And that’s the last thing I remember before passing out in the passenger seat of Mara’s car.
62
kennedy
Why does my head feel like it weighs a thousand pounds? I try to crack open my eyes, but I’m still so fucking sleepy that even when I do wake up enough to look around, everything looks blurry.Am I in the emergency room?This does not feel like I’m in a wheelchair or on a gurney. My hands tremble as I squeeze my eyes closed, count to three, then try to open them again. I don’t think this is a dream. My throat tightens, my breaths too close together to do any good.What the hell is happening?
“Wakey, wakey, Blondie,” Mara’s singsong words echo throughout the dark space. “I need you awake for the call I’m about to make.”
I try to lift my hand to rub my eyes, but I can’t. My arms won’t move. And they are behind me.What the…My eyes struggle to focus on her.Am I fucking tied up?!
“Mara…what the hell is going on? What call? Where are we?” I struggle to get the words out, but things are slowly coming back into view. Bile rises in my throat as I realize this is not the hospital. This is very, very wrong.
“Oh, Kennedy. Sweet, naive Kennedy. You two really aresoeasy to manipulate. I can only assume you’re trying to get hismoney too? He was so easy to trick the first time, and now I’ve gone and done it again! Only this time, I tricked you, too.” She claps her hands together, holding them up to her face, an evil smile behind them. “You know, I’m really quite proud of myself! The way I slipped that pill into your coffee. The way you trusted me, just like he did. It wastooeasy. And bless your heart—you really thought I wanted to be your friend.” Her eyes trace every inch of me, their scorn sharp. “I don’t think we’re really friend material.” She makes air quotes as she steps toward me.
The fog lifts just enough for me to truly see the bitch in front of me. The drowsiness morphs into rage and panic, electricity screaming through every nerve, my spine snapping to attention. My blood is torn between freezing in my veins or igniting and burning through me right into her. “What are you talking about?! What do you mean, last time you tricked him?”
She lets out a villainous laugh. “Oh…Jordan and I gowayback.”
My mind spins. My blood settles on the raging inferno option as it floods through my veins as fast as it can, with some sort of drug still in my system.Holy. Fucking. Shit.“You…are you…Angelica?”
She tilts her head with an evil grin. “Awww…I see he told you about me! He was alwayssoobsessed with the one and only Angelica Pierce.”
My pulse thrums in my ears, unable to hear anything but my rapidly beating heart. “What the fuck are you doing? He gave you money to go away. What more do you want?”
“Oh, sweetheart. I want what everyone wants. More money. Andyouare my ticket to being rich forever. That boy is crazy about you, and his family will pay anything to get you back just to make sure their precious boy is protected. When I leaked that video of us, I got a nice payout, thinking that would set me up for life. But it didn’t. I got a nice car out of it, rented a fancy-as-fuckapartment, but quickly realized the million dollars wasn’t going to last long if I kept up the luxurious lifestyle I was always meant to have.”
She looks down at her manicured nails as if they are going to give her some magical answer.
“Hmmm, how do I explain this to you?” Her eyes pop up to meet mine as if a lightbulb went off in her brain. “Once you fly first class, you can’t go back to flying coach. I decided I needed a better payday. I got a little plastic surgery done—a few things I wanted to fix and a few things to change my appearance enough that no one would recognize me from my past. The goal was always to catfish him and get pregnant. Can you imagine a Boucher family child support check? And with his reputation, catfishing him into a meetup was going to be easy. But that was a bust because ofyou. That naive as fuck little simp Jordan Boucher fell for you,” she scoffs. “Did he tell you he lost his virginity to me?”
I swear to God I’m going to kill her once I get out of these restraints.
“It was so easy to hack into his email. Who makes their password ‘hockeyplayer68’? And to see thousands of dollars in gifts being sent to some bitch Kennedy Kramer, made me see red. I tried telling him, telling you both, to stay away from one another. But you just couldn’t listen. Then I saw your kiss plastered all over the media and realized there was a much easier way to getmymoney.” Rage bubbles up, ready to burst out of my chest. “You.What a joke.”
Shit. How the fuck do I get out of this?And where is Jordan? Fuck, I hope he’s okay. I haven’t even gotten a chance to tell him I took a test yet.Fuck, I don’t even know the results!
Okay, Kennedy, focus.
You’re in an active capture situation. Survive. Evade. Resist. Escape. Okay, we’re surviving. I do a quick scan of the space,assessing the situation. There’s a knife on an old wooden table across the room, but she’s not using it on me at the moment.Shit.I don’t see any other weapons, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have any. I grit my teeth. I’ve already failed at evading and resisting.Fuck me for thinking she was nice enough buy me a coffee as an olive branch.But I can’t worry about how I got here…only how the hell to get out of here. Wherever the hell we are. I need to keep her talking and distracted while I figure out if I can escape from this chair as a start. I feel with my fingers behind my back—hard plastic digs into my skin. Has to be zip ties.I can get out of these.I just need to wait for the right moment. The haze is still heavy, tugging my eyelids down. I take slow, deep breaths in through my nose, hoping the oxygen and that extra shot of espresso will help me wake up.
I need a plan.
“Speaking of a joke, let’s call up your little boyfriend, shall we?” She shakes my phone in her hand.
I swallow hard. I can handle myself here. I don’t want him getting in the middle of this. I wish I knew where the hell I was—that would help considerably if I can get out of this chair.Think, Kennedy…think.
“Hi, baby. Everything okay?” his deep, sexy voice pours out of the phone. God, even in an active capture situation, I am melting for this man.
“Well, hello there, Mr. Sunshine.”
His voice hardens. “Who the fuck is this?”
“Oh, Jordan…you really don’t remember this voice? It’s yourformergirlfriend. The one you couldn’twaitto be with. I’m here with yourcurrentgirlfriend. You know, the one I told you to fucking stay away from. But…” She tsks, “you two just couldn’t listen.”
“Where the fuck are you?!” His voice is filled with an anger I’ve never heard before. “What did you do to her? I swear to God, Angelica, if you touched one hair on her head?—”
“Oh, calm down. She’s right here. We were just getting better acquainted. Say hi, Kennedy!”
