Page 23 of Love Undercover
Even more reason to get some separation while she analyzed her thoughts and feelings about this bizarre situation.
Once in his bedroom, she shut the door, leaning against it. With the distance, her mind started whirling through all the reasons she could not trust him. And she certainly shouldn’t let her guard down.
She hurried to the windows, hands hovering above the warped-looking wood. She’d tried them before, and they’d been hard to budge. But maybe she needed to put more muscle into it. He might’ve been lying to her, and she’d just given up too easily.
She placed her hands differently than the night prior, when she’d been desperate and juiced on adrenaline. It was hard to find a spot to get her fingers in to lift, and she broke a nail trying the new angle, hissing as she stuck the finger in her mouth. She glanced at the closed door before deciding on a final attempt.
It really couldn’t be that hard.
Repositioning her hands again, she ground her teeth as she squared her stance, giving it another try, muscles straining to lift the pane.
A raucous scraping sound ground out as the window slid maybe half an inch upward. It sounded like a bull elk during rutting season, and Sadie backed away from it so quickly she stumbled. Her heart jump-started into a panicked gallop as she looked to the door again, waiting for Chase to come charging in.
He didn’t.
“I heard that,” he said from the other room, sounding more amused than angry.
She pressed her hand over her heart, blowing out a breath, then wiped the sweat that had gathered at her hairline from the effort. So he hadn’t been lying, once again. But it was worth the effort to be sure.
A low annoyance simmered in her stomach as she shot a glare at the offending and uncooperative window, so she stomped off to the bathroom to find a washcloth to scrub her body clean of the dried sweat from her trunk adventure.
It was pointless to shower since the sweat had leached into her clothes, but she needed to do something to give her some semblance of control, even if it was small. At least freshening up was within her power. It wasn’t likely he had the kind of shower accouterments she was used to and preferred, so she wouldn’t bother with that.
Offering to get some things at the store was likely a scheme to lure her into trusting him when she shouldn’t. She couldn’t see the purpose in that. Other than getting her to give away whatever information everyone thought she had. If he still thought she had any info about Greg, he’d be sorely disappointed. The only thing Sadie could tell him about Greg was that he lasted longer schmoozing at corporate events than he did in bed.
She paused in the act of getting the washcloth wet, her gaze shifting to her grubby reflection in the mirror. If she let Chase believe she trusted him, she could use the time he’d be at the store to make her escape. Surely he wouldn’t tie her up when he left. That would definitely crack the thin trust she considered extending.
She washed her face first, gently scrubbing the dried sweat and dirt from her skin, then focused on the sweatiest places on her body, her top lip curling as she settled her shirt back down over herself. It was probably a wasted effort with how dirty her clothes were. Who knew what had been in that trunk before her?
A clown suit. Yikes. Taxidermied animals. Ick.
Dead bodies.
A shudder ran through her as she rubbed at her wrists, feeling where the zip tie had bitten into her skin. If she had her purse, she would have sprayed something on it to help the pain and to heal it.
But her purse was still out in the kitchen where she’d left it when she’d gotten the arnica for Chase’s face. What exactly had possessed her to offer that? He’d clearly thought she was a loon when she pulled it out. But he’d let her apply it.
Greg always called it her witch doctor voodoo and refused whenever she offered. Then she’d stopped using any of it in front of him since he liked to bring it up around his friends just to poke fun at her.
She caught her own scowl in the mirror and forced the expression smooth, finger-brushing her hair to see if she could get it into some manageable state.
How did she end up here? Bitter at a man she should have dumped way sooner than she had and kidnapped because of her affiliation with him. It was not something she’d ever anticipated adding to the list of reasons Greg was a sucky ex-boyfriend.
Fiona would have a field day adding such a solid black mark on her very real list ofWhy We Hate Greg. In case Sadie ever had second thoughts about ending things, she’d said. Not that Sadie ever would.
She sighed thinking about her best friend. No doubt Fiona would be worried by now. They rarely went so long without checking in. If only Chase hadn’t taken her phone.
But no self-respecting kidnapper, undercover FBI or otherwise, would let their kidnappee keep a phone that could be traced and tracked. Her true crime podcasts had told her that.
The sound of the front door opening and closing startled her. It was loud, like it took a good yank to break it loose of the jamb and required an extra hard pull to settle it back into place.
Or maybe he was just agitated.
She crept to the door and listened for movement on the other side before venturing out of the bedroom. The silence was too heavy for there to be anyone else in the house.
Still, she moved carefully out into the living room and toward the kitchen. The window above the sink didn’t reveal anything different about the sweeping front yard that extended down to the treeline.
She bit her lip. Did she dare venture outside to investigate?
