Page 42 of Stolen By the Billionaire
As Blaze Robinson drove, the cornfields and prairie gave way to suburbs. From a tall overpass, the cluster of mirror-glass skyscrapers in downtown Chicago by Lake Michigan looked like a graph of the sins of iniquity happening there.
After they turned off I-294 onto Lake Cook Road (Sarah was keeping track of street names so she could lead the police to this guy’s murder house if she ever escaped), Blaze drove down the long street where, over distance, the suburban grid of middle-class houses swelled, bloating with their own importance and squatting in the centers of more and more deliberately spoiled land carved into terraces and beds planted with ornamental bushes that would not bear edible fruit.
The waste morally offended a farmer like Sarah, who cared for the soil that fed her. This fertile Midwestern land could have grown grain, fruits, and vegetables to feed the people in those prizewinning pumpkin-sized houses. Instead, the houses were like a baseball-bat zucchini left too long on the vine, wooden and tasteless, useless as nutrition for the soul.
Blaze turned the car onto a meandering lane that Sarah realized was a driveway. Low walls built of yellow-sand bricks impinged on the road, forcing it to curve like a riverbed, and the mature trees and grass looked more like a park than a house.
When the building came into view, the yellow-brick flat house with tall windows built in an L around a patio looked like a public library or a doctor’s office building. Municipal or commercial money would be required to build something of that size. If anything, it looked more like the mid-century modern classroom buildings at the University of Iowa over in Iowa City than a person’s house.
Had he brought her to an office or something?
Yeah, it made sense that this guy would want to rent a commercial space for his murdering rather than doing it in his own house. That seemed like the status quo for serial killers.
As the car approached the patio, the driveway took a hard left, and Blaze Robinson followed the lane around the side of the house to a garage. One of the two wide garage doors lifted to let them drive in and then rumbled down behind them.
Inside, the garage was bigger than Sarah’s whole farmhouse.
Blaze parked the car in one of the middle spaces, but there was ample room for at least three more cars.
On one side, red enameled cabinets lined the wall above a matching tool bench, and a seating group of wicker patio furniture stood on a coarse rug.
Who had a couch, chairs, and a flippin’ coffee table in their garage? Was Blaze Robinson entertaining in there? Was he, perhaps, hosting a serial killer convention at this office complex?
This was too weird for an Iowa farm girl. Sarah just wanted to go home.
She blinked back tears and sniffed the gathering congestion up her nose.
Blaze stood up from his side of the car, stretched with just his hips and thighs visible from her vantage in the passenger seat, and then made his way around to her door and opened it.
“Um, okay.” She bobbed her head to point with her nose at the zip ties still encircling her ankles. “What am I supposed to do about this?”
His sharp glance down made her feel small. “If I cut those ties, will you walk nicely into the house?”
“Yes,” she lied, planning to sprint for the door to the backyard she’d seen past the garage doors. “Absolutely. I’ll behave.”
Blaze squinted at her like he was doing the calculus of her escape plan.
His Nordic blue eyes were like the sky-blue Morning Glory flowers in her garden.
In the Midwest, blue eyes were common as muck in the descendants of the Norwegian and Swedish farmers who’d settled there, as well as the German-descended Amish people.
He said, “You’re a terrible liar, Miss Bell, meaning that you probably shouldn’t lie when it’s important. You’re terrible at it. If you won’t walk in, let’s go.”
Blaze Robinson crouched and stretched out his arms.
“Wait, what are you doing? Oh no, you just wait a darned second!”
One of his hands slid around her ribs and behind her back, and then the other slipped under her knees.
He ducked, his cheek pressing against her shoulder as he rolled her bound body to rest against his chest.
His massive, manly chest.
She shouldn’t be charmed. “Unhand me! I am not some baby calf that needs to be toted around the barn!”
Blaze gathered her close to himself and stood, carrying her.
Her zip-tied arms dangled behind her. “Forget what I said! I’ll walk! I’ll be good!”
