His Ransom 6(4)

Jake kissed me, and all of my breath escaped as he pulled me into his arms. A wave of heat surged through me as I felt his hands caress my arms, his lips tearing the last air from my lungs. Then he pulled away, pressing a tender kiss on my forehead.

“You’re mine,” Jake said. Amazing, the power those words had to calm me. I inhaled deeply. My breath slowed and grew steady. The air seemed to lift from around me.

He took both of my hands in his, wrapping his fingers around both of my wrists.

“We still have farther to go,” he said. “Will you come with me?”

“Yes,” I said, my voice calmer now.

With that, we moved off again into the darkness.





Chapter Three

Back at the hotel, Jake locked the door behind me. He’d rushed me past the shocked catacomb workers, speaking too quickly in French for me to understand. And instead of going to the police station, he’d told the cab to bring us back to the hotel.

“Aren’t we going to call the police?” I asked.

“The police?” Jake looked at me like the idea was ludicrous.

“Um, yes?”

“Why?”

“To tell them that this man held me hostage? To tell them that he stole ten million dollars from you?”

“No.” Jake shook his head as though the idea was unthinkable. Maybe to him it was, but I didn’t understand why.

“But your money—”

“It’s nothing.”

“But your brother!”

“He’s not my brother.”

“How do you know?” I asked, confused beyond belief.

“What did he tell you?” Jake asked, instead of answering me.

“At first he told me that his name was Jean-Luc,” I said. “Then he said his name was Sean.”

“Both of those are lies. At least, that’s what we think.”

“We? Who’s we?”

“I…I had you followed,” Jake said sheepishly.

My mind whirled.

“What?!”

“I wanted to make sure you were safe.”

“Really? Is that why I got kidnapped? Because there was a guy there protecting me?”

“The men who kidnapped you were very careful to get you on an isolated street,” Jake said. “Trust me, the person I had following you—”

“And let’s talk about that for a second!” I said, my face turning red with a mix of shame and anger. “You had someone following me?”

“Paris is a big city,” Jake said. “Wealthy people are targets. Tourists are targets. You’re both.”

“I’m—I’m not wealthy,” I sputtered.

“With the money I gave you, you are,” Jake said. “The man following you was on the lookout for pickpockets—those are the main thieves in Paris, especially at sightseeing spots. He was going to look out for people who might scam you or steal your wallet. Neither one of us had considered the possibility that someone would kidnap you.”

“Not just someone,” I said. I put my hands on my hips.

“That man—Jean-Luc Chamblis was his name. At least that was what was on the registration for his art studio.”

“You had me followed to the art studio?” My nerves, already tightly-wound, screwed up another inch of tightness.

“There was nothing there that linked him to my brother in any way.”

“His name,” I said. “The man he had with him called him Sean.”

Jake winced at the name of his younger brother.

“He hired that man to help abduct you,” Jake said. “He might have told him any story about being my brother. He was paying him enough—”

“Why don’t you want to believe this?” I cried out finally.

There was a long pause. Jake looked angry for a moment, and I thought that I had stepped too far over the line into his personal family history. Then his face softened a bit.

“That man wasn’t my brother,” he said finally. “He got into your head. That’s all he wanted, was to lure me in there to give him the money. He had you, but he wanted to make sure I came and followed his rules. He didn’t know…”

“Didn’t know what?”

“All I care about is you. All I wanted was you. I didn’t expect to find anything else down there, and I didn’t need to.”

“But… but, your brother—”

“My brother’s dead, Lacey,” he said. He kissed me on the temple. “Please don’t worry about that man any more. I’ve hired on a better security team to escort you around Paris and keep close watch on you for the rest of the trip. And I have a private investigator who’s going to be looking into it for me. He’s better than any Parisian police we could ask for, trust me.”