He finally had to delete the security video of her abduction from the parking garage. I watched it so many times, I nearly wore out my tear ducts.
By the time Kage’s driver calls to say he’s en route from the airport with Sloane, I’m having a panic attack.
“Did he say how long it would be?” I demand, wringing my hands as I pace back and forth in front of the big executive chair in the office.
“Take it easy, baby,” he says softly, watching me with those sharp dark eyes that never miss anything. “Come sit on my lap.”
“I can’t sit. I’m freaking out. What if she’s hurt?”
“She’s not hurt.”
“But how do you know?”
“Because she’s indestructible, like Styrofoam peanuts.”
“Or your ego.”
His eyes grow heated. “Is that sass I hear?”
“Don’t act like you don’t love it.”
In a throaty voice, he says, “Come here and let me show you how much.”
Sighing, I turn and pace the other direction. “Later. Sorry. I’m too distracted. This is the longest I’ve gone without talking to her since I was five years old, and I feel like I’m missing a limb. She sounded okay when we talked on the phone—like her usual self—but that feels like a million years ago. And what if it was an act? What if he was forcing her to sound happy? What if—”
Kage reaches out, pulls me down onto his lap, and wraps his hand around my jaw. Gazing into my eyes, he says, “She’s fine, baby.”
He kisses me deeply. I instantly relax, melting against his big hard body, loving the feel of his mouth.
“Better?” he whispers when we come up for air.
I hide my face in his neck. “Better. If he hurt her, will you please kill him?”
He exhales. “I can see there won’t be any peace around here if I don’t.”
On his desk, his cell phone rings. My heart starts pounding. I jump off his lap and stare at the phone with my hands on either side of my face, biting my lip.
Shaking his head, Kage swings the chair around and reaches for it. He answers without saying anything, which is a weird thing he does, then listens for a moment. Then he hangs up and looks at me.
“She’s on her way up.”
I make a little noise of joy and terror and tear out of the room to the elevator landing.
The front door is a bank of elevators. We’re on the top floor of a high-rise building.
From his position sprawled on the living room floor, Mojo lifts his head and looks at me. He woofs in solidarity, then promptly falls back asleep.
I hold my breath as the elevator slows to a stop. The doors slide open, and there she is.
Looking like she’s returning from a yoga retreat in hell.
It isn’t her outfit, which is a beautiful cream cashmere sweater, designer skinny jeans, and sky-high heels, or her face, which is as pretty as ever. Though maybe thinner.
It’s her eyes.
Her normally clear green eyes—her normally dry clear green eyes—are welling with some kind of strange watery substance that if I didn’t know her better would think is tears.
My heart flip-flops. I say hesitantly, “Sloane?”
Her face crumples. She drops the bag she’s carrying. She hiccups, says loudly, “How the fuck are you, sis?” and throws her arms around me.
I smell alcohol and am swamped with relief.
She’s only drunk, not crying. Crying would mean it’s the end of the world.
I blurt, “I’m good, I was so worried, I can’t believe that bastard took you, Kage will kill him if he hurt you, oh my god, I missed you so much, are you okay?”
“Great. I’m great, babe, simply marvelous.” She laughs. It sounds crazed.
I pull away and hold her at arm’s length. Inspecting her expression, I say, “You’re giving me the willies.”
“Girl,” she hiccups, “same.”
Frantic again, I look her up and down. “Sloane, talk to me! Are you hurt?”
She nods vigorously. “It feels like all my skin has been peeled off, and I’ve been thrown into boiling water, and there’s a live wire in there, too, so I’m getting electrocuted while I’m being boiled alive. No. No, no, that’s not it. It feels like I’m being suffocated and roasted over hot coals and pushed off a very tall building, all at the same time. It’s awful. It’s the worst! How the hell do you deal with it?”
Now I’m totally confused. “Deal with what, honey? What the heck are you talking about?”
From behind me, Kage says, “Sounds to me like she’s talking about being in love.”
We both look at him. Then we look at each other. Then Sloane says wearily, “Oh, fuck.”
I shout, “Shut the front door! You’re in love with your kidnapper?”
She makes a face. “I mean…maybe? How do you know if it’s really love?”
Kage folds his arms over his chest. “It’s only love if you’re willing to die for him.”
Her moan is faint, miserable, and even more alarming than the almost-but-not tears.
“Oh, no. Sloane, you don’t have feelings for him. This is a thing that happens to kidnapped people sometimes. They develop sympathy for their captors. It’s called Stockholm Syndrome, and it’s… Why are you laughing?”
“Long story. Can someone please get me a drink? I think I’d like to spend the next several days in a coma.”
She walks past me into the living room and throws herself facedown onto the sofa. I look helplessly at Kage, who somehow doesn’t seem surprised by this turn of events.
“Better look after that,” he says with a chin jerk in her direction. “I’ll get you girls some whiskeys. Look like you could use it.”
He kisses me on the forehead, then ambles off toward the kitchen. I hurry over to Sloane, kneel beside her on the floor next to the sofa, and pet her hair.
She turns her head and looks at me. She sniffles. “You know what the worst part is?”
“What?”
“I like him. He’s smart. And funny. Oh my god, that dry sense of humor. It’s exactly like mine! And he’s as stubborn as me, too. More. You wouldn’t believe how stubborn the man is. He’s practically a mule.”
Her face screws up again. She whimpers. “Like one of those mules they take tourists to the bottom of the Grand Canyon on.”
I’m not sure what’s happening, but there’s no way she’s in love with her kidnapper. She doesn’t fall in love. It’s simply not something she does. And not with him.
I wonder if this is some kind of decompression thing that happens after a traumatic event? I have no idea what to say, so I just make a soothing noise and continue petting her hair.
She rolls onto her back and flings an arm over her eyes. “And he smells good. When he’s not smoking, that is. And he’s generous. God, you should’ve seen the jewelry! Here, look at this.”
She thrusts her arm at me, displaying a fat diamond tennis bracelet I wouldn’t wear outside for fear of being mugged.
“He bought you that?”
“Yes. And clothes. So many clothes. La Perla lingerie. Cashmere sweaters in every color. Thirteen-hundred-dollar jeans, for fuck’s sake. Who does that for their captive? And he protected me from MS-13! He saved my life!” She groans. “And when I was in the hospital—”