Reliving Yesterday ✔

Chapter 41.

The guy was wearing a thick coat, a dark shirt, dark pants and boots. He had dark blond hair and seemed a little shorter than Parker. He stood near the door and looked over at me. Then, nodded to a chair for me to sit down.

"What? Rick didn't give you permission to talk to me?" I asked, slightly amused, sitting down in a leather arm chair.

His eyes narrowed at me slightly as he regarded me. He probably thought I was idiotic for being so chipper when I was kidnapped. He probably thought I had a really bad case of Stockholm syndrome. After a few seconds, he chuckled. "Just shut up."

I sighed heavily and looked around the room. It was clearly someone's study. There was a big mahogany desk and a tall leather chair. The walls that were occupied had shelves and shelves of books that looked thick and important; the kinds of books I assumed would be about fact, rather than fiction and wouldn't really appeal to me, until I actually read them.

There was a grandfather clock in the room that didn't tell the correct time, but was still running. I watched the hands as five, ten, fifteen minutes passed in utter silence. The man in the room didn't sit down, move or try to make conversation.

"You can sit down, you know," I said to him, "I don't know what they told you, but I don't bite."

He looked at me with his head skewed to one side, watching curiously. I looked back as he stayed quiet.

"What time is it?" I asked, even though I didn't know if he had a watch because his hands were stuffed into the pockets of his jackets.

"Time for you to shut up," he said, curtly, not looking at me.

I opened my mouth to say something, but then, I heard a key being inserted into the keyhole. Soon, the door was unlocked. The man who was in the room with me stepped aside to give way to the people who were walking in.

First, in walked Rick, looking slightly vexed. Close behind him, Parker's mother walked in looking utterly harassed. I got up from my seat when I saw her. The colour in her face drained a little when she saw me, her eyebrows knitted together.

She pulled Rick by the arm, to a side and spoke to him in a rushed, but hushed tone. She kept looking over Rick's shoulder at me. Rick seemed to be brushing off everything she told him, asserting his correctness in the situation. I guessed that she wasn't too happy that Rick had decided to kidnap me.

"What were you thinking?" I finally heard, as Parker's mother stopped whispering.

Rick stared back at her. "She's leverage," he said in a voice that said he couldn't believe how Parker's mother couldn't understand his reasoning, "He'll do what we want" – he pointed at me – "to keep her safe."

I guessed right. I was their bargaining chip.

Parker's mother let out a frustrated noise and walked away from Rick towards the window. After a few moments, she snapped around, facing Rick. "You make sure he knows that I wasn't in any way part of this girl's kidnapping."

Rick just laughed. "Are you actually scared of him?"

Parker's mother, Claudia, shifted her weight between her two legs. Without answering Rick's question, she turned and leaned against the window, facing the direction in which I was seated. She was wearing a pair of expensive-looking pumps, as usual, and a Jackie Kennedy style dress. She didn't have her usual strand of pearls around her neck. Her hands were clasped, but her fingers were moving constantly.

Rick sat down at the mahogany desk, leaned back in the chair, completely at ease, like it was his house – which I doubted – and put his feet up on the table. He shifted his eyes from Claudia to me.