Page 101 of S.O.S. Billboard

Jakes actually snickered. “No. No. It’s all good. I don’t give a shit, because now we can make her disappearance look like a random kidnapping.”

Yup.Barnie wasn’t the least bit disturbed to find that they’d knocked around his supposed wife.

“Yes-sirree,” he speculated. “We’ll go with option three. My poor Anna was abducted and beat up, but with no evidence except her naked and bruised body, we, the good people of the town, will never find out who was responsible. How sad.”

O’Shea wanted to cause the man pain,aftertelling him he was a fucking lunatic. Clearly the man was delusional. With all the firepower behind Anna these days, he wasn’t getting away with diddly. But O’Shea kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t Anna. And he’d find that out soon enough. Then she’d make sure heknew that depth of the shit in which he and his cronies had just stepped. He’d be lucky if SOS let him live.

They reached the bottom of the stairs, and O’Shea braced. Would they start in on her now?

She heard some kind of scraping, then they turned and went down yet another level.

Deeper into the bowels of hell.

“Of course,” Jake’s said over his shoulder as they descended, “then I’ll have custody of Ethan, to whom I know you’ve left all your assets…myassets,” he growled. “The ones you took from me in the divorce, bitch. I’ll put up with the little shit for a few months until scuttlebutt about your death peters out, then he’ll have an accident of some kind and everything will be mine, just as it was always supposed to be.”

O’Shea wanted to throat-punch the motherfucker. What kind of man could rejoice over his own son’s death?

O’Shea needed to play everything cool until SOS came for her, then she’d make sure Jakes felt pain.

“The kid likes the woods, doesn’t he,” Barnie speculated, still plotting. “Maybe some rabid coyotes…”

They reached the bottom of the second staircase, and if anything, this one smelled danker than the first.

She heard a thunk, which was probably the safe being put down, then O’Shea was pushed into a chair. Her already bound arms were secured to the wood, and after her captors deemed her well and tied, O’Shea felt a hand at the edge of the bag.

She hauled in as deep a breath as she was able.

Show time.

The bag was yanked off.

“What the fuck?”

O’Shea blinked up at a clearly enraged Jakes.

“Surprise.” She gave him her best sneer. Better to start off as if she wasn’t intimidated by him and his asswipes.

Jake’s reached out and cuffed one of his men across the back of the head. “Do you know who this is?” he growled.

“Uh, your ex-wife?” the guy answered, rubbing his skull.

“You idiots. What have you done? This isn’t Anna. This is the bitch, O’Shea, who wanted to fuck me over at town meeting. The one who had the FBI and some group of investigative pricks all over my ass.”

Okay.O’Shea guessed she didn’t have to tell him he was fucked.

“We didn’t know,” Bloody-nose whined. Although O’Shea could see that the bleeding had stopped. She’d have to remedy that as soon as she was able.

“I had to do a lot of damage control with the police to make them think it was all a big misunderstanding.,” Jake’s resumed. “I even had to let Delaney and O’Reilly go this week; sending them to a town west of here where I know some guys. And that sucks because you know how hard it is to vet new people.”

“Sorry boss,” the second of the perps replied as he turned and took a few steps toward the rough stairs they’d just come down. “We’ll go back now and get the right chick.”

O’Shea noted that Mr. Limpy wasn’t limping anymore. Another thing she’d have to take care of.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Barnie was turning purple. “You didn’t bring the kid, which I should have your asses for anyway. But by leaving him behind, I’m sure he’s called every one of those big inquisitive pricks by now, and they’re crawling all over the place.”

“Well, don’t worry about them finding us here, boss,” the whiner said with conviction. “We weren’t followed. Just in case we were spotted, we changed out the license plates once we got out of that neighborhood. There’s no way they can trace us.”

Don’t be too sure, O’Shea thought with a smirk. Even though they were underground now, and the signal might be lost, theGPS tracker inside the safe would at least bring the team to the house’s location.

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