“Get. Off. Me.” Her voice was a breathless hiss as she struggled to get out from under him.
“Is there some reason you’re running away with my laptop, Ms. Winters?” James asked as he wrapped an arm around her neck.
“I’m going to work from home tonight.” It was a lame excuse, but it was all Ellie could think of, and Chloe had always said she was a terrible liar. No matter what she claimed, she doubted James would believe it since she’d been running away from him, and he’d only asked her to find and print one document.
“You saw the videos,” he accused menacingly. “You were going straight to Chloe. Nosy bitch. I asked you to do one thing on the computer and you just had to look at things that weren’t intended to be seen by you or anyone else. Not now. You’ll ruin everything. I’m glad I came back when I realized you might not mind your own business.”
You shouldn’t leave stuff you don’t want seen on a computer that’s accessible to anyone except you, dumbass.
Ellie was a crime show addict, and it was obvious that James was either sloppy or psychotic enough to not think about the possibility of her seeing it earlier. Feeling his arm tightening around her neck, she was pretty sure it was mostly the latter.
“Why are you trying to hurt Chloe?” Ellie gave up her pretense in her quest for answers. “She’d never do something like that to you. She loves you.” The fact that Chloe had even cared about a monster like James made Ellie’s stomach heave. The bastard had never deserved to even be in the same room as Chloe.
“Of course she loves me,” James grunted. “We’re getting married, and nobody is going to stop me. I’ll finally get what I deserve.”
Ellie wished he’d get what he really deserved: handcuffs and a very uncomfortable jail cell for the rest of his life. It was obvious that James thought he was entitled to Chloe’s share of the Colter family fortune, a wealth that was almost unfathomable.
“You deserve to be in jail,” Ellie gasped out with what little air she could suck in.
“Shut the fuck up! We’re going to get up. I have a gun, and if you make a single noise, I’ll fucking kill you,” he rasped dangerously.
There was no question in Ellie’s mind that James would follow through with his threat. After seeing how he’d treated Chloe, she had no doubt he was capable of just about anything.
He yanked her to her feet, and it didn’t take long for her to see the glint of steel in the dim lights of the empty parking lot. He definitely had a weapon, and was prepared to use it. She considered screeching as loudly as possible, but she doubted it would do anything except get her silenced permanently. The office sat off by itself, down a dead end side street. It was after dark, and it was cold. The possibility of anybody hearing her was pretty slim. She decided if she didn’t want to end up dead, she needed to wait until she could make her escape.
What happened next screwed up her plan.
“I told Chloe you were worthless. You have no value to her. Your family is poor, and you’re poor. I only hired you to shut her up!” James exclaimed dangerously, right before he brought back his arm and punched her in the face.
Pain shot through Ellie’s head as she absorbed the hit. Dazed from the brutal blow, she was incapable of resisting as he led her to his car parked on the other side of the parking lot.
As he slammed her against his vehicle, she finally spoke, desperately wondering if he was going to kill her even though she hadn’t screamed. “James, you don’t want to do this. What about Chloe? What about your career? Stop this now and I won’t say anything. Just let me go home.” She began to lie her ass off to get him to let her go.
“You think I’m stupid enough to believe that?” James asked in a voice that was growing high in pitch, a crazy voice that was beginning to scare Ellie half to death.
He’s going to kill me.
Ellie recognized the loss of sanity in his tone.
He yanked the computer and her purse away from her and tossed both in the back seat of his vehicle before shoving her toward the trunk. The minute she heard the latch pop open, Ellie started to fight for her life.
No more trying to reason with James.
No more begging him to let her go.
She fought him with everything she had, trying to scratch at his eyes, kicking her leg up to catch him in the groin. He overpowered her, and she finally began to scream, knowing if he succeeded in getting her into the trunk of his vehicle, she was going to be a dead woman.
“Shut the fuck up,” he growled menacingly, grasping her long blonde ponytail and yanking it so hard Ellie’s eyes teared.
She didn’t stop fighting even as he lifted her up and bodily tried to toss her into the confined space.
I’ll be damned if I’ll make this easy for him.
Her ass landed on the hard trunk surface, but she threw her arms out, trying to keep him from closing the lid, confining her in a makeshift coffin.
He’ll never let me live.
“Nooooo! Somebody help! Please!” Ellie kept screaming, not caring anymore about James’s warning, but nobody came to her rescue.
One more vicious slam to her head from his fist silenced her, made her world go dark.
With Ellie unconscious and incapable of fighting anymore, James closed the trunk and got into his vehicle, driving away into the night with her now-limp body hidden and confined in darkness.
The Present…
“Where in the hell is she?” Zane Colter mumbled angrily as he drove his Bentley SUV up another steep, off-road track of dirt that would lead to yet another cabin in the desolate mountains.