Scottie allowed a few more tears to fall as the silent prayer played over and over again inside her brain. Since regaining consciousness, she hadn’t uttered a single sound to avoid alerting her captor to the fact that she was awake.
The last thing she wanted was to bring attention to herself while she lay there trying to come up with a plan of escape. Scottie knew if she let this man get her to wherever they were going, her chances of survival—of herbaby’ssurvival—were slim to freaking none.
I’ll fight for you, little one. No matter what.
An instinctual need to protect the new life growing inside her was instant and stronger than any she’d ever known. It no longer mattered that the pregnancy wasn’t planned. It didn’t even matter whether Chase would be happy upon hearing the news.
Planned or not, she was going to be a mother. The test she’d taken—the one tucked away inside the purse that was somewhere in Chase’s truck—was all the proof she needed.
And with that acceptance came a strange sense of peace. A knowing that she was willing to do whatever it took—even kill—to protect the life she and Chase had created out of love. Because that’s what mothers did.
They protected.
With every spin of the van’s speeding wheels came a renewed determination to survive. Scottie looked to the doors across from where she lay. The windows in the vehicle’s double doors were low enough she could partially see the outside.
From the trees that were currently blurring past, she was fairly certain her abductor had taken her out of the city. She had no idea where, but her gut said they were going north.
Away from her home. Away from Chase, and…away from their future.
Please let him be okay.
The sudden wave of emotion her internal prayer brought forth had Scottie sniffling before she thought better of it. The sound was soft and slight, but in the otherwise silent van…
“I was wondering when you’d wake up.” The man behind the wheel spoke up.
She was positioned with her head on the floor directly behind his seat, preventing her from seeing his face as he talked.
“Good thing, too,” her abductor continued. “Can’t have you missing the best part.”
The best part?
“W-who are you?” Scottie hated the shakiness in her voice.
“You don’t know me.” His tone grew darker. “But I know you.”
Her heart raced, her veins turning cold with an icy fear. But she forced it aside and continued her efforts to find out more.
“H-how?” She cleared the fear from her voice and tried again. “How do you know me?”
“I guess I misspoke. I should’ve said I knowofyou. Feels like I know you, though. Scottlynn…Jeanene…Cahill.” Her name came out slow and mocking. “A thirty-year-old has-been chef. The former frontrunner everyone knew was going to win that cooking contest you were on.”
She frowned, still confused by the man’s reasons for wanting to abduct her in broad daylight. “Were you a…fan of the show?”
“Fuck no.” The man’s deep chuckle made her want to vomit. “My brother, though…that dumbass never missed an episode.”
Okay, now he’d really lost her.
“Your brother?” Scottie asked as she began another visual search of the van’s open interior.
“Oh, yeah. It was all Dustin ever talked about.” The man paused. “Youwere all he ever talked about.”
Dustin?
Shockwaves rolled throughout her system, and the world around her began to spin. Feeling as though she was going to be sick, Scottie forced herself to ask the question she wasn’t sure she wanted answered.
“You’re Dustin McVey’s…brother?”
“Technically, we were foster brothers. But that didn’t matter. Not to him or me. Dustin and I shared a very special bond. We both realized early on that we were made from the same cloth.”