Page 30 of Stolen By the Billionaire
Muffintop the cat strutted in through the open door with her head held high, and then he shut the door behind the cat.
Sarah still screamed her head off just in case someone could hear her over his phone.
Muffintop freaked for the first five seconds, scrambling around the room like gravity had reversed itself and she was landing on the ceiling, but then she settled into yowling at the top of her voice with Sarah because screaming seemed to be what they were doing.
The man returned five minutes later, not perturbed like his plan had been foiled. “The soundproofing is pretty good in your studio, but I still called from outside.”
Dang. “I hate you.”
He began to untie her arms behind the chair. “Yeah, but I’m going to save your life anyway. I’m going to take you to my house in Chicago. This should blow over in a few weeks. You can come back then.”
Muffintop scampered out the door, perturbed by the noise.
“Have you not been listening to me!” Sarah yelled, craning her neck to look behind her chair to yell directly at him. Heck, Sarah screamed at him. “The horse and the cow must be fed and pastured! The garden has to be tended! The corn has to be monitored for its watering system and fertilizing schedules! Plus, my whole tarot business at SnipSnap. I can’t leave! I can’t even take a weekend off!”
The flippin’ guy nodded. “I understand that. I contacted your neighbor Abigail Yoder, the one you said took care of things during your parents’ services, and told her I was from the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. I said that you’d been brought into the emergency department, suffering from exhaustion, that you’d be fine, but we needed to keep you for a few weeks for physical therapy.”
“Weeks?” Sarah shrieked. “I can’t have someone else take care of my farm for weeks! Not to mention the tarot people!”
“I told her that if she could keep your farm going while you were in the hospital, there was a federal grant I’d sign her up for, and she’d get ten thousand dollars. She was very happy to help.” Muffintop spiraled around his leg. “Oh, and she said she’d take your cat back to her house for the duration.”
“Ten thousand! I don’t have ten thousand dollars to give her!” Sarah yelled, freaking out at the tiny amount of money that would be left in her checking account for the rest of the year if she gave the Yoders ten grand.
“That’s okay,” the guy said, looking up at her with one dark eyebrow raised as the ropes around her chest fell away. “I do.”
She dropped her head forward on the desk in absolute misery. “You’ll do what?”
“I’ll give her money. I’d planned on giving her the money.”
And with that, Sarah was cut off from everyone.
Abigail would definitely tell everyone in the Amish community that Sarah had collapsed from exhaustion and was in the hospital, which would leach through to the English community about an hour later.
After this guy kidnapped Sarah and chained her in his dungeon in Chicago, no one in Kalona would even wonder what had happened to her for weeks.
“Dang,” she sighed. “I’ve never even met you before. If you are not trying to kidnap me, why would you come back here?”
The guy paused and studied a framed needlepoint sampler on the wall. “Because I’m the good guy. When people are in danger, I fight back. Fighting back against evil is the right thing to do, and I’m responsible for doing it. Come on. We need to get going before your aunt’s goon squad arrives,” he said.
When Sarah didn’t move, he took her elbow and guided her out of the chair and down the stairs.
Dang it, he’d outfoxed her, but that didn’t mean she was going down without a fight.
At the top of the staircase, she jumped backward and tried to shove the guy down the stairs with her shoulder, but he stepped sideways and held onto her arm to make sure she didn’t fall.
At the bottom of the stairs, he said, “Look, it’s my fault that you’re in danger because I used you to threaten your aunt. I’m not going to let them kill you. It’s my responsibility to keep you safe, and that’s the end of it.”
“I don’t want you to save me. I want to work on my farm.”
“I’ll figure out how to get them off your case, but it might take a few weeks. Let’s go.”
As they walked through the kitchen, Sarah tried to find anything she could grab with her hands tied behind her back to use as a weapon, but her knives were all put away because she kept a neat kitchen.
She looked out the window above the kitchen sink.
Outside, dust clouds churned above the corn waving under the sun, and the shining tops of black SUVs drove down the dirt road toward her house.
Her aunt had called somebody. The police or the FBI were coming.
