Page 66 of His Captor

It wasn’t the time to point out that Mace was the one who had done the research.

“So that’s why you have me sitting here on a mattress, shaking off the effects of being drugged….” I was going to say something else, but a squeezing pain suddenly filled my insides.

No. Absolutely not. I wanted to scold Junior and tell him that now wasnotthe time.

“Two things,” I said, panting a little and trying to shift so that I could stand. I had the instinctive need to walk around. Maybe that would stop the contractions.

“Stay right where you are!” Colin shouted, yanking the gun from his jeans and pointing it at me.

I instantly froze, raising my hands in surrender. Having a gun pointed at me by someone who didn’t know how to use a gun was horrifying.

The burst of panic sent another sharp rush of pain through me.

“I’ll stay here,” I said, grinding the words out through the pain. “But one, I think I’ve gone into labor, and two, isn’t this a bit of an overreaction when all you’re dealing in is security equipment for things like hospitals and corrections facilities?”

It was a long shot, but maybe if I showed Colin he was making a mountain out of a molehill, he’d realize how insane his actions were.

And to be honest, I was becoming quickly convinced that Colin actually was suffering from some sort of mental illness. But that only made the fact that he was pointing a gun at me even more terrifying.

I had already started planning how I could get the gun away from him when Colin shouted, “It’s not about the security equipment, dummy! It’s about the backdoor I programmed?—”

He clamped his mouth shut in a hurry, his eyes going wide.

Well, shit. That was a whole other level of seriousness. And it made the pieces suddenly click into place. Colin wasn’t upset because Mace had taken his ball and gone home. He was angry because somehow he’d, what, coded a backdoor into the security systems Mace planned to sell? Designed them with a way for hackers to get into the systems another way? I knew nothing about programming or tech. I just knew that if Mace managed to sell his equipment to the government and the military, like he wanted to, and Colin had written a backdoor into the whole thing, some very bad people would pay a lot of money for access to the government.

“Look, I’m just the office manager for the new company,” I said, not liking how panicked I sounded. “I don’t know anything about the tech or programming side of things. But wouldn’t the government or whoever discover the backdoor and fix it before they implement any of the technology?”

“Not if the company they hire to fix the problem had a vested interest in keeping the door open,” Colin said, adjusting his grip on the gun.

There were so many holes in Colin’s plan that Swiss cheese would be jealous. I could only assume Victory Holdings knew about the backdoor and planned to exploit it.

Then again, the way Colin had been so angry with someone on the phone a few minutes ago, maybe Victory Holdings wasn’t any happier with his antics than I was.

Another squeeze of pain stopped my thought process for a moment. Part of me was glad the mattress was bare and unimportant, because the likelihood of my water breaking all over it any second now was pretty high.

“What’s wrong?” Colin asked, waving his gun in a way that had me feeling sick. “Stop making that face.”

“I told you, I’m in labor,” I panted.

“No, you’re not,” Colin insisted, his eyes going wide and his face pink. “You’re faking it so you can try to escape.”

I laughed and gripped my belly. “Sure. That’s it,” I said, trying to steady my breath as the wave of contraction passed. That didn’t stop me from sweating and panicking, though. “I always fake labor in order to get out of a kidnapping.”

“You’re not having a baby right now!” Colin shouted. “I don’t have time for this!”

“Whatdoyou have time for?” I asked, glaring up at him. “Where are we anyhow?”

I hoped slipping that question in would get me some answers, but even if Colin wanted to give them, there was a loud, pounding knock on the door.

“Don’t you make a peep,” Colin hissed, keeping his gun pointed at me as he started for the other side of the room.

If Colin had been an experienced kidnapper, and if I’d had any faith that whoever was pounding on the door was on my sidenot his, I totally would have screamed. But I wasn’t the stupid one in the room, so I kept as quiet as a mouse as Colin marched over to answer the door.

“What the fuck is going on here?” a deep voice answered when Colin cracked the door. “Lyle says that?—”

“Shh!” Colin cut him off. “Not here.”

He then did the very stupidest and absolutely best thing he could have done and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

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