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My head throbbedand my mouth was dry. I couldn’t see anything. I tried to force my eyes open, but they refused to cooperate. Beyond the thump of blood in my ears, I could hear the sounds of someone moving nearby. I concentrated, trying to remember what had happened. It all flooded back to me in an instant.
Blair on the ground.
The intruder, face hidden by a balaclava.
The gun.
The letter.
Then a prick in my upper arm, which must have been a needle. He’d drugged me.
Keeping my eyes shut, I drew a slow breath through my nostrils, gathering what information I could about my surroundings. Based on the woody scent of the air, I assumed I wasn’t at the cottage anymore. I couldn’t feel a breeze, so we might be indoors. Not in a car because I was lying on something soft and had plenty of room to stretch my limbs. I shifted my feet and felt something coarse rub at my ankles. He must have bound them with rope. Testing my wrists, I felt the smooth, cool plastic of a zip tie around them. He’d restrained me the same way he had Blair. But what was over my face?
I tried to focus on the sensation of the fabric against my skin. It was soft. Dark. Covering not only my eyes, but my cheeks and chin as well. Not a blindfold. I moved my head ever so slightly and felt fabric brush against the back of my neck.
It was a hood. Perhaps a bag of some kind or a pillowcase. It wasn’t secured around my throat, which meant that if I wriggled down, I might be able to get free of it. But I might also attract my captor’s attention.
A latch clicked, and a draft swirled through the room. Something rustled, then the latch clicked again, and the draft ended. Perhaps it had been a door opening and closing. I strained my ears for several seconds but didn’t hear anything, so I shimmied down the soft surface, slowly working the covering off my face. It took a few minutes, and the adrenaline surging through my veins reminded me that my captor might return at any second, but eventually, I was able to shake it off, blinking against the light.
As my vision adjusted, I realized I was in a poorly lit room, lying on a broad bunk bed. There was a wooden counter along the opposite wall and an old-fashioned fireplace standing empty. My best guess was that I was in an old musterer’s cabin.
I sat up. My vision swam and my stomach rolled unpleasantly—perhaps an aftereffect of whatever he’d drugged me with. Through a small window above the counter, I could see tussock extending into the horizon with no other buildings in sight. But closer, right outside, was a four-wheeled motorcycle with a blond man sitting astride it. He had broad shoulders and tidy hair. Recognition set in an instant before he glanced around and made eye contact.
Tyler.
His mouth dropped open, and his frame went rigid. His mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
I threw myself backward, trying to get out of sight because I instinctively knew that this wasn’t good. Tyler wasn’t part of any rescue party. He was the one who’d brought me here. His eyes, burning into mine, had been cold and assessing. No sign of his usual gentle, friendly demeanor. My back hit the wall and I curled into a ball. There was nothing nearby I could use to protect myself, and even if there had been, my hands and ankles were still bound. The door crashed open, and Tyler strode in, his expression dark.
“You weren’t supposed to see me.” His voice grumbled like a thundercloud. I generally thought of Tyler as a nice, levelheaded guy, but it seemed I didn’t know him at all.
“What do you want?” I asked, shakier than I’d have liked.
He rolled his eyes. “What every guy always wants. To get the girl.” He stalked closer, watching me the way I imagined a shark would a fish right before it became dinner. “I had everything planned perfectly. When Blair got free, it put a kink in my plans, but I had it figured out. I was going to find you and be the hero. You just had to ruin it.” He shook his head, but I didn’t care, I was too relieved about what he’d said about my brother.
“Blair is okay?”
He ignored my question. “Fuck, Kennedy. All you had to do was lie still and play the damsel in distress, and everything would have been fine.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t.” He huffed. “You never have. First, I thought it was because you’d known me as a kid and needed to see that I’d grown up and was ready to settle down, so I got a girlfriend and hoped that would do the trick. But you were still blind about what was right in front of you, and the bitch wasn’t as dumb as I’d hoped. She knew I wanted you, and she did everything she could to keep me away from you. I had to end it before she said anything to make you suspicious.”
“You broke up?” I asked, hoping he meant that and not that he’d hurt the poor girl.
“Yeah.” He caught my eye. “That’s when I knew I needed to step up my game.”
“So, you started stalking me?” What happened to asking someone out? Not that I’d have said yes, of course, and perhaps he knew that.
He leaned forward, his gaze cold. “I figured it would go one of two ways. Either you’d like the attention, or you’d be freaked out and need comfort, which I’d be right there to provide. I didn’t expect you to get on a plane and fly halfway around the fucking world.”
I felt sick. All this time, I’d thought my problems could be attributed to some crazy fan, but it turned out the culprit had been much closer to home. I’d trusted him. Welcomed him into our lives. Let him fool me.
Tyler sat on the edge of the bed, never taking his eyes off me. “Now, thanks to you, I’m going to have to find another way to play this.” He bit his lip, and for a second, he looked like the boy I’d known years ago. A bit lost. In over his head. “I don’t want to hurt you. All I’ve ever wanted is to love you, but you just wouldn’t love me back.” He punctuated the statement by thumping a fist onto the bare mattress. “I’ve taken care of you. I’d have given you everything you ever wanted, but you never loved me.”
Thoughts flew through my mind, one on top of the other. Jumbled. Desperate.
But it all came back to a single, unavoidable truth: Tyler was obsessed with me. He didn’t want to hurt me, he just wanted to have me to himself. I was an actress. I could make him believe his dream might come true. My life depended on it.
