Chapter 50
JEREMIAH
Jannie’s heels clacked against the floors in the hallway outside, the sound coming to a stop outside the hotel room door. I braced myself for her to come in. To confront her.
I couldn’t see her when she entered, but I heard the door open and close and her feet padding across the carpeted room. She cooed when she reached me. “Look who’s awake. How’s the head feeling?”
“Fucking terrible,” I said through gritted teeth. I considered ignoring her, but I remembered one of the tips I learned from my nanny was to build a rapport with your kidnapper, to remind them you were human.
Given I’d fucked her brains out on the bed just a few feet away from where she now had me tied up, it was safe to say we used to have a rapport and she knew just how human I was. It couldn’t hurt to remind her though.
She came to a standstill behind me, running one of her taloned fingernails across the back of my neck. “Poor baby. Let me get you something for that.”
“How about you just untie me and let me get to a doctor? I might have a concussion.” There was no way she was doing it, but I wanted to test her reaction.
She giggled softly, still moving around behind me. I could hear her open something, probably the fridge, and close it again. Whatever she had gone to fetch crinkled a little as she carried it to me.
“Silly.” She said it warmly like she was talking to a baby. “I’ve already checked you for a concussion, you don’t have one.”
I felt her coming up behind me again, but she didn’t touch me. She walked past me, and for the first time, I could see her properly.
Turning her back for a moment, she switched off the television. When she was done, she came to sit in front of me and crossed her legs, then leaned over to press an ice pack to the side of my head.
It stung like a bitch, but I didn’t make a sound. Gritting my teeth, I tried to focus on what she had said. “How do you know I don’t have one?”
“I looked up the symptoms and checked you for them, of course.” She blinked so innocently like she couldn’t comprehend at all why I would ask her something like that. She kept the ice pack to my head and looked lovingly into my eyes.
“The ice will help. Just give it a minute. It’s quite a knock you took.” She said all this like she was Florence fucking Nightingale taking care of my injuries instead of being the psycho who caused them.
She was fucking crazy. Absolutely batshit. She was way past going off the deep end. She was sitting at the bottom as the reigning queen. “Remind me, Jannie. How did I take this knock?”
Glancing at the window, she shrugged. “The accident. I didn’t mean for you to get hit so hard.”
The woman sitting in front of me was almost like a stranger who bore a vague resemblance to my onetime secretary. Even her voice was off.
When she worked for me, she was almost aggressive in her approach. Confident. Her voice was loud, and she made you hear it. Now it was thin, careful. Jesus, what happened to her?
I couldn’t remember seeing her less than perfectly put together for one day, but her golden waves were messy now. They looked tangled and hung past her shoulders lifelessly.
I recognized the red dress she wore. It was the same one she’d been wearing the night of the retreat when we hooked up. It used to hug her non-existent curves, but it looked like a sack on her now.
Gentling my voice, I tried another approach. “I know you didn’t mean for me to get hurt, but I did. We should go to a doctor. Get you checked out too.”
Her nostrils flared, telling me the Jannie I knew was still in there somewhere when she snapped at me. “We’re not going to a doctor, Jeremiah. Get that through your injured skull.”
“What’s going on here Jannie? Why are we here?” I dropped the act, letting some of my anger and frustration bleed through.
She crossed her arms and sat back, letting the ice pack fall to the floor. “I’m sorry about driving into you. I know you adore that car, but it was necessary.”
“Necessary for what?” My patience was wearing thin. Feeling helpless, tied up and at her mercy wasn’t helping the situation any.
Head jerking back at my tone, anger flashed in her eyes. “I just didn’t know of any other way to get you away from that new secretary of yours. That girl clings to you like she’s been glued to your side. I know you don’t like clingy girls. I had to get you away from her, so I took the only opening I could find.”
“You could’ve just called me if you wanted to talk.” I wouldn’t have answered, and I suspected Jannie knew as much, but she didn’t really seem to be listening to me anyway.
“She ruined everything, that Stephanie.” She continued as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “I tried talking to her. I warned her.”
When you broke into my office and threatened her. The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I held them back. Arguing with her wasn’t going to get me anywhere. “What did she ruin, Jannie? You were already fired before I ever met Stephanie.”