I didn’t realize my fist was balled and my nails were digging deep into my skin until I felt the first drop of blood.
I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation, and by the time I cleared the murderous rage clogging my senses, Keiran had ended the call.
“What’s wrong with Sheldon?”
“Keenan…”
“Fucking tell me or I really will kill you.”
The gun shook in my hand as I watched him take a deep breath and scrub his hand down his face in a clear sign of agitation. “She’s been shot. She—”
My fist connected with his face before I even realized I had moved.
CHAPTER SIX
SHELDON
“YOU DIDN’T HAVE to call him.”
My voice trembled with the many emotions I was currently feeling. The physical pain was nothing compared to the feeling of being completely helpless.
“Are you kidding me? Do you know how much shit he is going to give me for waiting as long as I did? You were shot in the head and unconscious for almost twenty-four hours. He’s going to kill me!”
“You and I both know Keiran is too selfish to deprive himself of you, and I wasn’t shot in the head. It grazed me.”
“Sheldon, Kennedy is missing. We need to tell him. The sooner, the better.”
“She’s right, honey. If anyone knows who was behind her kidnapping, it would be him,” John spoke up. He only just arrived a few hours ago. Lake had to call him when she couldn’t get in touch with Keiran. Fortunately, I regained consciousness in time to stop—no beg—her from calling him before I’d spoken with the police.
We all knew what would happen when Keiran found out Kennedy was gone. He just might kill me along with the bastards who took her.
If she was ever found.
“Oh, God.” Sobs forced their way through me as I thought of the monsters that had stolen Keiran when he was an infant. Lake rushed over and started rubbing my back. I knew she was just as scared as I was though she was better at hiding it.
I and everyone else were deadly sure the kidnapping was related to Keiran’s past somehow. Who else would attempt a random, careless kidnapping in broad daylight unless there was something big to gain?
Mitch.
It had to be him. He’d done it once with his own son. There was no reason to believe he wouldn’t do it to Kennedy. He’d once again managed to escape and stay hidden for four long years.
Keiran never stopped searching even though we all believed he was likely dead after owing so much debt with no way to pay.
Panic ensued as my imagination ran rampant with thoughts of where my baby might be and if she was okay or suffering for reasons that she couldn’t understand.
Every second she was gone I died a little more inside.
And to make matters worse, the father of my child could be returning with Keiran, and he had no idea she even existed. I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer that Keiran hadn’t caught up with him before the phone call. It might have been selfish, but I would do anything to protect my child.
“Are you sure you told the police everything you knew?” Lake asked for the umpteenth time.
“I’m sure. It all happened so fast so there wasn’t much to remember.” But what I could remember, very vividly, was the screams of my daughter as she was being forced away from me.
The bullet, luckily, had only grazed the left side of my head, but it was enough to render me unconscious. The doctor assured me the wound wouldn’t scar, but cosmetics was the last thing I was worried about. I had told him just as much.
Keiran had just taken off yesterday morning for California to bring Keenan home and had been unreachable while everyone scrambled to find Kennedy.
The few witnesses who stepped forward said she had been taken into a black van with missing plates. My only guess would be that they couldn’t have gone far without the risk of being pulled over. It was all I could hope for.
“How long—” I stopped to clear my throat and swallow down panic. “How long until he gets here?”
“Eight or nine hours, maybe?” Her voice trembled while nervousness was sketched all over her face. “Your parents have called Dash, and he’s on his way from Germany as we speak.”
I stifled a curse and managed to keep a straight face. My parent’s reaction was bad, but Dash’s would be one hundred times worse.
My parents had done nothing but blame me for losing Kennedy along with grilling me over my activities. They hated that I moved away with Kennedy although it was only thirty minutes away. They accused me time and again of punishing them by taking her from them.
Never mind that I was in college just as they had always wanted. They believed my need to be completely independent was selfish due to having her so young. I was depriving her of her heritage, my father would say.
From the moment Kennedy took her first breath, she had only been without one thing and that was her father. Even so, she was loved as if she had two parents instead of one.
Lake would always say that maybe they were upset I proved them wrong and I had shown them a teen pregnancy didn’t always have to end in disaster.
*