Seven Years of Bad Luck (30 page)

I sighed, knowing all too well that he was right. “I know,” I conceded to him again. Despite my aching body, I began telling Ben the entire story from beginning to end. He made no comments or interjections. He only listened attentively and nodded his head on occasion. He listened to my story objectively until I began telling him what happened to me in the warehouse. I held nothing back. I recounted everything, including what I was thinking and feeling. The only thing I skipped was the many times I thought about how much I loved him. When I retold the parts with the baseball bat, the crippling blows to the face, and the rest of the physical assault, Ben’s jaw clenched and the muscle there ticked.

“When can I go home?” His expression relaxed at my reference to ‘home,’ and he leaned in to kiss me again.

“I’ll take you home as soon as the doctors discharge you.”

I rolled out my bottom lip and pretended to pout like a willful, petulant child.

“Sorry, that won’t convince me to break my severely injured girlfriend out of the hospital before she is deemed fit for release.”

Girlfriend? He just staked his claim.

I beamed inwardly, knowing that I wanted nothing more than for Ben to stake his claim on me as his girlfriend.

“Girlfriend?”

“Yes, that’s right. Girlfriend,” he said flatly, then smiled a heart-stopping boyish smile. I did my best to mirror his sweet smile, even though I knew my face was anything but sweet at the moment. I moved on to the next person who was dominating my thoughts.

“I want to see Cheyenne,” I declared while Ben poured water into a plastic cup and placed it carefully in my hand.

“I already texted her and Tuck. He’s bringing her now.”

“Thank you.”

A half an hour or so later, Cheyenne stormed into my room like her perky ass was on fire. The moment she saw me somewhat sitting up in my bed with my eyes open, she burst into tears, and a string of inaudible words tumbled from her trembling mouth. I cried, too. She threw herself at me, and I was sure I was doing more comforting of her than she was of me. I scared my best friend. She shook as I hugged her to me and waited for her sobbing to subside.

“I’m sorry, Chey.” She hiccupped and battled to compose herself. I braced myself for the lecture I was about to get. Tucker and Ben stood across the room and watched in silence as Cheyenne chastised me, cried, and chastised more. I only apologized repeatedly and nodded my head in agreement with my best friend’s tirade. I couldn’t imagine what I put her through, nor did I ever want to know for myself; but at the same time, she had no idea what I endured, and I was beginning to lose patience.

“I’ll never forgive you for making me think the worst. You acted so selfishly, Kat!”

“Yeah, I did Chey. I was way fucking selfish for getting drugged, kidnapped, beaten, getting my leg snapped in two when one of them swung for the fences, and then personally seeing my would-be grave…” Ben stepped forward.

“That’s enough. Both of you stop. Now isn’t the time.”

“I said I was sorry,” I muttered. Cheyenne nodded, but I could see that she didn’t let go of her anger.

Better buy some cheesecake and wine,
I mused.

“Oh one more thing before we leave. Your mom and dad are on their way here, so heads up.”

“Thank you.” She hugged me again, but I knew our discussion was far from over. Tucker wrapped his arms around her as he always did and guided her out of my room. The reunion with my parents went as I expected. I was a child again. My mom was her usual dramatic self. My father was his typical quiet and foreboding self. I begged my dad to drag my mom back home as soon as I was settled in at Ben’s house. Lord knows, I was glad to see my mom, but I couldn’t survive her dramatics over every move I made.

Ben was already hovering over me and seeing to everything I could need or want. Thankfully, my dad agreed that I needed my space to heal and forget the whole experience.

The next day was Saturday, July 6th, 2013, day 45 since I began working at the firm. I was still in the hospital and feeling the full brunt of my injuries. I ached all over. My head was in a constant state of pain even though the doctors had been generous with the pain medications. As Ben promised, he never left me. Not even once, and I loved him even more for staying with me. I knew I was safe, but still felt out of sorts and generally just edgy.

“When did you know something was wrong?” I asked.

“When you never showed at the airport. I called Trev, and he said no one had seen you, and I just knew something wasn’t right. I saw your earring lying in the driveway, and it was like the world was ripped from beneath my feet.” He shook his head, and there was no denying how haunted he looked while recounting the morning of my abduction. He sat beside me on my hospital bed and pure torment marred his handsome features. “I thought I lost you. I don’t-I mean I can’t…” His chin dimpled and quivered as he fought against his emotions.

My thumb brushed circles over the backside of one of his hands. I leaned towards him and brushed my knuckles against his jaw. “I am so sorry, baby. I would never want to hurt you.”

He swept my weak body into his and buried his face in my neck. “Never leave me again. You’ll destroy me if you do. Without you I’m a ghost of a man, Kathleen.”

He had taken a taxi from the airport and Trevor, Tucker, and Cheyenne were waiting for him at his home when he arrived. Ben was the one who found my hoop earring abandoned in the drive, alerting him that something had gone awry. Tucker and Cheyenne began combing the city; Trevor and Ben went to the office to see what they could find in my office. When Ben turned my office upside down, he found the bouquet of roses with the threatening message in the card. He dumped every file I had and also discovered my falsely labeled file with all of the copies I had made of the photos and information about John Murray and, incidentally, Janis. That’s when Ben knew what I had done. They called the police who explained that a missing person’s report could not yet be filed since forty-eight hours had not elapsed since I was last seen. Ben, being Ben, my take charge, bossy man called the press.

He pulled some strings and managed to get every news crew he could round up to come do a story on my mysterious disappearance. The story about the disappearance of the girlfriend of Dallas’s most eligible bachelor aired that evening on the six o’clock news, and Mrs. Kemp had watched in shock as my photo appeared on the television screen. She called the number for the tip line that Ben had established. The first person she spoke to connected her to Ben directly once she claimed to know who had me. She had relayed to him all of the information that she had, and he began hunting for me with an even more narrowed list of suspects. Ben returned to the office after speaking with Mrs. Kemp personally and kept piecing together the mystery of my disappearance. Ben had kept both his and Trevor’s secretaries late to assist in the search and was lucky enough to catch Janis talking on the phone with one bat wielding, overweight kidnapper. She had been tipping them off about Ben stirring the pot and getting close to finding out who had taken me and where I was. Ben startled her once she saw him, and she flew out of the building like a bat out of hell.

I remembered the call that the man had received on his phone. I assumed it had been Murray, but apparently it had been Janis. The men left me for the rest of the night, and I assume they had gone to dig my grave ahead of time so that dumping me would be that much quicker, therefore making them less likely to get caught. I stopped Ben during his recap of what happened.

“You know what happened to Janis, right?”

He nodded. “Yes. I saw everything you had in that file.”

“Yes, but you understand that she is fixated on you right? You look like her dead husband; that’s why she hated me so much. She was jealous.”

“She’s gone now, but she should be tracked down.”

“Ya think?” I shouted. “The crazy bitch turned me over to Murray’s guys on a silver platter, all because I’m with the man she is obsessed with!”

Ouch!

I held my head in my hands since my shouting did me no favors in the pain department. Ben dismissed my outburst and held me close to him, and it was hard to tell who was comforting whom.

By the time Ben had convinced the police that there was foul play involved and that Murray’s properties needed to be searched, I was in that warehouse getting my leg broken. Ben explained that the red tape he had to cut through consumed valuable time, and he was close to finding Murray himself and holding a gun to his head until he made the call that would secure my release. When I escaped and crashed into the State Trooper’s cruiser, I collapsed and was unconscious until I heard Ben talking to Dr. Graham about my injuries. As I lay in the hospital, the police were working on locating John Murray and his hired help who had allegedly fled the state in a hurry. The police were also looking into Janis’s involvement. She, too, was in the wind. It disappointed me that John Murray had thus far managed to evade the police, but Ben assured me that he was going to be caught. I wanted to believe him. I spent five days in the hospital and was more than ready to get to my new home, Ben’s home.

By the time I was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, July 10th, day 49, I was ready to raid the nearest liquor store and drink away my irritation at being stuck in a hospital with both Ben and my mother smothering me. Cheyenne’s frequent visits didn’t help the situation either. She was no less pissed off at me than the first time she reamed me for being ‘selfish’.

We arrived at Ben’s house and there were a half a dozen cars parked in his drive. “Ughhh.” Ben groaned, clearly annoyed.

“Um, did I miss something?” I arched my bruised brow and waited for an answer.

“It’s everyone.”

Everyone? Who’s everyone?

My eyes darted from side to side, and I pursed my lips.

“Everyone?”

“Tucker’s truck is there.” Ben’s finger began pointing out the parked vehicles to identify the people who were clearly inside his house. “My mom and dad own that Lexus. That sweet E-Class belongs to my Gramps and Grandmother. My brother’s Caddy is there. There’s Trevor’s ancient Honda.”