffled her position until she lay on her back and began to kick upward with
her knees. Not enough. She wouldn't break the lock this way. She remembered
reading a story about someone who'd been kidnapped and stuffed in a trunk, and
how they had kicked out the tail light of the vehicle. Maybe if she could do
that, a police car would happen by, pull them over for a broken taillight.

She didn't hold out much hope. It
was the middle of the night. She had no idea where they were, other than
somewhere in the vicinity of the harbor. If they were in the warehouse
district, chances of her being found were slim to none. These warehouses and
companies who owned them typically hired their own security. What if these guys
were part of that security? She had no idea, but because she had nothing else
to try, she began to kick at the rear end of the car. She had no idea whether
she was making contact with the lights are not.

Suddenly, the car slammed to a halt.
She rolled forward and hit her head against the metal wheel well. Someone got
out, slammed the car door. Seconds later, someone slammed something down hard
on the trunk hood.

"Knock it off!" a male
voice snarled. "Knock it off or I’ll bash you over the head, you
understand?"

Heather held her breath in terror.
She lay still. Moments later, she heard the card door open. The car dipped as
the driver got back in and then the car started and continued on its way. Oh
God, oh God, how was she going to get out of this? What did they want with her?
Alyson couldn't possibly have kidnapped her, involved other people like this,
just to get back at her for Brecken, could she?
Would
she?

Anyone who went to these lengths had
to be unstable. The fact that Brecken had warned her that Alyson was jealous
was one thing, but for her to be contemplating murder? Was she going to be
driven somewhere, murdered, and then thrown into the harbor? The worst
imaginings and thoughts raced through her mind. Her heart beat so fast the adrenaline
surged through her veins to the point where she thought she would explode. How
long could her heart race that fast without bursting? How long could her head
throb with fear and pain before she succumbed?

She knew she had to try and calm
down, to think of a way to get out of her predicament, but she could think of
nothing. What could she do when she was already blindfolded, gagged, and had
her hands and feet tied? What in heaven's name could she do to save herself?
She began to despair and fought back the tears. She wanted her mother, wanted
to feel her arms around her. She wanted to be at home, lying safe and sound in
her bed. She wanted to live.

Was it possible that all this was
happening because of Brecken? She kept coming back to that thought. Again, she
regretted the moment she had gone in for that interview with him. If she had
known then what she knew now… That was pointless. While she had been alarmed by
her initial encounter with Alyson, she would never have thought the woman would
go to such extremes.

Was she going to become a statistic?
Was she going to disappear, never to be found? She moaned at the horrible
thought. What would her parents do? Would the police look for her?

And all because of Brecken… Did
Alyson have him, too? Was she going to torture them both? Make them both pay?
She didn't know. All she knew was that she was terrified, and she didn't want
to die.

She didn't know how long she was in
the car, but it couldn't have been terribly long. The tears on her cheeks had
not yet dried when she felt the car slow, pull up into a driveway, and make its
way down a gravel path. The tires crunched on loose gravel as they continued to
slow, and then the car came to a complete stop. Her heart began pounding in
renewed fear. Was this it? When they opened the trunk was she going to get
shot? Stabbed? What were they going to do—

She heard the car doors open, one at
a time. Three of them. Slam. Slam. Slam. Then, footsteps were crunching on the
gravel. They were moving to the rear of the car. She realized she was holding
her breath and forced herself to breathe. It wasn’t over yet. She didn't want
to faint. She wasn't going to give in to her overwhelming fear, not in front of
that bitch, Alyson. She heard the key inserted into the lock in the trunk. It
opened and she felt a burst of cold, damp air.

"Get her out of there."

Alyson seemed to be in complete
control, in charge of everything. The problem was that she was out of control.
Her men had killed Brecken’s two guards. The police were certainly on the scene
now at her apartment. Would they know anything about Heather?