Taken: The MISTAKEN Series Complete Third Season (22 page)

T
his isn’t happening
. Not now. Not again
.

I couldn’t even bring myself to look at him. I just wished for the ground to open up and swallow me whole—anything would have been better than
this.

I expected there to be some kind of exchange—the men who had taken me had obviously wanted something in return. There was supposed to be a trade—I had heard them talking about it. But it was silent, and I couldn’t open my eyes to see what was going on. I was just there, kneeling with my hands behind my back and my mouth taped closed, not even able to scream or cry out for help. Not that there had been anyone there who would have been willing to help me.

“I’m just shocked.” It was Daniel’s voice—I would have recognized the low tone anywhere. “It shouldn’t have been that easy.”

I opened my eyes to slits to see that Daniel had walked over from where he had parked to stand closer to me and the other men. His head was cocked—he really did seem surprised. He held a large envelope in one hand, his other hand on his waist. Something about the way he stood—there was a gun. I’m not sure how I knew, but I did. There was still a wide gap between us—it was pretty clear that Daniel didn’t trust these men and that the feeling was mutual.

Daniel motioned toward me with his head, his hand never leaving his belt. “Have her walk toward me. I’ll toss the envelope as soon as she’s over halfway.”

My arms screamed in agony as the driver lifted me to my feet by my shoulders. I must have made some kind of sound through my duct-taped mouth because I saw Daniel wince.

He cares
.

It was the oddest thought and the strangest time, but it helped me find the ability to stand. The weakness in my legs melted away for a moment as I got to my feet.

The driver gave me a slight shove and I began walking toward Daniel. I had a brief thought that I should run, but I pushed it out of my head just as quickly. There was no sense in running, even if I wanted to. There was nowhere to go. And I still had my arms pinned behind me with handcuffs and my mouth was taped closed. Not to mention the heat—it had to be over a hundred degrees outside and we had been driving through the desert for some time with no sign of other people. I would have died if I had run. And my death would have been for nothing.

But at least it would be on my terms
.

With every step I took toward Daniel, the knowledge of what I needed to do grew clearer and clearer. I
would
run. But not until I got the handcuffs and the duct tape removed. And it didn’t matter if I died. Not now—now that I had nothing.

Daniel tossed the envelope into the space between him and the driver as soon as I crossed the midway point. I quickened my step—Daniel might not have been safer than the three men who had taken me captive, but at least I
knew
him. I didn’t hold any sway with him—I wasn’t dumb enough to think that—but at least he was a known commodity. I had no idea what the other three might have done.

“The key.” Daniel motioned with his head toward me as I came closer to him. “For the handcuffs.”

The driver tossed the key to him, and Daniel reached out to catch it.

His voice lowered so that only I could hear him. “Stand by the car, Jenna. Keep your back turned.”

I lifted my gaze to meet his for only a second. There was something there—something that wasn’t tinged with malice or hatred the way it had been for so long before. It seemed almost insane to think that maybe he’d had a change of heart. That perhaps he
did
care for me—maybe he always had and had just had a strange way of showing it.

You have the right to shut up, Jenna
. And I knew needed to shut off that voice in my head to survive this.

I did as he said, though, tearing my gaze from his as I walked to where he had parked. I forced myself not to turn around. Tears streamed down my cheeks when I heard the two gunshots, but I couldn’t bring myself to see what had happened. I didn’t want to know.

I stood next to the passenger door of the car Daniel had driven to the meeting point, never turning back around to look at the other car. It might have been a minute or it might have been an hour later when I felt Daniel standing behind me.

He unlocked the handcuffs and put his hands on my shoulders, kneading them with his thumbs as though he knew how much they must have ached from being pinned behind me for so long.

I closed my eyes. My brain was screaming at me, telling me to run—my hands were free now and I could pull the tape from my mouth. I should have at least fought him, but I just stood there with my eyes closed.

Enjoying it
.

I must have flinched pretty hard at the realization because he dropped his hands as soon as I had the thought.

We stood there in silence for a moment longer before he put his hands on top of my shoulders again and dipped his head to speak into my ear. “I’m sorry.”

My stomach did some kind of weird flip and my mind reeled. This was
Daniel
. Wasn’t it?

I opened my eyes at the sound of the passenger door opening and I looked up at him, now standing in front of me.

He reached over and tried to pull on the edge of the tape, trying to remove it from the side of my face.

I caught his hand and brushed it away, pulling the tape away myself. I had to close my eyes again for a moment at the sting of the skin being peeled away with the tape.

I balled it up and tossed it to the ground, opening my eyes again to look at Daniel. I heard the roar of the engine of the other car behind me and it took every bit of willpower I had to not turn around to look to see who was in it. My chest tightened at the thought of a family losing their father, and I somehow knew that Marty was one of the recipients of a gunshot. I just knew I couldn’t turn around to verify my instincts. I knew I
shouldn’t
, anyway.

“You should get in. We have a lot to talk about.” I couldn’t read Daniel’s expression, but I could see that he wasn’t trying to be evil. I couldn’t remember the last time he looked at me like that—it was almost the same look of … something. The way he had looked at me when our parents told us we were going to be married. It wasn’t pity, exactly, it was more … empathy. Like we were in the same boat, so we might as well make the best of it.

I got into the car without a word to him. I couldn’t think of anything to say, even though I had a million things to say to him. To ask him. But I couldn’t think of the right thing. I should have been angry. I should have been scared. But all I felt was guilt at what I knew had happened to the two fake cops in that car.

And there was something else. The unexpected lightness I felt and my inability to say anything. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I was
relieved
. It didn’t make sense—nothing about my life made much sense, but
this
… This made no sense at all. That I would be relieved that Daniel was the one meeting the car after I had first been terrified out of my mind. I wasn’t sure where it was coming from, but I wanted it to go away. I wanted to feel disgusted. I wanted to feel angry and hurt and betrayed, but I didn’t.

And from what I could read in his expression—in his body language and posture—he wasn’t feeling any of those things, either.

I tried to remember the last time I had seen him. How angry I had been with him—how he had betrayed me. How I could never forgive him for the
first
time he had kidnapped me. What he had done to me—how he had drugged me and how I couldn’t remember anything about that day.

He sat down behind the wheel of the car and I could see him looking over at me from the corner of my eye. I kept my gaze fixed on the desert in front of me, trying to find something interesting about the vast expanse of sand that stretched out for as far as my eyes could see. There was something in the distance—a bush or a cactus, and I tried to keep my focus on that. I told myself that if I ran, I would go there.

Daniel must have been reading my mind. “Don’t run. We’re literally in the middle of nowhere, and there isn’t anywhere for you to run
to
.”

I think I nodded. I hated that he made sense. I hated that I didn’t have any options now—even the guys who were ready to double cross Daniel were dead. I was sure of that. And there would be no way for anyone to find me out here. They probably wouldn’t even find my body when I died—it would be carried off by animals and vultures before anyone had the opportunity to find me. I was alone and my only hope—the only other person who could help me—was Daniel. How had this even happened? I tried to replay the events in my mind one more time—there was just so much. Too much. An hour ago—or was it longer?—I was about to marry the love of my life. The man I
thought
was the love of my life. And then my best friend showed up with two police officers and had me carted away.

Why?

It was a question I’d had to ask myself too often. I was tired of my life not making any sense. I was sick of having to constantly run for my life and all I could think about—the only thing that I could hang any amount of reason on was letting it all go.

Even if it meant letting Brandon go, too.

D
riving
through the desert made me realize that it was a lot like my life—a vast expanse of nothing. Nothing meaningful, anyway. The occasional majestic cactus seemed like it meant nothing at all when the long intervals of nothingness punctuated each appearance.

It was a strange time to be having an existential crisis. I just couldn’t help but feel that my life had no real meaning aside from what other people had assigned it. My life was only meaningful because of who my father was. Because I had been engaged to Daniel. Because I had loved Brandon. But there was nothing that was mine. Nothing that was meaningful on its own in my life. I’d had the piano at one time, but I hadn’t played at all in any significant way since I had left that cabin in Montana so long ago. And it
was
a long time ago—in many ways, it seemed like it was a lifetime ago. And that life had belonged to a different person.

As we drove in silence through the massive desert, I realized that it didn’t matter if Daniel had had a change of heart when it came to his feelings about me. If he had somehow been able to leave his anger behind and find some way of living for something besides revenge, it didn’t matter. I was probably misreading him, anyway—it wasn’t as though people were able to change like that. Someone like Daniel would never be able to change his personality—not in any meaningful way.

And that was what was wrong with me, too. I couldn’t change myself in any meaningful way, either. And I didn’t want to live like this any longer—waiting for the next thing to
happen
to me. I wanted to make my life happen or not live at all. I wanted to be in charge—I wanted to run a business or play the piano or do
something
. But I knew I wanted to
do
—I needed it. I didn’t want to wait and see what was going to happen next. I wanted to
make
something happen.

I think that was the moment that I decided that things were going to be different. That I was the one who was going to take charge of my life. There would be no more directives from my father or Brandon or anyone else. I wasn’t going to let anyone dictate anything about my life to me ever again. Even if it meant my life was going to be shorter because of it. And I knew that it would be—that my life would be cut significantly shorter if I stood my ground and made my own rules. But I’d had enough. Enough of the
happening to me
for a lifetime, and if it meant wandering in the desert until some creature ate me alive, it would be better than
this.
Better than waiting for what happened next.

“We’re almost there.” I saw Daniel glance over at me again from the corner of my eye. “My place isn’t much, but it’s comfortable. Your shoulders probably still hurt—you can take a shower if you want.”

I felt my eyebrows knit together—surely he wasn’t insinuating what I thought he was. I turned to look at him and he looked away. I could see a flush creeping across his cheeks.

“I didn’t mean it like
that
. You know. I just meant because your muscles are sore…” He squirmed a little, shifting in his seat. He cleared his throat. “You can do whatever you want.”

My brow furrowed again and I turned back to look at the road. There was something in the distance—a building, I thought, but it was hard to tell how far away it was. It was hard to judge anything—distance of buildings, my thoughts, his actions—and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the desert heat or because I was losing my mind. It might have been a combination of both.

“I should have brought some water. I wasn’t really thinking about it—this all happened so fast. I
did
ask them not to cuff you. I should have said something about not duct-taping you, too, but I didn’t think about that. I can’t even imagine the memories that must have brought back…” His voice trailed off and he went silent again, almost as though he was embarrassed that he had said anything at all.

I had to be hallucinating. I shook my head a little, trying to clear the fog that I knew must be there in my brain. There was no way that Daniel was embarrassed about anything. For as many times as he had tried to hurt me since I found out he wasn’t dead, I knew there was no way that this was real. It couldn’t be. I was either imagining it or he had become a very good actor.

I knew I had to be misreading him. I probably wanted to see something good in him—I had loved him once. It only made sense that I would want to believe that he wasn’t the horrible man that I had come to know. My brain must have been projecting the person that I
wished
he was—and to say this day had been stressful would have been an understatement. No, I had to be projecting this as some kind of response to the stress. To make some meaning out of allowing something to
happen
to me again.

I fixed my gaze on the structure up ahead and waited for it to come into view. Several more minutes had passed before I was finally able to make out the small house, sitting in the middle of nowhere.

We pulled into the driveway and Daniel stopped the car before turning to me. “It’s not much, but I’ve been calling it home for the last nine months or so. It beats the hell out of trying to live in Japan. Mostly.”

I turned to face him and saw him smiling, gazing at me. I still hadn’t said a word to him, but there was no anger in his voice. No hatred. I wanted to believe I imagined it, but I hadn’t. There really was kindness there. Caring, maybe. It was like I had entered an alternate universe or something—some place where Daniel had never hated me. It made no sense at all, but there was a part of me that wanted whatever Kool-Aid he had been drinking. I wanted to get to that place myself, whatever it took to get there. Some reality where I didn’t have to feel angry about my circumstances and where I could feel like the person I knew still lived inside of me. A woman who
mattered
, who wasn’t defined by what other people thought of her and expected of her.

He opened his door and got out, scurrying around the car to open my door.

I stared at the garage door straight ahead, trying to gather my wits about me. I was trying to make sense of anything. I just couldn’t stop flashing back between the moment I saw him standing there in the distance at the abandoned gas station and the last time he had spoken to me in any sort of purposeful way—the night he had kidnapped me from the nightclub. There was a mismatch that I couldn’t wrap my head around—I couldn’t make my mind accept that he wasn’t trying to hurt me now. I had no evidence to support that theory, other than how he had treated me for the past thirty minutes. But he’d had every chance to hurt me. He could have pulled the car over and done whatever he wanted—I would have fought him, but he was bigger than me. Stronger than me. I wouldn’t have stood a chance, and if he had wanted to hurt me, I knew he would have done it sooner rather than later. Waiting until we were at his house in the middle of the desert made no sense.

He opened my door and I looked up at him, my gaze clouded with my confusion. I could hear the uncertainty in my voice when I finally found the ability to speak. “What do you want?”

His eyebrows mashed together and he tilted his head. He blinked a few times and frowned. “I just want to help, Jenna.” He extended his hand, offering to help me out of the car.

I shook my head, edging myself off the seat, not accepting his offer of assistance.
Helping
wasn’t in his vocabulary. Not the one I remembered, anyway. If there wasn’t something in it for Daniel, he wasn’t about to
help
anyone.

But I knew I had a choice to make. I could run, even though at that moment he certainly would have caught me. Or I could wait—he would have to fall asleep sometime. I might be able to steal his car or find a phone to call for help. Waiting had its drawbacks, though—it would give him time to hurt me. And it would give him the opportunity to make sure I didn’t run. I was overcome with the realization that I was about to be tied up or locked away in a closet somewhere. That he was going to do what
he
wanted—he was never going to allow me to do what
I
wanted, no matter what he had said a few minutes ago.

I tried to command my legs to take off—to run as fast as they could carry me, but I didn’t move. I stood there frozen, staring into the eyes of a man I feared almost as much as my father. I tried to read some kind of benevolence or compassion in those eyes—things that I knew weren’t really there, no matter what he was trying to telegraph to me. This was an act. This was a performance designed to get me to do what he wanted. I somehow knew that he wanted to trade me in for some advantage or to hold me hostage so that he could get to the man I knew he truly saw as his enemy. This had nothing to do with the senator and his taking me to this place in the middle of nowhere had nothing to do with me, either.

I knew it with every beat of my heart. Daniel may have been attempting a new tactic with me—being the good guy—but this latest situation had nothing to do with him showing me any kindness. Daniel operated on vengeance now, and I knew there was only one person he wanted to exact his revenge on. I knew there was only one person he blamed for everything that had gone wrong in his life.

And if I was right about Melissa—if the father of her child was the person I knew in my heart it was, I had a pretty good reason to blame the same person for everything that had gone wrong in
my
life. Maybe Daniel wasn’t a hero—maybe he never would be.

But maybe I didn’t have to be, either.