Chapter 20

20

Kinsley sat across the table from Jada, while Colin had taken his computer to his room where he could focus better on researching Yapp. Kinsley couldn't concentrate on the puzzle as they waited for Dev to return. They needed to share the information they'd learned from Russ and hear what he'd had to say at Reid's place.

Come on, Dev. Where are you?

He should be back by now, but she wasn't worried about him. The odds of him running into some kind of trouble on the secured compound were pretty low. Or at least that's what he kept telling her. Still, she wished he was there.

Fatigue settled in, and she stifled a yawn. She couldn't believe she could even be slightly tired with everything going on, but the stress was finally getting to her. She had to be alert for any danger, not yawning and closing her eyes. Splashing water on her face might help.

She stood. "I need to go to the bathroom."

Jada held up a puzzle piece. "I'll be right here when you come back, probably still trying to fit this stupid piece in somewhere."

"You could move on to another one."

"And let this one get the best of me?" She gaped at Kinsley as if she'd suggested having open heart surgery. "No way."

Kinsley laughed and strode to the bathroom connected to the room she shared with Jada in the back of the cabin, her mood a bit better after Jada's antics.

She turned on the faucet, twisted the handle to cold, and splashed her face with a shocking wake-up of water. She dried with a towel and looked at herself in the mirror. Her fear, anguish, and stress still lived in her eyes. Maybe when Dev arrived, he would have some good news to share. She needed good news for a change. If she thought about it, Russ's news was good, too. They likely had their suspect and just had to find Yapp and arrest him.

"Just." Who knows where he could be. If Ozzy had been right about prisoner behavior when they were discharged, there was no telling if Yapp was actually residing at the address he provided to the prison.

No. They would find him. They had to.

She straightened her shoulders and convinced herself to take a positive attitude, then left the room.

In the dining area, she came up short. Jada still sat at the table, but she wasn't alone. Yapp stood next to her with a pistol to her head.

"Hello, Kinsley," he said. "It's about time we talk."

"No need to use a gun," Kinsley said, sounding calmer than her quivering insides let on. "I'm glad to talk to you and force isn't necessary."

"Hah! If you were willing to talk to me, you wouldn't put all these bodyguards in the way."

"Speaking of bodyguards, what happened to them?"

"Your sidekick, Devan, is down at the lake tied to a tree." He grinned. "He found out the hard way what it feels like to have a spear from my speargun cut through a hip and then be strangled with the cord until he passed out."

"Is he okay?" Kinsley cried out, visions of Dev in need of help, maybe dying, nearly taking her down, and she had to grab onto the table.

"He'll be fine as long as you do what I tell you to do. Your buddy in the other room, too. Keep your voice down, and he won't even have to know I'm here. So far, I've overpowered your bodyguards without killing them. But you bring him out here, and he's dead. I'm too close to getting what I want to let someone interfere."

She'd thought to call out to Colin, but she wouldn't put him in danger as well. "And what about Hayden on the front porch? How did you get past him?"

"I slipped up on the side of the porch planning to incapacitate him with a well-placed bullet." He grinned, something evil and vicious. "But he thought I was Devan, allowing me to get close enough to him to take him down with a sedative before he even knew I was injecting him. He'll be out for several hours and wake up embarrassed as all get out."

She hated that he was right. That Hayden would be embarrassed to have been taken out like that. But she was sure it happened to the best of them at times. Dev included. He would feel bad, too. Was likely already feeling bad, and doing everything within his power to escape.

If he even woke up and was able to act. She had no idea how long someone might be out from an attempted strangulation. She just never had to deal with something like that, and she hoped to never experience it.

She removed her hands from the table and lifted her shoulders. "So what do you want?"

He snorted. "Like you don't know."

"I have no idea."

He pressed the gun harder against Jada's head, and she grimaced.

He bent low to look her in the face. "I suppose you're going to play dumb with me too."

"I won't be playing," Jada said, her voice strong, her eyes fighting back at him. "I don't have a clue what you want either."

"Then let me spell it out for both of you." He came to his full height and glared at Kinsley. "The diamonds. I want my diamonds."

"Diamonds?" She glanced at Jada to see if she had any idea what he meant.

"No clue," Jada said.

"I hid them in the base of the lamp at the Bluebird." He locked eyes with Kinsley. "The one you took for a memory."

Kinsley gasped. "How do you know that?"

"Tsk. Tsk." A snide smile crossed his mouth. "You opened your big mouth on social media. Told everyone about the special memories you have with your good friend Jada. The accompanying picture included the lamp."

"But my account is private for my friends only. So how could you even see it?"

He raised his chin. "Correction. You weren't quite careful enough. All of your posts are private. Your friends list was out there for everyone to see. It wasn't hard to impersonate one of your friends you didn't have enough contact with to realize it wasn't really your friend."

Dev had been right about her security setting. She'd changed it now, but the damage had already been done. This was all her fault. Jada had a gun to her head. Dev was tied up, perhaps unconscious, maybe dying. And Hayden was drugged. All because Kinsley didn't properly adjust her security settings.

Tears formed in her eyes, but she didn't want to cry in front of this man. No way she wanted him to see that he had gotten to her. Once she figured out a way to safely get rid of him and call an ambulance for Dev, then she could cry and fall apart.

"All you have to do is tell me where the lamp with the diamonds is, and I'll be out of here." He challenged her with his pointed look.

"In the back bedroom. I'll go get it."

"No," he said, steel in his voice. "We'll get it together. The three of us."

He grabbed the neck of Jada's sweater and tugged her up while keeping the gun to her head. "Any funny business and I take her out."

Kinsley didn't think he was eager to kill Jada, but he seemed willing to end their lives to get his diamonds. So she led the way to the bedroom and lifted the lamp from the nightstand. She shook it but still didn't hear anything in the base.

He forced Jada to sit on a hardwood chair pushed up to a small desk in the corner and readjusted the gun. "I made sure to pack the base so it wouldn't rattle and the diamonds wouldn't be discovered before I could return to collect them. I just didn't count on the stinkin' cops finding me and not getting right back."

Kinsley looked up from the lamp. "I don't get it. Why put them in an object that easily could be discarded or moved?"

"Like I said. I planned to come right back. When I went away, I was going to send my girlfriend to get them when things cooled down and the police were no longer watching her. But no. She decided to two-time me with my best buddy, so I had to leave them and hope the lamp was still here when I got out." He smiled. "As you can see, it turned out just fine. Now pull the felt off the bottom and dump the bag on the bed."

She followed his directions, finding a black velvet pouch tucked in bubble wrap in the base. She opened the drawstring on the pouch and poured out a cascade of sparkling diamonds too numerous to count.

"Ah." He let out a long breath of satisfaction. "They're just the way I left them, and I have you to thank for that. If you hadn't taken the lamp as a souvenir, my diamonds probably would've ended up in some landfill."

"So pick them up and leave us alone."

He removed the gun from Jada's head for a second to gesture at the diamonds. "Bag them back up, then leave the bag on the bed and step away."

She sat on the bed to cup the diamonds in her hand and pour them into the bag. She had no idea of the value of this pouch of diamonds, but it had to be significant. She considered flinging them across the room so she could buy some time to pick them up, but she feared he would shoot Jada, something Kinsley wouldn't risk.

She glanced at him. "What I don't get is why you've been shooting at us? If you killed us, you would never get the diamonds."

"I never intended to kill you. Not even wing you." He narrowed his eyes. "I just wanted to scare you so when I asked for the diamonds, you knew I would kill to get them."

"But the opposite happened," she said. "Dev and his teammates came to my rescue and made it impossible for you to get to me."

"Impossible? I'm here right now, aren't I?" He scoffed. "But yeah, I didn't know about him and his team at the time. Still, you never got around to figuring out it was me, did you?"

"We had no reason to be looking for you. You were just some guy we played pranks on back in the day." Kinsley gritted her teeth. "But you screwed up in the end. We got your ID when you were dumb enough to leave a video of yourself on the drone's camera."

Yapp's mouth slackened. "I forgot all about that. I obviously didn't count on you getting control of the drone. Who all knows about this?"

"All of us, but who you really need to worry about is the sheriff. He knows all about you, and is getting ready to arrest you." She exaggerated, but she hoped she put fear in him so he would take off and leave them behind.

"Then we best be going. Stand up."

Kinsley raised her shoulders. "You'll get away faster without us."

"Maybe that's true, but I might get dead before that." He pointed at the diamonds. "Pack those up now! Or I start shooting."

She took her sweet time of gathering them together hoping someone would come to their aid. But no one came before she gathered all of them into the pouch and tied it tightly. She left it on the bed and walked to the other side of the room as he directed.

He tugged Jada to her feet and dragged her to the diamonds. "Put them in my cargo pocket."

She glanced at Kinsley, looking like she wanted to do something to escape. Kinsley shook her head, and Jada frowned, but grabbed the diamonds, then shoved them in his pocket. He pushed her to sit on the bed, keeping the gun at her head.

He looked up at Kinsley. "Come sit by your friend."

Kinsley gladly took a seat near her and grasped her hands.

"No time for handholding." He swiftly shifted the gun from Jada to Kinsley. "You'll be coming with me so I can make sure we get out of here without taking fire from any bodyguard."

Kinsley didn't want to go with him. She didn't want to go with him at all. But she'd much rather he took her as his hostage than Jada. She would rather give up her life than see her friend killed. Unfortunately, it might come to that, and she needed to prepare to die.