Page 27 of Stolen By the Billionaire
Not that he ever chuckled.
Sarah Bell coughed. “Logan isn’t here. Logan was never here. I am. Now untie me so I can finish my gol’danged chores.”
“I promised Logan I’d keep you safe, and I will, even if I have to throw you in the trunk of my car and dump you in my basement for a few weeks until this blows over.”
“Weeks? I can’t do that. I have chores to do. Charlie has to be let out to pasture for the day, and HowNow the Brown Cow needs to be milked and pastured. And I have SnipSnap videos to upload and personal tarot readings to do. They’re booked. They’re prepaid. I have to do them!”
“The assassins that your aunt sent to kill you flew into Cedar Rapids this morning. They’ll be here soon.”
“I can’t believe you’re still harping on that. Wait, were you over at the Meeks’ farm this morning, asking for directions to my place?”
“After lying in your cornfield for a week, I didn’t need directions. Why?”
“Why were you lying in my cornfield for a week?” she yelled at him.
“Reconnaissance. I had to know your schedule and how to get you on the phone with your aunt.”
“For a week?”
“I prepare thoroughly. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Why did you ask if I was over at another farm? The Meeks’s farm, you said.”
Her body heaved under his in a sigh. “Tiffany Meeks called me about forty-five minutes ago. Four men knocked on her door and asked for directions to my farm. She wasn’t real clear to them about how to get here, though.”
Shit.
Blaze leaped to his feet and hauled Sarah to hers. He glared directly into her pretty little face and growled, “We need to leave now.”
“Dude, the horse is hungry.”
“Fine.” He shoved her down to sit at the base of a post and wrapped a thin nylon cord from his pocket around her hands and the column. “I’ll feed him. Tell me what to do so we can leave.”
10
Chores
Sarah
The zip ties were snug around Sarah’s wrists, which were tied behind her back but not too tight.
She leaned against the post, trying to yank her hands through the loops. The hard plastic chafed her skin like a knife that hadn’t quite cut her yet. At least her fingers were getting sufficient blood circulation.
The man towered over where she sat on the barn’s concrete floor. “We need to leave soon. Tell me what needs to be done.”
“Oats,” Sarah said. “First, Charlie the horse and HowNow each get a can of oats with dewormer mixed in, then I turn them out to pasture for the day. The coffee can sits on the oats bag in that first stall, where I keep my tools and stuff. The bag of dewormer granules is on the shelf with a little measuring spoon inside. They get one spoonful each.”
The guy hustled, scooping up the oats and adding the spoon of medicine before dumping it in their troughs. Charlie and HowNow had been looking wild-eyed askance at the man shouting in their barn, but Sarah could see the two traitors revise their opinions of the guy as he fed them their oats.
The troughs jangled on the walls as the horse and cow chased the oats, eating them all up within seconds.
The sun was rising farther, slanting sunbeams more sharply through the windows at the top of the barn. Hay dust motes danced in the sunshine as Sarah leaned back against the support pole, the metal chilling her spine.
Sitting down was—nice.
The guy was standing in front of her again, tall and disapproving, with his arms crossed over his beefy chest. “Can we leave now?”
“Oh, dear Lord, no. I have so many more chores to do.”
“What else?”
