Page 53 of Shielded Hearts

Gideon perched on the only chair in the room, facing her, a smug smile on his ugly face.

“You think you’re so damn clever, don’t you?” she taunted, voice hoarse but defiant. She hadn’t stopped talking since she regained consciousness on that plane. Several times, he’d ordered her to shut up or threatened to knock her out again, but she didn’t have anything to lose and kept up a constant volley of harassment.

At first, she pleaded with him to let her go. He ignored it. She promised him money as soon as they landed. He waved that off.

Then she begged him to tell her what happened to Colt. He only smirked at her and shrugged, saying he was probably dead. He’d seen the cabin fall and the truck get swallowed up by the snow.

At that point, Aspen had succumbed to noisy tears, which seemed to anger Gideon more than talking had. But she eventually dried her face on her sleeve and did what her momma would have told her to do.

She straightened her shoulders and fought back.

“If it’s not about the money, then why are you holding me here? Why come after me at all?” she shot at Gideon.

“It’s not about the money,” he snapped. He stood so fast that the chair skidded across the wooden floor and fell over with a hard crash.

She bit back a cry and lifted her chin a notch higher.

He poked a finger at her face. “It’s about pride, you little bitch. You humiliated me. In front ofeveryone.Do you know what that does to a man?”

She watched fury flash in his eyes, made more horrifying by the green light in the cabin. “You stupid dickhead motherfucking, cock-sucking asshole! How didIhumiliate you? You had every opportunity to create a good life for yourself. But you waited around for your aunt to die, thinking that you’d get an inheritance.”

By now, she lost all hope of Colt finding her. She’d be damned if she’d go down without kicking, screaming and clawing.

She continued on, pushing her captor to the breaking point. “You had family money of your own, if I remember correctly. Plus a good-paying job as a mechanic. You had connections and resources in your hometown, but you wasted them all, didn’t you?”

He started pacing in front of her, bringing the oily stench of sweat every time he circled near. Her nostrils pinched, and her stomach rioted at the smell.

“All you needed was ambition, Gideon.”

He whipped around and grabbed her chin in his hard, biting grasp. She stifled a yelp and glared him down.

“You think I don’t have ambition, Aspen? I got to you, didn’t I? I cloned your phone.”

The breath punched from her lungs. So that was how he found her.

“When?”

“When you set your luggage down to board yourprivate jet. Your phone was in your handbag. I knew it would be after I watched all thosetouchingvideos you recorded with my aunt. I know everything about you, Aspen.”

For the moment, she was struck speechless.

He released her jaw, surely leaving bruises where his fingertips bit into her flesh. Then he whirled around to pace the other direction. He cut a hand through the air. “I disabled your landing gear once we reached Wyoming.”

“Wait—oncewereached Wyoming? You were on my plane?” Her voice pitched louder. The bulb flickered like in a horror feature.

His face broke into an evil smile. “You don’t keep very good track of who’s around you. You slept on the flight and you didn’t even notice me slipping out because you were in such a hurry to get to that ranch and deliver the honeymoon portfolio.” He made another rotation, his voice mocking.

She stared at him, stunned.

“Once I had your phone cloned, I saw every place you were going. I went to the cabin and took all the wood so you’d freeze. I went to the next cabin and broke the furnace so the place would fill with carbon monoxide.”

She gasped.

“I started an avalanche!” He threw his arms in the air like some demented villain proud of his master plan.

Aspen’s heart hammered, but she refused to look away. If she was going to die, she wasn’t going to cower.

“I remember the lawyer that read the will said that Vivian left you a thousand dollars for therapy. Obviously, you didn’t use the money for therapy.”

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