Page 52 of Embracing the Consequences

Her boys had been scouring every property and address they knew about in order to bring her father to justice. They were coming up empty-handed, hitting brick wall after brick wall.

Vince had had forty years to plan his exit and cover his tracks. He was a billionaire with properties all over the world and his own private plane. It could be months before Johnny, Derrick, and Kevin found him.

In the meantime, Jack had tapped into her father’s security systems, his bank accounts, and his credit cards. There wasn’t a move Vince could make that Jack wouldn’t know about.

But they still hadn’t been able to find him.

Kara sighed in frustration as she placed yet another box of files onto the stack she had already sorted through. Ten. There were ten boxes stacked there that she had looked through just that day alone, not to mention the million other ones she’d combed in the last month. Two months. Three months. It was exhausting.

The lights dimmed beyond her open office door.

She frowned and glanced at the clock. It was only eight p.m.; the lights weren’t scheduled to start dimming until after ten.

In the office remodel Taylor Construction had completed while she was out with her injuries, they’d removed the glass walls and installed drywall instead—the idea had been to allow for privacy and confidentiality when meeting with clients.

Now Kara was cursing that thought process. She’d love to be able to look out and see if anyone was in the waiting area outside her office without alerting them to her presence.

She grabbed her phone and slipped it into her garter belt, at the small of her back, beneath her pencil skirt. She hoped that it would go unnoticed in the event of an abduction. She tiptoed toward the door, wondering if she was being a paranoid idiot.

She had fought tooth and nail with Johnny and the guys regarding staying late at work without them. She had claimed that the building had security and that several people stayed lateevery night, that she wouldn’t be alone in the building. And there usually were most nights, hence her wondering if she was being paranoid.

Before she could make it to her office door, four armed assailants stormed in. They were dressed head to toe in black, including the ski masks they had pulled over their faces. Assault rifles were strapped to their bodies and trained on her.

Kara froze, blood rushing to her ears as her heart hammered in her chest. She tried to focus on the four men in front of her but couldn’t hear them above the yelling.

She soon realized it was the first man in front of her who was yelling. “Get down! On your knees!”

She failed to comply, failed to process his words.

There was a sharp prick in her neck before things went dark.

Her last thought was of her unborn baby.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Kara blinked open her eyes as nausea rolled in her belly. She was cold, so cold. The thin, bare mattress she was sprawled on offered little insulation against the cold seeping through the concrete floor beneath it.

Her body and head ached. Her clothes were damp. The cold was in her bones.

Kara groaned softly and turned her head to find the source of the incessant dripping noise. She froze when she saw the man seated in an orange plastic chair like something out of a hospitalwaiting room. He was leaning back, his ankles crossed above his heavy boots. His muscular arms covered a paunchy belly. Dark eyes stared at her from sunken sockets.

There was a deadly air about him, as if he were more dead inside than alive. Or at least that was how his eyes portrayed his inner thoughts.

“Who are you?” Kara asked softly, forcing herself to get answers before her untimely death.

The man stared at her. He didn’t answer her, didn’t move, just stared.

Kara looked around the room, trying to get her bearings. There wasn’t much to see, though. It was a ten-by-ten concrete room with a lone light bulb hanging from a chain in the center of the room. A conduit ran along the ceiling toward the door before it turned and went straight up through the concrete ceiling.

There was a camera in the corner of the room, above her captor, and there was a bucket in the opposite side of the room, which she assumed was supposed to be her bathroom facility. Besides the threadbare mattress in the corner and the orange hospital chair in the opposite corner…there wasn’t anything else in the cell.

Except for Kara and the man watching her.

Kara sat up slowly, keeping her eyes on her captor.

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