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I look down at the number of chains that hold me to the metal chair and snicker. “I can’t do anything other than hold still.”
The man opens a lid to a massive toolbox, and I take him in. He’s my size and muscular. A gold wedding band wraps around his ring finger and it catches my eye as he shuffles tools this way and that, finally landing on what looks like massive bolt cutters.
“Who did you say pays you?” I ask, recalling doing the accounting after Father passed and seeing nothing that I deemed ominous on the accounts.
He smirks, twirling the bolt cutter. “I didn’t say, and I won’t. So, don’t ask again.”
I shake my head. “What the fuck.”
“Men like you need people like me...” he trails off as my eyes snap up to his abruptly as his words echo what Conner said that night. I wonder if that night is going to haunt me constantly now that the memories are back.
As he sets on busting through the layers of chains holding me down, my mind spins, remnants of electricity and its heated touch left over and trying to tug me back under. There’s nothing I’ve ever wanted less in my life than to close my eyes again. Logic tells me I’ll have to sleep sometime. But I know if I drown my brain with enough whiskey, I’ll be able to starve off the flood gates that seem to have opened in my head.
“Fuck they used a lot of chain. Who had you? What did they want?”
The question takes me aback. He’d been speaking so plainly before as if he knew who had me. But now I know he hadn’t a clue.
“I thought you knew,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I have a tracker in your wallet, I’ve been watching the place for a few hours now, waiting for that car to leave before I came in to get you. I got the plates, though. I’ll run them when I get back to my office.”
“And what is it you do?” I ask.
He smirks again, dropping the last of the chains to the ground and wiping his brow. “Oh, you know, a little of this, a little of that.”
I rub my wrists absently, looking down at the state of my clothes and body. Everything aches now that I’m moving. It’s as if a freight train ran over me.
“Well, whatever it is you do, I’m thankful.”
“So?”
I raise my eyebrows in question.
“What did they want?”
“Answers,” I say, not giving away anything else. I don’t know who he is. What I do know, however, is the lengths people will go to get to where I am. My father left me a legacy, one that’s worth billions. Anyone would sell their souls to be where I am. I’ll give him no more than he’s given me.
He nods, chuckling as he packs up his tools. “Fair enough. Well, at least you know now in a time of need, say nothing, I’m on my way.”
“I’m thankful, I am. But I do wonder who the hell is paying you to bug my wallet, I’ll admit.”
He shrugs. “Not my problem. I’m paid handsomely to do a job, and I do it to the best of my ability. Although not my finest hour with the time it took me to get you extracted. My daughter had a little league game, and I didn’t grab my work phone. It would’ve pinged me the moment you’d been off your normal route too long. That’s on me.”
I watch him move through the motions of packing his tools up as if he’s repaired my hot water heater after a winter blizzard. He strikes me as an odd character. He’s unchained me from a fucking chair in a warehouse, and he’s acting like it’s any other fucking Tuesday.
“I’ll give you a ride back to your place, hmm?” he asks.
“I mean, I’m not going to take an uber looking like this,” I admit.
He steps in between my legs and heaves me up. “Can you walk, or you need to lean on me?”
My knees instantly try to buckle under my weight. “I’ll need some help apparently.”
“They must’ve really wanted those answers, you’re in rough shape,” he acknowledges.
Yeah, she did.
When he helps me into an SUV, I note the toys in the back seat. What kind of man randomly breaks from his family-filled evening to come and save a man, only to go back home and tuck his kids in?
