have been why they weren’t at the wedding. “What about the wife? Did anything come up?” I asked.
“Yeah. That’s where it gets interesting. The wife, Marie, is filthy rich. But it’s all tied up in trusts. She works as a preschool teacher three days a week, but she receives a stipend, and all of her expenses are pre-paid. So she may look rich on paper, because she has three houses, a boat and two luxury cars, but in reality it’s all tied up in assets. Assets she’s not allowed to sell.”
“So if the husband needs money, he’s shit out of luck.”
“Exactly.”
It was all starting to come together. Douglas had run himself into the ground with debt. Someone, probably someone violent who was in the mob, wanted their money back, and they wanted it now. Douglas was a dumb shit, so he went looking to marry a rich woman. The only problem was that the rich woman’s money wasn’t really hers. It was her family’s and she didn’t have jack shit to give him.
And then he’d come up with the plan to kidnap Loren, and try to get a ransom from her high-profile family.
“Thanks man. I appreciate it.” We got off the phone, and I called my supervisor and told him I’d run into some problems. He got on a secure line, and I told him the whole story, including the parts about Douglas and Marie, and my theory that Douglas was behind the kidnapping.
He didn’t disagree. He did however curse me out for several minutes before telling me he’d get started on handling the fallout from the five guys I’d shot.
Now what was I going to tell Loren? She’d reacted badly enough when I said Douglas was an asshole. And yes, she’d apologized, but she probably overreacted in the first place because she was sensitive as hell about the whole independence versus dependence thing.
But for right now, maybe she didn’t need to know. And yes, I knew that would piss her off. And maybe it should. But I’d just killed five guys on the trip that was supposed to fix my nightmares, and I was fucking terrified that if I told Loren the truth, that she’d go off half-cocked and try to fix it by calling her cousin and warning her. She might have defended Douglas, but the moment she found out he was using her cousin, and trying to take advantage of her wealth… Well. I knew Loren well enough to know that she would go nuts and go to great lengths to defend her cousin.
And I hadn’t made it through tonight to just have this shit start all over again.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Loren
I woke up with my face pressed against the window of a Jeep that Jackson was driving. But not the first Jeep I’d ridden in with him. No, this was the Jeep of one of the men who’d attacked Jackson and tried to kill him.
I still hadn’t really processed what had happened. I knew the fog would lift eventually, and I’d be a complete mess over what happened. I mean, I was supposed to be taking photographs of a wedding. Not watching men get their heads blown off.
But I was grateful to Jackson. Without him, I’d be alone in the woods, assuming I would have gotten away from those men, or I’d still be locked up in that place.
“Who was that on the phone?” I’d been semi-aware of Jackson talking on the phone, but I couldn’t follow most of it because I’d fallen asleep on and off.
“My boss and a former Army buddy.”
“Did they say anything important?” I asked.
“No.”
“Jackson. Please. This affects me too. I heard you asking for the details of what happened. I was kidnapped too. I was the one that was going to be used for ransom.” I put my hand on his leg. “I have the right to know.”
“You may have a right to know, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.”
“What? How can you say that?”
“Because sometimes certain information just makes everything harder.”
“Jackson. I need you to tell me what you know,” I said.
“I’m not going to talk about it right now. I talked to someone who’s an expert, and you’re just going to have to accept that.”
I crossed my arms. “I don’t have to accept anything.”
“You do, because I’m done talking about it.”
How could one person be so infuriating? “I don’t want any more decisions made for me. I am an adult, and I just demonstrated that. I got drugged, kidnapped,