Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
I want to tell him to fuck off so badly, but I refuse to escalate the situation. I know it’s in my best interest, and Ella’s, to just let him keep up all this bluster. It is buying us valuable time, and it is making him feel like he is being effective.
He smiles at me broadly. “I thought I would never be able to get you to the table, because I thought you were untouchable. You never had a real relationship. There was never anybody you seemed to care for. And then she came along and now I can puppet you all over the world at a whim.”
“Hm,” I say, not giving him the satisfaction of much of a response. “I think you will soon find that I am not a very good puppet. I have a tendency to cut the strings.”
“Not this time. Not with her condition.”
“What do you mean, her condition?”
“Oh. You didn’t know? How exciting! I get to break the news,” he smirks. “She’s pregnant. We had a doctor scan her, just in case.”
“Just in case of what?”
“I always have female captives scanned in case there is some extra leverage on board. In her case, there was. You’re going to be a father. Or an uncle. Hard to say which, really, the way she’s been going through your family.”
He means to be insulting, but I could not care less. Ella is pregnant. I should have had her scanned too.
“How far along?”
He reaches into a small table beside his chair and plucks out an ultrasound image, handing it over to me.
“Old enough to look like a baby,” he says.
I cannot help but smile at the image. I knew that at some point she might fall pregnant, but there is still something miraculous about seeing the actual proof of it having happened. There is new life inside Ella. A part of me wants to believe that it is Teddy coming back to us through her, that the family hasn’t lost anyone, not really.
“Thank you,” I say.
He laughs. “You shouldn’t be thanking me, old man. Not yet, anyway. We haven’t decided what her fate is going to be. Are you going to join me? Or is Miss Baby-on-Board going to have an unfortunate accident?”
Threatening the life of the woman I love is one level of stupid. Threatening the life of the child she is carrying is about the most stupid thing I could possibly conceive of.
“Does she know?”
“Did we tell her she is having a baby? No. We told her that it was part of the routine medical.”
“And she believed you?”
“I’m going to be very honest with you,” he says. “She was sedated. I put a little something in the cheese toastie before I had her examined. It’s easier to deal with people who aren’t conscious. In so many ways.”
I make a mental note not to break the pregnancy news to Ella until this is all settled. When I know we are all safe, and she will be able to enjoy it, that is when we will tell her. Right now, the news will overwhelm her, between her guilt-ridden world escape attempts and the constant threat of new evils… it’s not the time.
“You’ve gotten slow over the years,” I say.
“Is that right, old man?”
“It is. The version of you I used to know would never have spent this long monologuing and threatening, giving me time to ensure the love of my life is extracted from your grip before anything can hurt her.”
Eric smirks. “There is no way to take someone out of this house without me knowing. Every window is alarmed. There are pressure plates under the floors. There are cameras everywhere.”
“And yet, she’s already gone,” I say, spreading my hands out palm up, much like a magician unveiling a particularly smart trick.
He looks perturbed, and in that moment, we both know I have won. Whether Ella is still in his home or not (she is not), he has been visibly rattled. Eric hates nothing more than being outplayed.
“While you sat here with me, I had a team of ex-Marine commandos break in through the roof and take her out in a helicopter.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“We’ll have the tiles replaced,” I say. “They had to break a few to rappel into the attic where you were keeping her.”
“How did you know that?”
“Because this building doesn’t have a basement, and she would have thrown herself out a window if she had access to one, so the natural conclusion was attic. No windows, relatively secure, you can’t hear her complaining. The downside of that is you can’t hear her being rescued either. We used one of those special helicopters. The ones that move silently. What are they called again?”
I pretend not to remember, so he says it for me.
“Comanche,” he says. “Or a modified Black Hawk. Or I suppose, one of the very new Defiant range.”