I was scared.
Someone was always in the courtyard at the Oasis. Someone had to have heard me. Not to mention, the guys at NI&S would have seen me taken, and they tracked my phone, so I had no doubt they were close on our heels.
I was just not liking this, and not simply for the obvious reason that I’d been kidnapped.
We were at a warehouse, one that was remote. There was nothing but a Tarmac parking lot around it, beyond that, darkness, which meant desert.
The door was opened for us, and I started surveying when they pulled me inside.
The three guys from the van.
The guy that opened the door.
Four more loitering in a vast space that was empty, save for a seating section with folding chairs and a folding table on which were bottles of beer, overflowing ashtrays and a mostly empty bottle of Jack Daniels, along with a pimped-out Escalade and another van.
Metal stairs up to some rooms that overlooked the space, all dark, except one that had a window facing out to the warehouse.
Another guy stationed on the stairs to where they led me.
And up.
We went to the occupied office, and they knocked on the closed door.
“Got her?” a man called from inside.
One of the guys with me opened the door and yanked me inside.
He pulled me to a stop.
A man sat behind a desk.
He looked up.
And that was how I met Knox’s father.
TWENTY-SIX
CLOSURE
“Cut her free,” Knox’s dad ordered. “And take off that fuckin’ gag.”
My hands were freed, but that wasn’t the relief I thought it would be.
The zip-ties cut into my skin, my shoulders were frozen in a backward bend, and my fingers were numb.
I rolled my shoulders, pins and needles attacked them, and I shook out my hands as one of the guys untied the gag.
That felt better, though my cheeks ached.
Thus, I shifted my jaw side to side, all while taking in Knox’s dad.
The good news: Knox’s genes stated he’d be hot for a very long time.
The bad news: Knox’s dad kidnapped me, my phone was pinpointing me right where I was, Knox and the men would know where that was, and as such, who took me, and I knew Knox right then was going out of his mind.
“Take a seat,” Mr. Chambers said.
I looked to the chair opposite the desk.
