Page 223 of The Re-Proposal

Not right now.

“You’ll want to hear this.” Vargas moves insistently toward me, “I just got a call from Clarissa’s tail.”

My back snaps to attention.

My shattered heart snarls in pain. “Where. Is.She?”

“We don’t know.” Vargas gulps. “She’s been kidnapped.”

24

THE VAN RIDE

CLARISSA

There’sa man in my living room with a gun pointed in my back. In the reflection of my cabinet glass, I recognize his beady, desperate eyes.

“Winifred?”

“If you want to see your mother again, come with me,” he orders. His voice is trembling, but the hand holding me hostage is steady on my back.

My heart quivers. An icy sickness spreads through my gut.

I could scream.

Someone would come running.

Cody put a tail on me. I’m not sure if he thinks I wouldn’t notice. Or maybe he believes I’m such an idiot I wouldn’t recognize that my new ‘neighbor’ has muscles on top of muscles and happens to show up at all the places I do.

But if I scream, what happens to mom? What if Winifred has her already?

The gun digs into my back. “Your security is currently taking a nice little nap. So here’s what you’re going to do…”

Winifred pushes a hat over my head with a wig attached. He slides a coat across my shoulders and nods, as if satisfied with the degree of the disguise.

I want to fight. My fingers curl into fists and I calculate my odds. They’re not good, but that doesn’t scare me. Since leaving Cody, I’ve been feeling rather reckless.

Or maybe I’ve just been trying not to feel at all.

I’m crazy enough to take my chances with a bullet, but I can’t risk angering Winifred. He could be lying, but if he really has mom…

“What did you do to her?” I hiss.

“She’ll be fine. As long as you behave.”

Fear rises in me, and I understand why Cody is so obsessed with control. I wish I could roll my mom in bubble wrap and lock her in a human-sized hamster wheel. Anything to see her safe.

If even a hair on her head is harmed because of me, I’ll never forgive myself. Never.

“She’s just an old woman,” I hiss. “She has nothing to do with this—”

“Shut up and walk.” Winifred shoves me through the hall. The gun is pressed to my back and his face smushes into mine. He has his arm around me, trying to act like we’re lovers out for a stroll.

I shudder, utterly repulsed. He smells like beer and fish.

He’d looked so smug in his business suit during my pitch. How long ago was that? It feels like ages.

Winifred had on an expensive watch that day. I remember because of the way he looked at the time and then looked down his nose at me. He called me a beggar. Made me feel like dirt.

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