“We appreciate all you and your team are doing,” Chris assures him, his hand sliding to my bare knee.
“You just go make some money for some sick kids,” Blake says. “Always a cause we want to help with.”
“Amen to that,” Jacob says, and we are officially moving. But as everyone focuses on our travels, the mood shifts, almost as if we have some odd sense of wrong tunneling into the center of everything being right. Not even Chris’s hand on my bare knee warms me where I’ve suddenly become chilled.
This event is being attended by politicians, actors and actresses, and high-profile businesspeople, but Chris is a rock star in the art world, and the minute we step out of the car cameras are flashing. This part of the event is Chris’s least favorite, but once we’re inside, with the towering glass ceilings and art-lined rooms everywhere, we’re in our element. We both love this place. And I love seeing how people respond to Chris. And more so, how he responds to them. He’s a billionaire by inheritance and a millionaire from his art, all of which he donates, but you’d never know it. He’s the most down-to-earth person, never hurrying anyone away. Never acting like he’s above anyone.
We make our way to the main event room, with scattered tables of desserts featuring different types of chocolate delights, Jacob shadowing us and Blake overseeing the bigger picture, somewhere out of our sight. I forget about the earlier tension and I can sense Chris relaxing as well, our hands, and our gazes, touch often. And finally I can understand, if not speak, enough French that I understand what people are saying to us, even managing to make contacts for a few purchases I want for the gallery in San Francisco, which Chris and I are helping a friend reopen.
Finally it’s time for Chris to head to a table in the corner, where he signs paintbrushes, and there will be an auction for several pieces he created for the event. As usual, I stand by his table and chat with people, which they seem to really like, and so does he. The line is exceptionally long tonight, but I know Chris. We won’t leave until everyone who wants to talk to him has had the chance.
About an hour into the signing, I catch Chris’s gaze and whisper “bathroom,” then find Jacob to escort me. Feeling happy we didn’t cancel the event, considering the turnout, I weave through the crowd and we reach the restroom a guard pointed us to so we can avoid a long line. Sure enough, there is an empty stall and I enter. Once I’m done, I’m about to open the door when a piece of paper slides under it. I laugh, because this has to be one of Chris’s crazy fans.
Bending down, I pick up the paper and unfold it:
Do as you’re instructed or your famous husband will be your dead famous husband.
My stomach rolls and my fist balls over my now racing heart. Inhaling sharply, I force air into my lungs and keep reading:
There are several people in his line, and in the crowd, carrying syringes. One quick jab and he will never paint, let alone breathe, again. Go to the parking garage and make sure you are not followed. Tell someone, and your husband dies. Take your phone with you, or use it, and your husband dies. If you try to warn him and we can’t get to him, we’ll start injecting random, innocent people. If you arrive in the garage and do not have this note in your hand, the results will be the same. At any moment, if we think you have warned someone, the results will be the same. We’re watching.
You have five minutes. Ready, set, go.
This can’t be happening. It can’t be. But it is. There must be a way out of this.
Think, Sara. Think!
People will die. Chris will die. If I leave and they take me, Chris will lose his mind. But what can I do? I close my hand around the piece of paper and open my purse. They say they’ll know if I use my phone, but an unsent text message isn’t using it. It shouldn’t register in any electronic monitoring being done.
Chris. They were going to kill you and innocent people if I don’t go with them. They say they have syringes of poison. They told me to go to the garage. I have to go. I wouldn’t be the person you love if I didn’t go and I let innocent people die. I can’t let you die. I love you too much, and no matter what happens, you were my safe place. My only place.
I’m shaking when I exit the stall and set my phone on the sink. A woman walks in and I want to hand it to her and tell her to take it to Chris, but she could be one of them. I exit the bathroom and Jacob is waiting. We start weaving through the crowd, and even from ten feet away, I can see Blake huddled with Chris at the table. And my gut tells me that Blake just got some kind of heads-up about what’s happening. That gives me hope of a rescue that I cling to, but nothing more.
I turn to Jacob. “I forgot my phone in the bathroom. I need to get it. I had a text message I don’t want read on it.”
His brow furrows. “Let’s go.”
“Oh, wait.” I point to a woman only a few steps away that I don’t even know. “Can you grab her? I need her. She’s a big donor. Please, Jacob. I need to talk to her first.”
He gives me an odd look but says, “Ma’am,” and turns a moment, and I weave in between several people and repeat this move several times. I never stop walking, and I don’t let myself look back toward Chris. I enter the elevator to head to the garage, and a dark-haired man in a dark suit enters after me. When the doors shut, he turns to me, his lips twisting evilly.
“Good work, Sara. Garner Neuville will be proud of you.”
ella
He meant it when he said he wouldn’t touch me with the hawk tattoo on my arm, and though his manipulative personality, combined with my tattoo, an extension of Kayden, saves me from his touch, no such thing is true of his attention. He watches me the entire flight, which I estimate to be two hours thus far. And while his eyes are all over my naked body, intent on taunting me and promising me punishment, I tune him out. I see him but do not see him, nor do I allow myself to feel him. Surviving him is a practiced skill that I do well, and my mind is not on Garner Neuville, or my naked body, or even the chill of the air blowing on my skin. I disappear into a mental zone that’s all about calculating, plotting, and tallying what the voices and movement in the plane tell me, which equate to four men and a pilot, in addition to us. The real question becomes how many will be on the ground when we land, and how many will travel with us to our new destination. Certainly his bodyguard Bastile and a driver, and if it sta
nds there, my odds are good.
Time ticks by and each minute takes me farther from Rome, but I hope not Europe, where Kayden’s best resources exist. Finally, less than three hours since I awoke, I’m certain, the engines’ hums shift, our altitude with them, and we begin to descend to the ground. Neuville changes as well, a sense of urgency in his energy showing in his gray devil eyes. He unties me, the cigar-and-whisky scent of him turning my stomach. His hands on top of my arms, which are positioned on the armrests, and his body close to mine jerk me fully back into the present, where I’m naked and his breath is hot on my face.
“Get dressed, but don’t get used to those clothes,” he orders. He sits back down and watches me struggle through a bumpy descent I should be strapped in for.
His gaze goes to my nipples and for a moment I feel disgust at his inspection, but I shove it aside, cursing that part of me that remains ever so human, and thanks to this man, at moments fragile in a way I despise with every part of my being. Humanity is a luxury, or curse, a demon even, that I can’t afford. I’ll wrestle that part of me later, with Kayden.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I say once I’m dressed, which is true. That human thing wins again, but it also gives me a chance to exit this plane with anything I might use as a weapon.
He looks irritated. “I’ll go with you.” He stands and motions me to the back of the plane.