Rise of the Notorious (33 page)

She snarled at him. “You don’t have to tell me, Wyatt. I know exactly what my inaction has caused.”

“Then what are you going to do now?” he demanded, pointing at the latest letter. “Clearly the person who took Kennedy is sick of waiting around for you to take a stand.”

“She’s probably dead,” she spat, pain hitting her violently at the words. “It’s too late.”

“You don’t know that,” he growled. “You have to take these to the police.”

She snorted. “What the hell are they going to do?”

“More than you’ve been doing,” he pointed out cruelly. “You’re letting this bastard win by not using his taunts against him.”

“So what, take the letters to the press? Clearly the public’s sympathy has not helped me so far. All it’s done is make things worse,” she reasoned.

“Getting the public on your side helped you with Shaw and that actress, but it won’t help you with threats like these,” Wyatt told her, his voice darkening as he continued to watch her. “Are you sure this person is the same one who sent the other ransom note?”

“Yes,” she replied coolly, her knees aching beneath her. She sat down as gracefully as she could in her desk chair, her expression void of emotion. “The first two letters were warnings of what was coming. The ransom note was confirmation. This letter is supposed to be the nail in the coffin on my ambitions, my plans.”

“We need to ask ourselves why the ransom note was sent to Grant and not you, and why it was written differently, styled differently. It looks and sounds nothing like these letters.” Wyatt looked down at the papers again, his brow creasing as he considered them. “If you ask me, they were not written by the same person.”

“I believe the ransom note was sent to Grant because I didn’t listen to the other letters,” Madison said numbly, her eyes staring unseeingly out the window of her office as she sat back in her chair. “Whoever this is was getting tired of my disregard for his wishes.”

“So they reached out to Grant instead.” Wyatt sighed, running a hand through his hair. “That may be the case.”

“Of course it is,” she muttered, her hands clenching over the arms of her chair. “I'll take the letters to the detective tomorrow.”

Wyatt watched her silently as tears began to spill from her eyes, though her face remained hard as stone. There was something hauntingly beautiful about the sight of her crying, yet it disturbed him more than anything he had ever witnessed.

Tears of rage or passion were one thing, those he had seen on her a thousand times. But the tears she shed now were tears of pure, unadulterated pain. She had been beaten down, bullied, attacked, and then built up again, only to be hit with an awful tragedy. First her sister, then her brother. She must be wondering to herself what the next big disaster was going to be.

His helplessness to do anything about it strangled him like a rope infused with barbed wire. Other than stand by her side, he could do nothing. Other than kiss away her tears and rock her to sleep at night, he was useless.

He had his own theories about who was responsible for some of the press leaks that had occurred, but the kidnapping, the brake tampering…that was something else entirely.

There was an enemy out there, a dangerous one. Wyatt had faced plenty of violent men in his day, men who had nothing to live for and didn’t fear consequences or death. But there was something about a person who would kidnap a teenage girl, sabotage a man’s brakes, and send threatening letters that just didn’t seem all that sane.

Clearly they were dealing with a sociopathic monster. The only question at this point was if the man, or woman, was a complete stranger or of Vasser blood.

With a burdened sigh, he stepped toward Madison and knelt down before her, his hands cupping her face and forcing her to look at him. He brushed at the tears on her cheeks as their eyes met.

“It’s okay to be weak sometimes, sweetheart,” he murmured with a slow smile. “As extraordinary as you may be, you are only human.”

Pain flashed over her face then, dramatic and real, and her heart burst at the seams from it. More tears fell from her eyes as she let her head fall forward onto his shoulder and she gave in to the misery.

He held her tightly, his hands brushing over her hair as she cried, the sounds she made beautifully horrific. She had needed this; just as he had needed to comfort her, to feel like he was capable of helping in some small way.

Because he wasn’t leaving her side from this moment on, not with the mounting danger and the building pressure she was under. There was no going back to Maine—there was no resuming his previous life. The past be damned; he wasn’t going to let her push him away, wasn’t going to allow the men who had ruined his life do the same again this time.

He was going to expose them and soon. Though the truth would undoubtedly hurt her, it would destroy those he had a very good hunch were responsible for at least some of what was happening to her.

He was going to thoroughly enjoy delivering a well deserved dose of bad karma.

Her back was
stiffer than a board and her arms were tied behind her, numb and useless. It had been days since she had been taken, or so she thought. She had no real grasp on how much time had passed, or if it was even night or day outside. Her world had become this impenetrable darkness, and her initial fear had turned into a numb acceptance.

Kennedy had no hope of ever going home. In fact, part of her wondered if her family had even reported her missing. Her captor had certainly left her in the dark about what was going on and why she was taken. Instead, all they had done was bring her an occasional cold hamburger or bottle of water, always silent despite her questions and pleas.

She had to assume that because they fed her, they wanted her alive for some reason, for money or for fame, she didn’t know. But with Madison in charge, she sincerely doubted if their demands would be met.

Her sister was a ruthless bitch. And her mother and brothers were all preoccupied with their own shitty lives; they didn’t care about her anymore. In all likelihood, they probably assumed she ran away to escape all the drama, and they couldn’t care less if she returned home.

The very thought of it brought angry tears to her eyes, which only bled onto the blindfold she wore. Her mouth twisted around the gag in her mouth, a sob wracking her throat.

She didn’t want to be here. She just wanted to go home…

Though she could see nothing, she knew she was in some sort of chamber or metal room, given the way any and all sounds she made echoed hollowly off the walls. She heard the door to the chamber rattle as the lock was opened and quieted her sobs as whoever was there stepped into the room.

She whimpered, as always fearing they had finally come to kill her. Though her limbs were too weak and numb to move, she still strained away from the direction of the intruder, tilting her head to the side as she trembled.

When she heard the voice, her heart galloped wildly with terror. All she could think of was that she was living inside a horror movie.

“This should have been simple,” the voice said, guttural and disturbingly warped. It occurred to her that whoever it was, they were using some kind of voice changer like she’d seen in the movies. Either that or it was a demon straight from Hell.

She felt the person approaching, but kept her silence. Fear prevented her from making any noise.

“Your sister is quite the stubborn bitch,” the voice continued, violent anger lacing the words. “She clearly would prefer to see your death than relinquish her high and mighty throne.”

Kennedy’s jaw clenched, her teeth biting into the gag as she forced back another sob. So it was true. Madison was doing nothing to help save her.

She really was doomed.

“Drastic measures will have to be taken.”

She heard footsteps approaching her from the left, then squirmed as she felt a hand slide over her throat. Fingers clamped over her skin and forced her face upward, though she was still blind to what she was looking at. Her body shook uncontrollably as she imagined a man lifting a knife, its razor sharp blade glinting in the light.

If there even was any light.

Instead, his next words brought about a far darker, more ominous terror within her.

“I’m going to use you the way I should have in the first place.”

He released her face and left, leaving her sobbing hysterically in the darkness.

N
ightfall claimed the city as she slid from her town car and stared instinctively up at the sky. It was an oddly clear and quiet evening, the world around her eerily calm. Traffic was light, few people walked the streets, and the usual drone of sirens and honking horns was absent.

Part of her wondered if it was just her perception of things that had changed, or if the world really was darkening under the weight of some impending gloom. Surely it seemed that her world was darker these days.

Her sister had been missing for four long, miserable days. The police seemed less confident now in their search, and the detective was all but useless. In the conversations she’d had with the woman, especially after giving her the letters, she had felt more like a suspect than a victim. If the police wanted to paint her and her brothers as the criminals here, then the search was going to go nowhere.

The real suspect was still out there, and she had to pray they still had her sister alive. The most recent letter had hinted otherwise, but she was determined now not to lose faith.

In the end, her faith and her vindication would be all that would save her and her family from this nightmare.

She spotted Raoul off to the side of the building, leaning against the stone wall with a lit cigarette in his mouth. A somewhat grateful smile lifted her lips at the sight of him, realizing just how long it had been, or so it seemed, since they had talked.

With everything that had been happening around her, she had lost so much of what she had once considered routine. Her life had been turned upside down and over again more times than she could count, yet Raoul had always been there.

Unlike most of the people she knew, he had never once left her side.

“You haven’t smoked in years,” she stated humorously as she walked up to him, the amber of her eyes glinting in the outdoor lights of the hotel.

He snorted derisively and savored a long drag on the cigarette, his eyes meeting hers. After he blew out the smoke politely away from her, his mouth formed an edgy smile. “Stress is a killer,
cariño.
I do what I can to survive.”

“Well, then you better pass some of that remedy my way.” She joined him against the wall, the cool stone soothing against her back through her light coat. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the pack of cigarettes, holding it out for her to take one. As she did, he tucked the pack away and held out his lighter, his own cigarette hanging loosely from his lips as he lit hers.

She let the smoke fill her system and released a heavy sigh, watching it drift out into the night air. Her head fell back against the wall as her eyes closed, and she reveled in this simple moment of peace.

“I’m sorry I’ve been such a stranger, darling,” she told him quietly, turning her head to look at him.

He avoided her eyes as he continued to smoke. “Life goes on.”

“Does it?” she mused, shaking her head as she took another slow drag on her cigarette. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m caught in this never ending cycle, up and down, back and forth. It’s been several weeks since my grandfather’s death, and I
still
have yet to do what he needed me to do. I keep being held back, either by my own choices or by the hatred of others.”