Page 7 of Swan River

She closed her eyes and rested her head on the seat back. The pain gripping her pushed everything else out of her mind. The fear. The doubts. Nothing remained but the knowledge that if she didn’t lose herself to sleep, she’d never shake the agony swallowing her.

When she got to the early-twentieth-century mansion the locals called “The Farmhouse,” the sun had started to fall below the mountains, casting the orchards around it into shadows. The house itself was silent with Landry out running and the others still in town. Silence was what she needed.

Nikki rushed up the stairs and down the hall to the sunny bedroom she’d claimed at the front of the house. Tonight, she needed darkness, so she drew the blinds and curtains, turning the room pitch black. She fumbled her way to the bed, stripping as she went, and slid into the cool sheets before resting her fevered brow on the pillowcase and letting herself drift away.

Chapter Four

Adria

HOME SWEET HOME

Performed by Mötley Crüe

“Let me see if Tommy will talk to Ronan for us,” Fiadh said and headed across the studio to where their manager was in a fierce discussion with the owner of their record label. There was so much animosity floating around them this week, Adria wondered if Mercury was in retrograde.

Her stomach clenched tight at the thought of having to talk to Ronan Hawk. Her friends were confused by her active disklike of him these days when they’d flirted and teased for years. But the humiliation she’d experienced at his hands in January was burned into her brain, even if her body tried to forget it whenever he was near. She hated her natural reaction to him almost as much as he hated him.

Asshole.

Adria’s phone rang, a classic The Mills song that had brought her and her dad’s love of music together. Drum riffs that she’d practiced almost as soon as she’d picked up the sticks. She was surprised to get a call from him when he was supposed to be on his way to Colombia to see her mom.

“¿Qué pasa, Papá?” she asked.

“Thank God, you’re okay!” Papá’s deep voice came over the line, speaking fast in Spanish, full of relief and panic in a way she’d never heard before. It caused the tension in Adria’s shoulders and abdomen to triple. “You need to get out of there. We’re calling your detail now. We need you to go underground for a few days.”

“What’s going on?” Adria’s heart slammed hard against her rib cage. Three security guards burst into the room at a run, drawing everyone’s eyes and causing her pulse to leap.

“Your sister…she’s been kidnapped,” Papá told her. “The ransom has already come, and there are threats that you will be next if we don’t pay.”

“Wh-what?” Adria gasped as her hands froze around her twirling drumsticks.

Her father had been kidnapped in Colombia, but that had been two decades ago, and even though he was a constant target for the big-oil companies he went up against, there’d never been any threat to her or her siblings.

“We need to leave,” the female security guard said as the three of them surrounded her.

“Adria, are they there?” Papá asked.

“Yes,” she managed to breathe out.

“Go. Go with them now.”

“Tati…” Emotions choked her voice, thinking of her somber little sister. Thinking of what they might do to her.

“We’ll get her back, Adria. We will, but I can’t focus on what I need to do for her while I’m worried about you as well. Go. Now.”

“Okay…I’m going.”

“Leave your phone,” he commanded.

“What? No. How will I hear from you?”

“We’ll get word through your team. Don’t argue. Just go.”

He hung up, and she stared at the phone with trepidation, fear, and sadness soaring through her. Fiadh was at her side in a flash, her normally happy face a furrow of frowns and worry.

“What’s wrong?” Fiadh asked.

“Someone…” She couldn’t even finish the sentence. Her heart was pounding too hard, fear taking over.

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