The Marsh Madness

Now we were bumping and bouncing along some very uneven terrain. Whatever we were driving on, it could not possibly be a road. Therefore, there probably wouldn’t be many people to see my efforts even if I did get the lights kicked out. Plus my captors might hear the noise. Better to see if I could get out of the van.

Find the windows. What was covering them? I stood up, woozily, and promptly fell down again as the van bounced in another direction. I tried again, gripping a piece of metal and easing myself up. Maybe I could pull off whatever was blocking the windows. I felt . . . curtains?

Curtains? Really?

The van lurched to a stop. My heart almost did too. I had to get out of there—wherever “there” was—before my captor arrived. I needed to see.

I yanked open the curtains and screamed.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN





“UNCLE KEV?” I slumped to the floor of the van and sobbed.

“Jordie!”

I gathered enough strength to stand up and shout. “Are you insane?”

The familiar look of hurt crossed his handsome Irish face. “That’s not nice.”

“Demented? Crazed? Delusional? Mad? Off your rocker? Just plain nuts?”

“Why are you screaming, Jordie? It all went according to plan. Ouch, that hurts.”

I got to my feet so that I could hop around with rage and frustration.

“What plan? What plan is that, Kev?” I may have augmented my point by beating my shaking fists against his handsome Kelly chest.

“The plan to pretend to kidnap you so the police would lose interest in you as a suspect.”

I resisted the urge to bang my head on the side of the van. The only thing that stopped me was that I already had so many bruises from that metal. Plus I had a message for Uncle Kev.

“The police, as you may not be aware, Kev, do not actually lose interest in people who are kidnapped.”

“Okay, okay, but you have to admit it worked. You should see the clips online.”

I rubbed my temples. “Clips of what? The police?”

“Your kidnapping!”

“There are clips online?”

“YouTube and everything. It’s big news.”

“Well, that’s terrific. But I was scared to death. What if I’d had a heart attack?”

“Jordie! You’re only, what, twenty-seven? Why would you have a heart attack?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I thought I was being kidnapped by the person who killed Chadwick and Shelby, you . . .” Words failed.

“But it was me.”

“I know that now, but I didn’t know it when you put that bag over my head.”

“Of course you knew. It was part of the plan.”

“Maybe it was, but I—the person with the bag over her head in the speeding vehicle—didn’t know about the plan.”

Kev shook his handsome ginger head. “Why didn’t you?”

I thought for a second that my eyes would pop right out of my head. “Good question, Kev. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did!”

“You did not. I would have noticed if you had mentioned it.”

Kev shrugged.

I resisted the urge to slug him.

He said, “I did tell you.”

“When? When did you tell me?”

“I left a message on your burner.”

“How did you get the number?”

“Cherie gave it to me.”

“That makes sense. And you left a . . . ?”

“Yeah. Left a message. Burner to burner, no problem there.”

“There was a problem, Kev, in that I never got that message.”

“You didn’t? But you called me back.”

I scratched my head. “I did?”

“Yes.”

“Um, what did I say?”

“You said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Uncle Kev.’”

It actually hurt when I scratched my head. “Okay, I did call about a particularly obtuse message and said I didn’t understand it.”

“Told ya,” Uncle Kev said with a grin.

“But the thing is that you left me a message saying, ‘All systems are go and the eagle will be landing and we will have liftoff, Houston.’”

“Exactly.”

“But that didn’t come across like you were going to stage a faux kidnapping, Uncle Kev.” I tried to speak gently, although I actually felt like . . . Well, never mind.

“Oh.”

“Next time, a bit of detail.”