Page 52 of Finding Lexie
“What a jerk,” Elodie exclaimed.
“Yeah, he definitely wasn’t going to win dad of the year,” Lexie said. “But he did the best he could.”
“He still around?” Elodie asked.
“No. He died a few years ago.”
“Hmmmm.”
Lexie couldn’t help but snort a laugh.
“What?” Elodie asked.
“Your reaction was much more…subdued than Midas’s.”
“I can imagine,” Elodie said. “He’s a lot like Scott. Protective and with a nasty temper when it comes to people messing with me.”
“You guys haven’t been together all that long, right?” Lexie asked, hoping she wasn’t being too nosey.
“Not really. But because of everything that happened, we clicked really quickly. I guess danger has a way of doing that.”
“Yeah,” Lexie agreed.
Elodie smiled at her. “That’s right, you would know all about that, huh? Are you really okay after what happened to you? I read some news articles about what happened, and it sounds awful. I mean, it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park to be on a ship that was taken over by pirates, but everything was over really fast compared to your ordeal.”
“It wasn’t fun,” Lexie said. “But mostly it was boring.”
“Boring?” Elodie echoed in surprise.
“Yeah, besides the actual kidnapping part. That was scary as hell, I can admit. But once we got into the desert, we pretty much just sat around, being ignored most of the time. And after Dagmar had the stroke, we did even less. Before that, we tried to at least walk around and get some exercise…watched at all times, of course. But afterward, I sat with him in the shade and tried to keep his spirits up.
“The worst part was not knowing what was coming. We could’ve been there for months to come, or negotiations might’ve wrapped up and we could’ve been released. I didn’t honestly think anyone would come in like Midas and his team did, though. That was completely unexpected.”
“So, the kidnappers just ignored you?”
“Well, not exactly. They liked to taunt us and tell us that no one was going to pay the ransom and we’d end up dead…things like that.”
“Wow, I’m sorry. That sounds horrible.”
Lexie shrugged. She’d worked really hard over the last month to put the ordeal behind her. She didn’t mind talking about it with Elodie because she was honestly trying to understand, not pump her for juicy info she could put in a news article to get more clicks.
“Can I ask something without sounding like I’m judging?” Elodie asked.
“Of course.”
“So, after you were rescued, you guys all went back to the town you were taken from, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? I mean, that makes no sense. Why didn’t you get the hell out of the country and go straight to the US ship?”
Lexie sighed. “Of course, hindsight being what it is, we should’ve. But Dagmar’s brother has a lot of power in Denmark, and he pulled some strings and probably threw a bunch of money around, and he flew Dagmar’s personal physician to Galkayo. The Danish special forces were pretty much ordered to bring him to town to be looked over before being transported to the ship.”
“Oh.”
Yeah. It sucked that Dagmar had survived three months in the desert, and a stroke, only to die because of an ambush at the hospital when sympathizers—and maybe even some of the kidnappers who hadn’t been in the desert when the camp was raided—had tried to retrieve him so they could get the ransom money. “I’ve been emailing back and forth with Magnus, and he feels horrible about what happened.”
“You have?” Midas asked from behind them.
