Dakota brought him through the garage and into the kitchen. The kitchen was how they’d left it.
“These security systems have minds of their own sometimes,” Brentwood said.
The two men surveyed every room. Dakota checked windows. Still closed and locked. He checked closets and beneath beds. All clear. He led the officer through Miranda’s basement apartment, but they found nothing out of place. No window had been broken, and the back door remained closed and bolted.
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” Dakota said.
“Happens all the time. We chalk it up to ghosts.” The officer showed himself out through the garage.
Standing in his kitchen, he pulled out his phone and called Providence. “Hey, babe.”
“What happened?”
“False alarm. We walked through the house. No one was in here and nothing was—”
The door from the garage opened and Dakota turned. Everything went into slow motion as his brain screeched to a halt. His late wife stood there staring at him, a glazed look in her eyes.
“Hello, Dakota,” Beth Luck said. “It’s been a while.”
His brain shorted. “No way…Beth, you’re back.”
“Dakota, what’s going on?” Providence asked. “Dakota!”
Beth pulled her hand from her jacket, aimed her taser, and fired.
“AAAAYYYYYY!” Jolts of searing pain pummeled him and he dropped to the floor. Blinding agony had him writhing on the ground.
Beth moved into action, but he was powerless to stop her.
In less than a minute, she tied his wrists behind him and secured the rope to the kitchen table. Both his ankles and knees had been bound with black hemp rope. His legs had been tied to a kitchen chair. His cell phone lay a foot away, next to his Glock. So close, yet utterly useless.
With the effects of the taser gun gone, he acknowledged the cold, harsh truth. He was a prisoner in his own home.
Dakota barely recognized the woman glowering down at him. Her dark, brown hair hadn’t been combed in days, her clothes were filthy, and he couldn’t get past the deranged look in her eyes. Instead of pointing the taser at him, she was pointing a handgun at his head.
She’d killed the first-floor lights, save for the stove light, which bathed her in shadow.
“Life is fucking irony, you know that?” Beth began. “You fucked my life up once, now you fuck it up again. What are the chances the same man—the same freakin’ asshole—fucks it up twice?”
“I’m the one tied up, so I’d say you’ve got the upper hand.” He was stalling, trying to figure out a way to free his hands, or to beat her at her own game.
She stopped pacing and stared at him. “Do you know who I am?”
“My wife, Beth Luck.” While he should have been elated his missing wife had returned, he was not. She appeared to be a shell of her former self…and a violent one, at that.
“No, I’mnotyour wife and I never was. I’m Randy Maddox’s wife, Lizbeth Maddox.”
What? What the hell is she talking about?He clenched down on his jaw and remained stone-faced.
“You’re going to transfer twenty-five million into my offshore account, Bank of the Princes.” Beth flipped open a laptop perched on the island. “This is your computer. Password?”
“Fuck you,” Dakota growled.
“I’ll kill you if you don’t give me what I want.” She pointed her handgun at him. “All I have to do is pull this trigger. Bang, bang, you’re dead, Dakota.” She waved the weapon around like a lunatic. “This is Providence’s gun. I’ll be long gone and she’ll be the one in the hot seat.” Her creepy laugh pierced the otherwise silent house.
“You can’t get money from a dead man.”
That got her attention. For several seconds, she stared at him. “Where’s the booze?”
