“Thanks.”
“No problem. He’s my kid, too. Now stop worrying and relax. It will be okay. Hey, Josh, you want music, buddy?” he asks, grinning into the rearview mirror when Josh starts clapping and singing “Humpty Dumpty” at the top of his lungs.
The kids songs have a soothing effect on me, and by the time Miah sees us to my classroom and leaves us to go to work, I feel a little calmer. The meet and greet goes okay, except for one incident when Billy tried to touch Josh and got an earful of recriminations for his efforts.
When playtime rolls around I’m feeling great and so jazzed about this progress that I’m giddy and tempted to call Miah and tell him all about Josh’s day.
For the rest of the school day, Josh shows the children how to do multiplication tables—Jared actually taught our four-year-old multiplication and he picked it up almost instantly—and by the time last bell rings, I can see the benefit of putting Josh in a nursery school at some point.
I turn from tidying my desk and notice Josh is hiding between the lockers, making himself almost invisible, and I smile until I feel a hand wrap around my mouth from the back and the hard muzzle of a gun at my temple.
“Scream and I will kill you. Now drop your phone on the desk and move. We don’t have all day.”
That voice is so familiar, it sends chills up my spine. It’s the second man from the night I hid in the window seat.
He’s the one Miah kept asking me questions about, and now that he’s touching me I know why. This man is no civilian contractor. He must be military from the way he stalks and holds himself.
Josh moves to scream and I shake my head once. He freezes and follows my eyes as I lower my phone to the desk and let him know that he should use it to call Jared, the number I swiped onto the screen before dropping it to the desk.
We start walking when he transfers the gun from my head to my back and digs the metal into me. Making me cry out in pain.
“You warn anyone and they die, too. Walk, Miss Elms, and don’t try to run. I’d hate to have to shoot you in the back of the head.
I’m shaking so hard that he’s forced to help me along when my knees threaten to give out, but we eventually make it outside to the back parking lot and a dark SUV that’s still idling.
“In.”
I hop up with difficulty and scoot over, almost biting into my tongue when my teeth start rattling dramatically.
“Give me your hands.”
He uses cable ties to restrain me, making me wince when the thick plastic is pulled too tight and cuts into the tender skin of my wrists and ankles and then a sack of some sort lands on my head and the world goes dark.
I’m shoved down behind the front seats and I lie there immobile, knowing that this is the cause of the bad feeling I’ve been having all week, but at least I protected Josh.
The man says nothing else and we drive for what feels like minutes but could be hours. I try to follow the route and guess where we are, but he makes so many turns that I’m soon too lost to keep up the effort any longer.
The only advantage I have is that at least I’m not gagged, but if this guy is legit and ready to kill me at the blink of an eye, I doubt that’s a problem for him and he knows it.
“Stop crying, you’re making a damned racket, woman!”
I jerk at his yell and realize I am crying—so loudly that my head is throbbing. I stop immediately and hiccup through my sniffles, not willing to do anything to annoy a man who Jace and Jared have agreed was probably hired to kill me.
Miah has never come right out and said it, but I know that he believes it, too. If they’re going to kill me now, I hope to God they at least leave my body somewhere that I’ll be found so that my family can bury me and Miah can have some closure.
“Please don’t kill me. Just let me go. I have a kid to look after, and a family.”
“Shut the hell up, lady. I ain’t gonna kill you, okay? So you can stop the theatrics for now,” he barks, ripping the sack off and handing me a bottle of water. “My employer sent me to take care of that first guy who was hired to grab you. I took care of him but couldn’t get to you to arrange the meet before now. That man of yours sure knows how to keep you on lockdown.”
He’s annoyed and seems affronted by my assumption that he was going to kill me in cold blood, but honestly, what the heck am I supposed to think here? It’s not as if he came up and issued a friendly invitation, and he freaking knows it.
I don’t trust him. For all I know he’s just trying to shut me up before murdering me viciously and dumping me in the swamps for the gators to take care of.
“Miah loves ma and takes my safety seriously, Mr.…”