“Dumb bitch,” he said. He dragged me back into the bedroom. He found a pair of my panties on the ground and grabbed them. He moved his hand and shoved the panties into my mouth, punching me in the gut.
I fell onto my knees and felt like I was going to throw up again. He was on me then, shoving me to the ground. He pulled some duct tape from one of the pockets in his pants and wrapped it around my face and then around my hands.
“There we go,” he said, standing back. My hands were taped behind my back and the panties were taped inside my mouth. “That’s better.”
He grabbed me roughly and dragged me back into the main room. He pushed me down onto a chair and taped my ankles together.
“Selena, Selena, Selena,” he said, smiling. “It’s so nice to meet you.”
I stared at him, confused. I didn’t recognize him, had never seen him before. He was acting like he knew Nash, but I couldn’t imagine that someone who knew Nash would do this to me. Nash had never mentioned any friends, anyway.
No, this man was someone else. I had no clue what he wanted, but I was terrified.
“Blink once if Nash is coming back soon, twice if you don’t know,” he asked.
I blinked twice.
He grunted. “Stupid fucking girl. I never understood what he saw in you. Nash, my man, was living the fucking life.” He looked around the room, rooting through Nash’s stuff.
“Look at this,” he said, finding the note. “Out for a run.” He grinned at me. “So our boy will be back soon then.”
He tossed the note aside and reached into another pocket. He pulled out a gun and I nearly fell off the chair, trying to scream.
“Calm down,” he said. “This isn’t for you. It’s for Nash.”
He sighed, admiring the weapon. “Nash is such a popular guy now. I loved him back before he was famous, you know? The guy is a fucking legend in the military world.” He walked over toward me and touched my face. I recoiled in terror and disgust.
“Most of the stuff in his book is a lie,” he said. “Did you know that? Well, not a lie, but all the details are made up. Nash was a pretty serious special ops kind of guy, and you can’t have that sort of information out in the public.” He began rooting through the stuff in the room.
“I can’t wait to see him,” the man said. “The last time I saw him was a few months ago, in Indianapolis. I didn’t say hi back then; I was way too shy. But now, now I’m going to say hello.” He pulled the clip from his gun and looked at it, smiling.
“Don’t worry, Selena,” he said. “You’re not in danger. I don’t care about you. I care about Nash. I want to prove that he’s not as amazing as everyone says he is. He’s just another washed-up military asshole pretending like he’s a badass.”
He stared at me, smiling hugely.
“I’m going to put a bullet in his head. Then everyone will know that he’s just another fake.”
I struggled against my bonds, staring at the man, my heart pounding in my chest.
He was clearly insane, obviously out of his mind, but he was in our room and I was tied to the chair. And his gun looked very, very real. Nash had no clue what he was coming back to, no clue what was waiting for him. This freaking psycho was going to kill him for no reason other than jealousy.
Suddenly there was a knock at the door. The man glared at me. “Who’s that?” He walked over and looked through the peephole.
“Room service,” I heard someone call from outside.
“Go away,” the man said.
“We have your food here.”
“Go the fuck away.”
He stared out for another second and then stormed over to me. He smacked me across the face, knocking me off the chair. Pain flared all through my face.
“You dumb bitch. Why didn’t you tell me you had room service coming?” he growled.
I tried to struggle away from him, but he grabbed me and shoved me back onto the chair.
“There’s no escape, Selena,” he said. “You’re going to watch me kill your husband.”
I stared into his deep brown eyes and realized that he was right, there was no escape. This man was insane, and that was all there was to it.
I felt my whole body begin to shake and tremble from fear, fear jolting through my spine, fear clouding my mind.
Nash was coming, straight into a trap.
28
Nash
I’d been so damn lazy since I’d married Selena.
I didn’t know why. Going for long, early runs was one way to keep my sanity. That probably explained why I had been losing my damn mind ever since that girl had come into my life.
My feet banged the pavement as I tore up the miles, running mindlessly. I was trying to escape the memory of her body, her perfect fucking hips and breasts barely covered by her bra. She talked so dirty when she was drunk.
She sucked cock so good when she was sober, too.
Fuck, even when running I couldn’t get her off my mind. She was so stuck inside my head that it was all but impossible to outrun her.
I turned along my loop, heading back toward the hotel. I wondered if she was awake yet, and what she’d ordered for breakfast. She was probably hungover as hell. I wondered if she had liked my little note.
I could see the hotel up ahead. My breath was coming fast and deep, and I felt good for the first time in a while. Well, the first time except for when I was fucking Selena, touching her body, standing close to her. I felt strong, and I could tell that I was still in good shape despite all my fucking boozing and sleeping around.
Maybe I’d lost a few steps, but even me at my worst was better than most men. And I wasn’t even close to my worst yet.
I stopped out front of the hotel, catching my breath. There weren’t any paparazzi around, fortunately. I wasn’t really famous enough to have them hanging around constantly, so I got lucky once in a while and had a peaceful second or two.
It took me a few minutes to cool off, but eventually I walked back into the hotel. I nodded at the girls standing behind the front desk and headed into the elevator.
I leaned up against the wall, thinking about Selena. I wondered what she was wearing and how bad she was feeling. Maybe I’d go out and get her some aspirin or some shit, or at least call down to room service for it. She didn’t seem like a complainer, so hopefully she’d be able to get through the day without passing out.
The elevator doors opened and I headed down the hall, still lost in thought. I saw our door up ahead.
And stopped in my tracks.
Sitting on the ground outside the door was a room service cart. It looked covered still, as if nobody had touched it.
I cocked my head, curious. Was Selena out? Why would she order breakfast and then leave?
In the pit of my stomach, I knew something was wrong. The room service cart just sitting there looked wrong, felt wrong. All of my training was telling me to get out of there, that something was happening. I had no weapon, nothing to defend myself with.
But Selena could be in trouble. She could have slipped in the shower or gone into spontaneous cardiac arrest. I took a deep breath and went to the door, swiping my card to unlock it.
I pushed it open.
“Don’t move.”
It only took me a second to assess the situation. A normal person might have been confused by what I saw, but years of combat and training kept me levelheaded.
Selena was sitting on a chair, her face covered in duct tape, her ankles bound together, her hands bound behind her back. And standing next to her was a shorter bald man, stocky, maybe in his mid-thirties, wearing camo pants and a black button-down shirt.
And holding a gun aimed directly at my face.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“Come inside. Slowly.”
I stepped inside.
“Close the door.”
I closed it. “Let’s talk about this,” I said.
“Nash Bell. Do you recognize me?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”
There was a twinge of anger. “You don’t? How could you not?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I meet a lot of people.”
“But you’d remember me,” he said. “I wrote you emails. So many emails. All about your book, about the combat in your book, and about the shit our government is doing to ruin us.”
I stared at him and suddenly it hit me. “I do remember you,” I said. And that was true.
Months ago, Livy had shown me a string of emails from some “deranged fan,” as she had put it. The guy had been ranting about the fake details of my book, how the government was covering something up and somehow I was involved. He’d kept saying that I was fake, that I wasn’t really a SEAL at all, that I was just another crisis actor.
He smiled. “So you understand.”
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“John,” he said. “John Smith.”
“Okay, John,” I said, realizing it was a fake name. He expected to live after this somehow. “Why don’t you let the girl go? We can talk.”
He moved closer to me. “I don’t want to talk, Nash. I want the world to know that you’re fake, that the whole war is fake. You’re an actor, a phony, a liar.”
“Okay,” I said. “We can talk about that. Tell everyone if you want. But let the girl go.”
“I can’t do that. She’s important.”