Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 81787 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81787 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
I was gripping the phone so tightly that I realized my hand was sweating. What was going on here?
The last voice message.
“Please. Call me back. For Sarah, listen to me. DON’T leave your house. CALL ME.”
Pulling the phone from my ear, I opened the text messages, all from the unknown number Wilder had been calling from.
Oakley, you are killing me here. I need to know you’re okay.
Answer me, dammit!
Stay in your house, Oakley. Do it for Sarah.
I need to know you’re alive. Just give me something here.
Oakley, please! Answer your goddamn phone!
I was shaking. I checked the time these had been sent, and it was an hour and a half ago. I’d been in the shower with my favorite playlist blaring.
I started to dial the number back. Sarah had to be okay. Why was he worried about me? What was going on? So many questions were running through my head. I didn’t know what to ask him first.
The moment the phone rang, I heard a loud noise in the front of my house. It sounded like someone had kicked in my door. I looked frantically around the room for something to use as a weapon. The only things that looked remotely dangerous were my hand weights. I ran over and grabbed them. They were only fifteen pounds each, but if I hit someone in the head with one hard enough, it might buy me some time.
When I turned around, Wilder was filling my doorway, and the sight of him made me want to weep with relief. Until I remembered that he had just broken into my house after calling and texting me several times.
“What is going on?!” I shouted, panicked. “You could have knocked or—I don’t know—used the doorbell.”
“We have to leave. Let’s go. NOW!” he barked at me.
I didn’t move. “I don’t have to do anything. You can either tell me—” I stopped talking as he stalked over toward me. “Wilder, what are you doing?!”
“We are leaving,” he said simply before taking the weights out of my hands, tossing them onto the floor, then picking me up and throwing me over his shoulder.
“WILDER! What in the hell?! PUT ME DOWN! I don’t even have on clothes! This is a towel wrap!” I beat on his back as he carried me through my house.
He didn’t respond, so I kept pounding on him and started kicking. This was insanity, and he needed to talk to me now.
“You are crazy! Put me down!”
“Don’t make me gag you and tie you up, Oakley,” he warned as we walked out of my house.
The damaged door was standing wide open. He hadn’t even tried to close it.
“I need clothes, my phone, to lock up my house! Wilder!”
“You need to shut up!” he snarled.
I couldn’t see where we were going, but I tried to lift my head enough to see my surroundings. We passed by my car and kept going. My house wasn’t locked up and couldn’t be thanks to the damage to my door. That stressed me out.
“Wilder, my house can’t be left open like that. I have my things in there. Anyone could break in.”
“It’ll be taken care of,” he replied, then opened a car door I couldn’t see and shifted me into his arms before shoving me into the backseat.
Black leather, tinted windows, the faint smell of cigar, and a man I did not know was in the driver’s seat.
Wilder climbed in after me and slammed the door. “Buckle up,” he ordered me.
I glared at him, tugging my towel wrap down to cover up what I could of my upper thighs and adjusting it over my breasts. I was practically naked and being kidnapped by my former brother-in-law. Things could not get any more twilight zone than this.
“Ready?” the driver asked.
“Yeah,” Wilder replied. “Make sure the house is locked up when the car is taken care of.”
The guy nodded.
“What car? My car?” I asked him.
He didn’t respond. The only reaction I got from him was his jaw clenching. This was Wilder. Sarah’s father. He wasn’t going to hurt me. I knew this. Yet here I was, barely covered up, in the back of a strange SUV, after he barged into my house and took me.
“Wilder, can you tell me if Sarah is okay?” That was my one real concern. The rest would fall into place after that.
He nodded. “She’s fine.”
Okay. I could at least be relieved about that.
“Thank God. Now, will you please tell me why I am basically naked in the backseat of this vehicle after being forcefully taken from my home?”
He turned his head, and his gaze drifted down my body, as if he was just now registering that I was wearing a terry-cloth wrap. I had told him I was naked before. He hadn’t cared.
Muttering a curse, he leaned forward and pulled off the brown leather jacket he was wearing. “Put this on,” he said, shoving it at me.