Graham
My head was pounding and my mouth was dry. It didn't take a genius to figure out what happened to me.
I'd been drugged.
The question was why and by whom? My head was foggy and I couldn't remember what I'd been doing before this. The last thing I did remember was my team meeting at my house to discuss where we were with the kidnapping, but that didn't make sense.
Luckily I didn't have to wait long to figure it out. "This wouldn't have had to happen if you just stayed gone." Charmaine's whine cut right through the fog in my head.
I attempted to move my arms and legs, but just as I suspected, they were tied down to a chair I recognized. In a living room I recognized.
Son of a bitch.
"Did you seriously drug me and then keep me at your house?" I was proud that my words didn't sound slurred. She had to be the worst kidnapper known to man. Not that I wascomplaining. It would be easy enough for my team to find me this way. Sarah and Andrew had known where I was going. Sarah would start to worry if I was gone too long and then she would call my team. If I didn't check in at some point, they would come looking.
That was if I didn't get myself out of this mess. With Charmaine being so horrible at this kidnapping thing, there was a good chance I wasn't tied up very tightly. I just needed to distract her.
"You left me no choice!" my ex snapped. "I need to pay the men I hired to kill you and only your life insurance policy will do."
I stared at her dumbfounded for a moment before anger took hold. "Well, the joke’s on you because you don't get my money if I die. Andrew does, when he turns twenty-one. So you hired a hitman for nothing."
Charmaine’s face fell, her eyes went wide and her hands balled into fists at her side.
"You bastard!" She charged at me hard enough that the chair toppled over and Charmaine landed on top of me. Beating her hands against my chest, she continued to scream in my face."How dare you cheat me out of that?!"
My hands were pinned beneath the back of the chair, but the contact with the floor loosened the ties enough that I was able to slip my wrists free. I waited for Charmaine to lose steam before thrusting my hips up and tossing her off of me. Once I was free of her, it was easy enough to twist my arms out from behind my back and change the dynamic.
Charmaine was either too stunned by my movements or too stupid to move. Either way I had her arms pinned behind her back in seconds with my one hand, while I used my other one to untie my legs.
"No!" Finally, she tried to fight me but it was too late. I overpowered her small frame easily enough.
I used the rope from my legs to tie her hands behind her back. Unlike Charmaine, I was very efficient at tying a knot and there was no way she was getting out of it.
"Now," I said as soon as I had her secured. "I think it's time we have a little chat about these so-called men you hired."
"I'm not telling you anything!" she hissed and turned her head away from me.
I was at my wits’ end and done with her bullshit, so I grabbed her chin and forced her to look at me. "Wrong answer, Charmaine," I growled in her face.
I could see the fear in her eyes and I welcomed it. She didn't need to know that I wouldn't actually hurt a woman. I had more morals in my pinkie than she did in her entire body.
"Who did you hire?" I asked her again.
"I don't know!" she yelled back in my face.
"I don't believe you." I countered her anger with my own calm tone, despite it being the opposite of what I felt. The truth was I wanted to rip her apart for what she did to me and Sarah. "What exactly did you hire them to do?"
Pieces of the puzzle weren't fitting together, and if I wanted to keep both Sarah and Andrew safe, I needed to know everything Charmaine had done.
"I hired them to make you disappear. I didn't know they were going to crash the plane!"
I jerked back like she had slapped me in the face. And she might as well have with that confession. "You didn't know they would go as far as crash a plane? What kind of people did you fucking hire and for how much?"
That was a hell of a lot of deaths on her conscience. No wonder she had been drinking so much lately. I could practically smell the alcohol on her breath and it had been the same whenI showed up to retrieve Andrew. She probably couldn't deal with the aftermath.
Wait, who am I kidding? That would mean she would have to care about someone other than herself.
"I don't know. I found them through a friend of a friend."
