Page 89 of Tactical Revival

“I’m here! Jaxson!” A hand cracks across my face, and I groan, my mouth filling with copper tang. Daniel and the lions. I can do this.

“I am going to find her,” Jaxson growls. “And when I do, you will receive no mercy at my hand.”

“That’s not very becoming for a man of God,” the man replies.

“Tell me where she is.”

“I think I’ll let you figure this one out for yourself, Detective. Have fun fishing.”

The door opens again and a second masked figure walks in. Bile rises in my throat when I see the vial and syringe in their hands.

“Jaxson!” I scream. “They have a—” The person ends the call and tosses the phone to the side. “No. Please no. Don’t do this!”

“You’re a distraction for the detective, and I need him focused.”

Daniel and the lions. I can do this. “You don’t have to do this. You can let me go.”

“No, we can’t. We have plans, Margot, and they don’t include you.” The second person fills a syringe, then offers it to the first person. They start toward me, and I take a deep breath, once again turning to my God.

Father, please give me strength. I have to survive for Matty. Please let me go home to him.

As soon as the person is close enough, I slam my head into theirs. Pain rings in my ears, but instead of focusing on it, I throw my chair back, hoping that the fall will break it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t, but I still try to fight the hold, doing everything I can to loosen at least one of the ropes.

My heart pounds.

The first person stands and rips the mask from their face.

Nothing would have prepared me for the shock as I find myself looking back at someone I’ve known my entire life. “Patty?”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” the second person snarls, then rips their mask off. “You weren’t supposed to let her see your face, Mom!” Lanetti rushes forward and lifts my chair up off of the ground.

“I don’t understand. You were kidnapped,” I say as I try to piece everything together.

“I only needed Jaxson to think I’d been kidnapped,” she snaps. “So he’d turn to me, where he belongs. Instead, you kept getting in the way.” She moves around in front of me. “It’s always ‘Margot this, Margot that.’ Ugh, it’s exhausting!” Bending over, she lifts the syringe her mom dropped. “You would think he would’ve noticed me, but no, he was always only looking at you.”

“This is about Jaxson?”

“Are you really this slow? No wonder Chad left you.”

“He—you shot Chad!” I say to Patty.

“He had it coming.”

“You taught us math in high school. You were our teacher!”

“Which is how I know he deserved it.”

“But the cards. The B&B. The fire. It was all you?” I ask.

Lanetti smiles at me, but the girl who used to babysit my son, who served me coffee at the diner, is nowhere to be seen. “The card thing was clever, wasn’t it? It took some deep digging into Jaxson’s background to find that. Of course, I hadn’t been looking for that in particular, just something I could use to get him to notice me, and when I read about the cards, I thought it was brilliant. After all, he stole my heart, so using them to capture his seemed fitting.”

“The girl wasn’t supposed to survive, though. I’m just glad they didn’t find the card.”

“What? What girl?”

She arches a brow. “No need to worry, we got the dose right this time. Just needed a little more.” She steps forward.

“We need to handle this,” Patty says. “We can’t risk getting caught.”

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