Delores Fossen - Kidnapping in Kendall County

That’s why she’d come up with her own plan several months ago while she was staying at her family’s ranch. A plan that’d started with finding any info to get her inside this place or any other place that would possibly lead her to her daughter.

Rosalie leaned over and jammed the gun to the back of the man’s head. “I want answers,” she managed to say even though her throat clamped shut. Her voice had hardly any sound.

He moved, just a fraction. “Darlin’,” he drawled.

Her shoulders snapped back, and it was that split second of shock that caused her breath and body to freeze.

The man reached out, lightning-fast, snagged her by the right hand and stripped her of the Beretta. In the same motion, he pulled her down onto the bed with him and rolled on top of her, pinning her beneath him.

That unfroze her.

Her heart jolted, throbbing in her ears, and Rosalie started to fight back. She couldn’t just let this man kill her.

“Play along,” he growled, his voice no longer a drawl but rather a whisper. “There’s a camera.”

She’d already brought up her knee to ram any part of him that she could reach, but she stopped. Stared at him. Well, she stared at what she could see of him, anyway.

“Rosalie,” he muttered.

Mercy. How did he know her real name? She was using a fake ID with the name Mary Williams. If he was onto her, why hadn’t he already told the guards?

“Who are you?” she tried to ask, but he put his hand over her mouth.

“I figured you’d drop by,” he said. No longer a whisper, and the cocky drawl had returned. “I saw you eyeing me earlier from the window.”

She had. She’d eyed him and committed everything she could see about him to memory from his sandy-brown hair to lanky build. He normally wore a shoulder holster, and judging from the bulge in the back of his coat, he had another gun tucked in the back waistband of his jeans.

And the keys.

Three of them.

They jangled from a metal ring hooked to his belt loop.

Rosalie believed one was for the truck she’d seen him driving, but one of the others was for the room inside the main house where she’d gotten a glimpse of computers and files. The room was always locked, and there was a camera mounted on the doorjamb, but she needed his keys to get a look at those files.

She glanced around, to try to see if there was indeed a camera here, but the room was too dark.

“Who are you?” she asked, shoving his hand from her mouth.

He pulled back, stared down at her, though she still couldn’t clearly see his face. “You don’t know?” But he didn’t wait for an answer. He mumbled some really bad profanity, and his grip tightened on her wrists. “Why the hell are you here, anyway?”

He didn’t shout it, but she had no trouble hearing the anger in his voice. Or maybe not anger, but something.

What was going on? She couldn’t see enough of his face to recognize him, and that raspy whispered voice wasn’t enough of a clue. He could be friend or foe, but clearly he fell into the latter category since he was the boss here.

So, what was her next move?

She hadn’t thought beyond getting answers and then trying to escape, but clearly she hadn’t expected this. Whatever this was.

“Did you come here to kill me?” he demanded, still whispering.

“If necessary.”

Except a dead man couldn’t tell her what she needed to know. But she would have pulled the trigger if it’d come down to it. Unfortunately, she no longer had a gun as a bargaining tool. She had only shaky hands. Shaky body, too, and her heart just kept pounding.

The moments crawled by. Him, still staring at her and obviously waiting for an explanation. The only sounds were the rain pinging against the window and their rough breaths.

“Pretend,” he finally snapped.

Rosalie didn’t get a chance to ask what the heck that meant before his mouth went to her neck. He nuzzled it, as if kissing her, but he was still mumbling profanity, and his jaw muscles were way too tight for this to be a real kissing session.

So, what was this? Some kind of act for the person on the other end of the camera? If so, why was he trying to cover for her?

“I’m not leaving without answers,” Rosalie whispered. “And I want these babies safely out of here and back where they belong.”

“Pretend we’re having sex or you might not be leaving at all. You’ll be dead. And so will I.”

That was the only warning she got before the pretense went into full swing. He kneed her legs apart, yanking off her green scrub pants. He didn’t touch her panties, thank goodness, and he threw the covers over them.

He fumbled between them, pretending to unzip his jeans before the fake thrusting started.

“If necessary?” he said, repeating her response to his question of Did you come here to kill me? “If you’re not here for revenge, then why did you come?”

Revenge, yes, she wanted that. And justice. But more than those things, she just wanted answers.

It was impossible to think with everything going on. The sex was fake, but it was still a man’s body shoving against her. And then there was the fear. Obviously, this man knew her. Knew she was as phony as the sex they were having. So, why hadn’t he shouted out for the guard?

Why hadn’t he killed her?

After all, he had her gun and his.

“I’m looking for my baby,” she said. Her mouth trembled. And she felt her heart breaking all over again.

He stopped moving, met her gaze. For a few seconds, anyway. Then, he let out a loud groan, the sound of a man who’d just reached a climax, and he collapsed against her.

“You had a child,” he said. Not a question exactly but more like something a person would say when trying to piece things together.

She nodded. Bad idea. It caused her mouth to brush against his neck, and because his sex was still aligned with hers, she felt a stirring.

Yes, this was pretend, but his body was obviously having a hard time remembering that.

“I gave birth to a baby girl nearly a year ago.” Eleven months. Six days. Heck, she knew the hours and minutes.

“Nearly a year ago,” he repeated. “She was your fiancé’s baby?”

Again, not a question that she’d expected. Rosalie nodded and tried to tamp down the massive lump in her throat. Her eyes burned with tears that she couldn’t cry. Tears wouldn’t help her baby now.

“Sadie...that’s what I named my daughter. She was born eight and a half months after my fiancé was murdered.”

The memories of that day came. Of his shooting. That horrible flood of images that just didn’t stop. So senseless. Her fiancé, Special Agent Eli Wells, had died because of a botched investigation, and Rosalie had wanted to die right along with him.

And then she’d learned she was pregnant.

The baby had saved her. Because she’d put all her love and emotions into surviving, into the pregnancy, so she could have the child of the man she’d loved.

“Someone stole Sadie from the hospital just a few hours after she was born,” Rosalie added, “and I’ve been looking for her ever since.”

His breath was thicker now, practically gusting. “She wouldn’t be here. They only bring newborns here, and they’ve only used this place for a couple of months.”

Yes, she knew that from the guard’s ramblings before he’d actually dozed off from the meds that she had slipped him. “I thought there would be records on the computer in a locked room of the house.”

“There are. But only for the babies being held at this location. You’re sure the black market ring took your daughter?”

“No.” And it hurt to admit that. She wasn’t sure of anything, but she’d exhausted her leads and had gone with this different angle. “A criminal informant said there might be information here.”