“Excuse me?”

“You’re fucking sulking,” I repeated.

“This may be hard for you to grasp, but my three-year-old daughter has been missing for a week, and I just found out the only person who could have been a suspect had nothing to do with it. Mitch was a dream compared to the nightmare I’m living in at the moment.”

“I don’t think anything could possibly be worse than the unscrupulous greed of a man who once sold his own child for gambling money.”

“That didn’t help.”

“It wasn’t meant to.” I took the risk of taking my eyes off the road to face her. Her face was drawn tight and her fingernails dug into her jeans. I’d forgotten how good the pain of her nails digging into my back felt, but I promised myself I would have that feeling again soon.

“Keiran should have never brought you back.” She whispered it so low, had I not been playing close attention to her, I wouldn’t have heard it.

“No, he shouldn’t have, but he did, and I won’t be going anywhere, baby, so get used to me. I’m a different animal now… so don’t fuck with me.”

“What do you want from me?” Her voice had risen so high and unexpectedly that I swerved before quickly righting the car.

“I want you to tell me about her.”

“That’s it?” I could tell she wasn’t expecting my answer, and I didn’t miss the wariness in her voice. She had every need to be suspicious.

“For now.”

She was silent for a few heartbeats before finally asking, “What do you want to know?”

I blew out air in frustration because I really didn’t know. “Anything. What color are her eyes? What kind of food does she like? What’s her favorite color?”

“Well… she has my eyes and your hair. She likes anything that is covered in ice cream… even meat.” I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t fight the smile similar to the one Sheldon currently wore as she spoke about Kennedy.

“Her favorite color is blue. She hates anything to do with pink. She’s obsessed with the Ninja Turtles. Michelangelo is her favorite.”

“Did you teach her that?”

“What?”

“To like Mikey?”

“I know he’s your favorite, but no, I didn’t teach her about any of them. She naturally gravitated to him. I tried to get her into Dora, but she hates it.”

“That’s my girl.”

Sheldon stiffened at my statement, but I shrugged it off. The more she spoke of Kennedy, who I noticed she affectionately called Ken, the more I realized how alike my daughter and I was.

The realization further cemented Sheldon’s future. I could almost taste the pain I would cause her. My fingers gripped the steering wheel, the leather creaking under my hands as I imagined it was her throat.

My cock also stirred to life thinking about the moment I could begin to make her pay. I would make her pay more times than one before I ended it all.

“Keenan?” she called, breaking me from my fantasies.

“Yeah?”

“I have to find her soon. Kennedy’s condition is too delicate. I don’t know what they will do if she—” Sheldon choked on her words, and when she started to cry, my tension kicked into high gear.

“What do you mean? What condition?”

She took a deep breath, which seemed to calm her before continuing. “Since she was two, she’s suffered from seizures. The doctors haven’t been able to find a cause since she’s never suffered a brain injury.”

“Epilepsy?” When she nodded, I brought my fist down on the dash, cracking the surface and pressed down on the gas, speeding all the way back to Six Forks.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

VICK

“BOSS, THE CAR took off.”

“The place is compromised. Move to location two when it’s safe but keep eyes out for them in case they come back before.”

“And if it does?”

“You handle it.”

The line went dead before he could ask for further instructions. The man cursed while silently wishing he’d never agreed to this job. Kidnapping kids was new to him, but it was a job, and one that paid well, though he now wished he’d asked for more.

The day he snatched the kid, she had some sort of episode that scared the hell out of him. He almost dumped the kid off anonymously to the nearest hospital, but his partner convinced him not to by reminding him how much money was at stake. Luckily, whatever it was didn’t seem to last long so they chalked it up to a reaction from being kidnapped, but when it happened a second and third time, we starting drugging her.