Page 31 of Oh No, My Kidnapper Is Hot!

“Of course, of course. Come right in. I’ll make some tea,” a gentle voice, but Rosie. Much nicer than Stryker’s gentle. And I do love tea.

We enter the fairytale house, and Rosie leads us to her fairytale kitchen. I look around.

There’s a pie cooling in the kitchen window. The walls are red – or, oh, they’re blue.

I’m sitting at a small, round table covered by a lacy, light blue tablecloth. A full vase of the same flowers I saw in the front yard sits in the middle of the table. The chairs don’t match each other, but they’re all covered with the same blue cushions. It’s quaint. Cozy.

The sound of a muffled gunshot echoes in my ears, then a teapot appears, pouring tea into a tiny floral cup.

“I don’t know what to do. She’s not talking. She won’t eat. I can barely get her to sip water. I screwed up, Rose. She didn’t believe me, and I let it go too far, and now she’s…” He gestures at me, a movement full of defeat. I notice the absence of chain rattles. Hmm.

I look at my wrist. There’s no handcuff there. I look at Stryker’s. It’s splattered red. I recoil.

Stryker groans a miserable sound.

“Rosie,fix her.Please.”

I’ve never heard a man plead like that before. The man on the ground probably would’ve pled like that – if he’dhad a chance.

I pick up my tea. It’s red, red, red. Bad color, red.

“Do you have any green tea?” I ask. Stryker freezes. They’re the first words I’ve spoken in days – since before everything was coated red.

“That is green tea, love,” Rosie answers, gentle gentle gentle. I look at it.

Oh. Green.

I gulp it down before it turns red again. It’s gone when I look back at Rosie. She’s studying me closely.

She seems like a sweet woman, but then she’s here, living in a compound with men who shoot other men in cold blood on a Tuesday morning. There’s obviously more going on behind her sweet old lady persona.

“Stryker, be a dear and give us girls some alone time, yes?” Rosie asks him. He hesitates, and she shoots him a severe look. Ah ha. I knew she wasn’t all sweetness, pie in the window or not.

Stryker rises from his seat and approaches mine. He crouches in front of me, grimacing when I meet his eyes.

“You’ll be safe here with Rosie, okay?”

I seriously doubt that. I won’t be safe until I’m on a beach and everyone here is in jail. Forget getting them help; they need to be locked away for a long, long time – like forever. Stryker nods at me, even though I’ve said nothing, and exits the room with a thanks to Rosie.

Every muscle in my body relaxes when he’s gone, then tenses all over again when Rosie speaks.

“I told him not to take you, you know,” she says conversationally, taking a sip from her teacup, as if we’re just two women having a normal chat at teatime. “You shouldn’t have had to see that, dear, and I’m very sorry that you did,” she continues. “But I need you to know a few things before you judge Stryker too harshly.”

I scoff. Hekilledsomebody in cold blood. There is no judgment too harsh. Rosie nods at me.

“I know it’s hard for you to imagine, but it truly isn’t as bad as it seems.”

Yeah, right, lady. I was there. Isawit. I saw the red, the man’s face, the door, the splatter. The red, the man’s face, the door, the spla–

“You didn’t see it,” I say. Another nod.

“You’re right, I didn’t. But you, dear, didn’t see the man’s file,” she says.

She stands then, disappearing down a hallway. When she returns, she’s holding a thick, beige folder with a photo of the dead man paper-clipped to the front. He’s alive in the picture, staring unsmiling at the camera.

I look away.

“This is Michael Fern’s file,” she tells me, pushing my empty teacup aside and replacing it with the folder, photo up. My stomach churns.

---