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It had probably just been the shock, and then the spinning car that had made me freeze when I’d been taken. Also, the disbelief that my kidnapper—and Donovan’s attacker—had been a woman.
What did that mean?
Was it an, I don’t know, angry ex?
He hadn’t mentioned previous girlfriends.
But, I mean, he was a grown man. He was handsome and charming. I knew he’d hooked up with women, and it wasn’t a big stretch to assume there had been other, more important women in his past.
Perhaps ones important enough to want to hurt him. Even after years.
And I could definitely see Donovan being attracted to the woman.
I mean, she might have actually been the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. In person or even on a TV or movie screen.
She was tall and slender, but I couldn’t make out much about her frame. With the whole… kidnapping thing. But her face was, well, doll-like. Soft, but dominated by plump lips and gorgeous blue eyes. Her hair was long and shiny, existing in that stage between true blonde and light brown with honey and gold highlights.
Stupidly pretty.
Of course Donovan would have been interested in someone like her.
“God,” I grumbled to myself.
I was getting jealous during my own kidnapping. That was insane.
Once the thoughts started to form, though, there seemed to be no stopping them.
My mind was working at a breakneck pace, oscillating between wondering what may have torn these two apart, and nauseatingly vivid pictures of them in bed.
I mean, if she wanted to kill him, things must have ended badly, right?
It was hard to imagine Donovan being cruel. Sure, he’d been a little chilly with me that morning, but things had been tense because of the sudden plans for a meeting.
But cruel?
Cruel enough that someone was still holding a deadly grudge?
That just didn’t mesh with the image I had of the man, of the guy who’d been so soft and sweet with me.
But, I guess, people changed.
I mean, the girl in middle school who’d bullied me mercilessly grew up and funded a nonprofit meant to help women and children out of abusive situations.
If that borderline evil child could become practically a saint in adulthood, I guess I had to believe in change, in people’s capacity for it.
So maybe Donovan hadn’t always been a kind and sweet man. Maybe he’d done something terrible to this woman to make her so bent on revenge even after all this time.
As much as I hated the feeling of the car racing through the streets—apparently, high speeds were only acceptable to me when Donovan was the one behind the wheel—,it was even worse when I felt it slow, chugging a bit down what had to be a gravel driveway.
Where were we?
How much time had passed?
It could have been mere minutes or over an hour. My perception of time was skewed with my anxiety.
However long it had been, though, we could have gotten quite far thanks to the insane speed she’d been driving at.
Was there even a chance of the guys finding me? Saving me?
Or was I on my own in this?
At least I felt like I stood a chance. If it was just this woman, we were pretty equally matched.
Sure, it was possible she had some crazy martial arts training, and the closest I came to that was watching that Cobra Kai show on TV. But I was just going to put my faith to rest in the idea that she was just a kind of normal woman like me. Just with really good driving skills.
If that was the case, then I absolutely stood a chance. Yeah, she had crazy on her side. But I had something just as potent. Survival instinct.
No, my life wasn’t super glamorous or anything like that, but it was mine. And I had weeds at home that needed pulling. And a new dog that needed snuggling. I had a sister who needed me to help keep her grounded sometimes so she didn’t simply lift off into space. I had a book that was a good chunk written, and the feeling that it was good. Really good, even.
And, maybe, possibly, hopefully, I had a man that I was beginning to fall for. Against all logic. Against all the odds.
I wanted to get back to all of that.
If, to do that, I needed to incapacitate or even kill this woman, my kidnapper, then that was just what I was going to need to do.
That was what my thoughts were on when the car finally pulled to a stop.
I sucked in my breath like it might help me hear better, but there was no sound of a car door. The driver seemed to be sitting there, thinking. Maybe… regretting what she’d done now that the adrenaline wore off?
That was probably asking too much.
Then the car was shifting, the door opening and slamming, and I exhaled a shaky breath before sucking another one in.
