Page 43 of Look for Me

Martin got into the passenger side. “I won’t be able to sleep tonight anyway. If you want us to go to Pete’s house, we could do that.” He turned to the Uber driver. “Yes?”

“At your service, sir.” The driver turned on the ignition.

“All right. Let’s go.” Butler got into the backseat. “I have to call my wife. She leads the Women’s Prayer Team, and they’d want to know too.”

“We need all the prayer we can get.” Martin held back his tears. “I just want Corinne and her daughter home safely.”

“That’s our priority prayer.”

Chapter Twenty

Corinne didn’t know how long she had been in the van, since she passed out when they took her away. They kept her wrists tied up behind her, and she was lying down on some musty-smelling sleeping bag. No pillow. No safety belts.

She finally woke up, thanks to the motion of the vehicle on bumpy roads. If she were to guess, she would say the road was probably not paved.

Her sense of time went out the window, and she closed her eyes to pray and rest. She would need all the strength and energy to get out of this.

With God’s power.

The two men in the driver’s and passenger seats didn’t talk to each other at all while Corinne was awake. She knew who they were, knew they worked for Nikos.

But why would Nikos abduct the mother of his unborn child?

Probably to get back at Flavian.

How Corinne hated to be in the middle of the crossfire between these two sworn enemies.

For the longest time, the FBI had tried to gather enough evidence against Flavian for his hand in money laundering activities for some criminal organization. It had turned out that the FBI only wanted to use Flavian as a stepping stone to some international terrorist.

After failing to make anyone turn against Flavian, the FBI got to Corinne.

As a mother of Dahlia—then only a year old and being weaned—Corinne had to do what was best for her.

Was Dahlia going to have a decent life living in the shadows of a father who had broken so many laws that he’d go to jail for a very long time—if caught?

All Corinne did for Flavian was bookkeeping.

Well, and dating him.

When the FBI special agent showed Corinne how awful that terrorist was, and how Flavian was responsible for converting stolen diamonds into money for arms in the black market, Corinne had enough. The agent said that the Department of Treasury was interested in the money laundering aspect of it, while the FBI wanted to go after the terrorist.

Once Corinne agreed to help, she suddenly had a fully grown best friend from college named Stephanie, who showed up at the Hawaiian vacation resort one day, and showed her more photos of Flavian in bed with the terrorist, a woman they called Molyneux.

That was all it took to turn Corinne. Flavian was sleeping around. He was never going to marry her.

After that mother-and-daughter vacation in Hawaii, Corinne did everything she could to help Stephanie, whom Corinne suspected was from the FBI. Months later, she had her opportunity when she memorized the combination to Flavian's private safe.

She took the pouch of diamonds from Flavian's private safe in his mansion, put Dahlia in the car seat, and some clothes in the trunk, left the diamonds in a drop box.

And vanished from Flavian's life.

The same way she had vanished from Martin’s life four years before.

Within the next six weeks, the FBI had given Corinne a new identity and a new start in sunny Florida, where she never expected to see Flavian or Nikos again.

Or Martin, for that matter.

Martin. Oh Martin.

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