Clearly, she couldn’t do much about the situation on her own. Not only did she not know where she was, she was unarmed and didn’t have the skill or ability to defend herself with her own hands should she need to. Her kidnapping made that very clear. She had just opened the door when four hands from men she hadn’t heard come in through the back grabbed her. She’d tried to fight them off, but she was bound, gagged, and hooded in such short order she doubted they were even breathing hard. She wouldn’t do much better one-on-one.
So she needed help. And that meant Carson.
He was here only through a weird confluence of luck and chance, but he was here, and that was what mattered. The question, the one she most needed an answer to, was exactly how loyal to or scared of her kidnappers he was.
He walked through the shack, looking out all the windows and going through the closets, clearly searching for something. He appeared hyper-focused, like finding the thing he needed was paramount to his continued existence. She marshalled the courage she needed to ask the one question that she wasn’t sure she wanted him to answer.
“What, um, what are you going to do now?”
Engaged with a task, his voice was much more business-like, and he didn’t turn back to answer. “Don’t know. I didn’t expect to be in this situation, so I’m looking for anything I can use to my advantage.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, sounding slightly peeved at having to repeat himself. “A pipe, a rope, anything that might come in handy. It’s like being shipwrecked – you find what you can and then figure out how you can use it.”
“Oh, OK,” she said without totally following his point. “But that wasn’t really my question. I meant, what are you going to do – with me?”
Carson stopped searching and turned back to face her. “With you?” He looked completely baffled.
“Yes, me.” She paused, wondering if it was wise to voice her greatest fear, but she needed to know. “Are you… will you have to… you know, kill me?” She tried to remain stoic, but even saying the words out loud make her chest tighten like a vice.
Dismay enveloped Carson’s expression, looking as permanent as a death mask as he met her eyes. “Jesus,” he said after several seconds. “I’ve really fucked your head up, haven’t I?” He approached her but stopped short, as if afraid to get too close to her, his eyes flooded with regret and anguish. He dropped to one knee, putting them both on the same level, and took a deep breath. Katie could see his wheels turning, but when he tried to speak again, nary a syllable came out. He rolled his eyes in exasperation and finally got some words to pass his lips.
“All right, look! You’ve got every reason to think of me as something you found on the bottom of your shoe, but just because I screwed up so badly… well, I mean… that doesn’t change things. I mean, it changes things, of course. I know it changes things for you, probably 180 degrees. But it doesn’t mean I don’t care about you – a lot. I meant what I said last night. I’m getting you out of here safely, regardless of anything else that happens. I know you don’t have any reason to believe anything I say any more, but… well, I love you too damn much to let anything worse happen.”
Katie had been looking down, listening but too frightened of what he might say to her to face him. When the key phrase passed his lips, she momentarily forgot about the place and the circumstance and everything else and lifted her now-incredulous eyes to meet his. She had to have misunderstood him. “What?”
Carson stared at her, shocked, as if someone had taken control of him and voiced the phrase for him. It had been the stress of the moment, she realized, but that didn’t make it any less true. If she doubted it from the sound of his voice, the look of hopeful fear confirmed it. Carson loved her.
Katie felt a surge of elated passion. She had heard him correctly. For a tick of the clock, she wanted to throw her arms around him (forgetting she couldn’t) so he could take her away from this mess and they could just go back to the day before when none of this had happened. Then the tock came, and the real world muscled that lovely fantasy aside and shoved it in a ditch. This wasn’t possible. The joy dissipated like fog under a hot sun, to be replaced with fear, betrayal, frustration, and a hundred other emotions she couldn’t sort out. In an instant, she was enraged – more so than the moment she’d learned why Carson was standing in front of her when he took off her hood.
“No!” she said in a near-yell. “You don’t get to say that! You son of a bitch, who the fuck do you think you are? You don’t get to play with my emotions like this! It’s not enough you completely turned my heart upside down by being involved in – shit, I can barely say it – my abduction! You have to pick this time to tell me you love me! What are you thinking?”
“I know,” Carson said in a tiny voice that sounded completely incongruous coming from a man of his physical stature. “I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I just wanted you to know, well, I’m not going to fail you anymore. No matter what you think of me.” He rose and walked and leaned against the wall, his back to Katie. “No one is going to kill you, least of all me. You might hate me, but if you work with me, I’ll make sure you stay safe. I give you my word.”
“Your word means absolutely shit to me right now, Carson.”
His
