IN HIS KEEPING: CLAIMED

Sylvie had spent the last three days reading and rereading the 3rd book in the Forever and Always Yours trilogy.  It was amazing how different it was from the second book.  Elias was less of a dark presence and had assumed the mantle of hero again.  The book was a nail-bitter, an edge of your seat thriller.  The killer rapist hunts down and kidnaps Sam and takes her to his lair in the mountains.  There he proceeds to repeatedly torture and rape her for days.  Elias moves heaven and earth to find her.  When he does finally locate the remote cabin where she’s being held captive and saves her, she is broken almost beyond repair.  The hospital scenes with Elias keeping a lonely vigil by her bedside as she teeters between life and death are heartrending.  The tragedy has changed Elias.  This once selfish dom cares nothing for himself.  His only concern is Sam’s welfare; getting her well again.  Though she survived, Sam has retreated into her own little world, staring blankly ahead, never uttering a word, spending her days endlessly rocking.  It is Elias’s devotion and love that heal her.  Incapable of caring for herself, Elias is urged by doctors to commit her to an asylum where she can live out her days shuttered away from the world.  But he refuses.  No matter what, she will always be his.  He will love her forever.  Sam has regressed to an almost infantile state, forcing Elias to tend to her every need.  But he willingly bears the burden.  It’s a labor of love.  He bathes, feeds, and toilets her; dresses, rocks and reads to her.  And little by little, step by slow step, Sam comes back to him.  Sylvie cried when Sam lifted her eyes for the first time to meet Elias’s and he saw a flicker of recognition there.  In the story Elias’s love was both benevolent and fierce.  It was relentless and enduring.  The strength of his devotion saved Samantha, made her whole again.  But it was also transformational and redemptive for him.  Elias abandoned the darkness inside him, the cruelty that once held sway.  He wasn’t the man he’d been before.  He’d become noble, honorable, and worthy of Sam’s love.  Sylvie absolutely loved the story.  It was the best book of the trilogy and was certain to be a bestseller.

Sylvie printed out a paper copy of the manuscript, penciled in her corrections and suggestions, and put it in a folder to give to him.  She was elated!  They were a team again.

This was launch day for the second book in the Forever and Always Yours series and Connor had been following the Amazon rankings when he wasn’t on the phone yelling at people.  He’d had the phone glued to his ear most of the day.  That was unusual.  Connor didn’t like talking on the phone as a rule.  That’s why he had assistants, managers, and executives on the payroll…so he didn’t have to.  It must be something important.  Connor seemed upset.  But why?  The book was doing well.  The presale had been extraordinarily successful and the book went to number one in the erotic romance, romance, and romantic suspense categories almost immediately.  She’d been monitoring the numbers.  It was currently number three on the Amazon Bestsellers Top 100 list, right behind the first book in the series which was in the number two spot.  Connor’s book Battle Weary–Chaos and Carnage had fallen to number eight.  Was that what was bothering him?

The new line of lingerie, marketed under the Forever and Always Yours label, was launched today too.  It had been featured on every national morning talk show and some regional ones in larger markets like New York, LA, Chicago, and Miami.  They held fashion shows with gorgeous models wearing the sexy, intimate apparel.  From audience and viewer reaction, it was a big hit.  Everyone loved the line.  The lingerie was now on sale at all major department stores around the country, and at online retailers, just in time for Valentine’s Day.  From the reports Connor was getting, the lingerie was flying off the racks, especially the red silk bras and camisoles with matching tap pants.

Connor should have been ecstatic, so why did he seem so angry?  Something was wrong and it had nothing to do with the books.

‘Have you seen this?’ Connor asked as she approached him.

‘What?  Sylvie said peering at the screen.  She stared at the grainy image for a minute trying to figure out what it was.  Suddenly her mouth gaped open.  ‘Holy crap!  Who is that?  He looks just like you!’  Her eyes widened in realization.  ‘Is that me?’ she asked horrified.  Plastered on his home page was an image of Sylvie lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by machines, tubes protruding from her body..  Her face so bruised and swollen her features were hardly recognizable.  And beside her sat a grieving Connor, holding his head in his hands in what could only be described as despair.  It very much reminded her of Elias keeping vigil at Sam’s bedside.  ‘Where did they get that?’

‘Somebody in the hospital must have taken it.  There’s more of them.  They started showing up the day before yesterday and now they’re popping up all over the internet.  It seems that my readers, business associates, competitors, and friends have been speculating about my whereabouts and why I suddenly dropped off the grid and went into hiding.  Apparently I’ve been the number one topic of conversation in financial, publishing, and media circles since I missed the December 1st launch date of book one of Forever and Always Yours.  I’m usually front and center when a book of mine comes out, so people wondered why I wasn’t there.  Some stockholders in a couple of the publicly owned companies I do business with went ballistic.  Wanting to know where I was and how long I intended to be away from work.  They’re worried that my absence will somehow cause their stock to depreciate in value.  They don’t like doing business with my underlings.  They want to deal with me directly.  Pompous asses!  I’ve remained unavailable to them, so the rumors have been flying.  It’s not like I abandoned my companies and left them rudderless.  I have competent executives at the helm of all my corporations.  They’re perfectly capable of making decisions in my absence.  I’m confident they haven’t bankrupted or run my businesses into the ground.  I’ve been getting weekly written reports and keeping tabs.  But suddenly firms I’ve been doing business with for years are running around like Chicken Little, screaming ‘The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!’  They’re worried I won’t be involved enough in the design of a new toy or computer game based on one of my books.  Or a movie won’t get made.  Or a thrill ride won’t be constructed in some damn amusement park halfway around the world.  When they couldn’t get hold of me they panicked.  These are captains of industry mind you.  Gimme a frigging break!  They’ve been calling corporate headquarters almost daily, haranguing my executives, demanding to talk to me directly.  They want reassurance that all the projects I’m involved in are going forward without a hitch.  Reassurance?  What the fuck?  I’ve never reneged on a deal in my life.  I run billion dollar corporations for God’s sake!  They started blabbing to a bunch of dimwitted commentators on the financial channels, who picked up the story and ran with it.

I told everyone, and I mean everyone, who works for me that I was occupied with other things, and didn’t want to be disturbed.  Consequently, no one told me how bad it was getting.  I’ve avoided calls from everyone, including my friends, corporate executives, longtime associates, and my business and legal advisers.  I’m not a very good liar, and since I don’t really know who I can trust anymore, I chose not to speak to anyone.  I thought people would back off, give me some space, leave me be a while; but that was naïve thinking on my part and of course they didn’t.  I tried to keep everything quiet as long as I could, but eventually,’ he let out a dejected sigh, ‘I had to tell some people what was going on.  But trust me, until today, the only ones who knew what happened to you were Sean, Victor, and Drake.  I wouldn’t have told them except Sean was going batshit wanting to know where you were.  What I’d done to you?  And why you weren’t returning his calls?’  Connor frowned in irritation.  ‘Evidently my friend is smitten with you, or something to that effect.  Whatever his motives, he was bound and determined to find out what happened to you.  He’d been calling me all along, but I never responded.  Then he started calling the security office in Saranac and demanding to speak to Brady.  Tom’s in daily contact with the office.  He listened to the voicemails from Sean and came to me.  Sean was threatening to hire detectives and contact the media about your disappearance and my possible involvement in it.  It was going to get ugly so I called and told him what was going on.  I felt I didn’t have a choice.  What I didn’t know was that he was with Victor and Drake at the time and I was on speaker phone.  That was last week.

I swore them to secrecy, but now it doesn’t matter.  The rumor mill has been churning out stories since before the holidays.  I normally spend Christmas with the guys in Telluride and while there I host a big benefit for wounded and homeless veterans.  I’ve been doing it for the last six or seven years.  I had word sent to the guys that I wouldn’t be joining them this year, two days after the assault.  I didn’t give a reason.  Then I cut off all communication with them.  The company went ahead with the benefit even though I wasn’t there; but it started people talking.  There was an article about my unexplained absence in the local paper.  It was picked up by a wire service.  Another article came out in mid-January that threw fuel on the fire.  You know, Connor Hudson billionaire, bestselling author disappears.  It was suggested that I may have been kidnapped by either anti-capitalist militants, socialists, communists, anarchists, or one of any number of radical extremist groups…take your pick!  A piece on the web reported I was suffering from a terminal illness and had gone to a clinic in Europe to try some new experimental therapy that’s banned in the United States in a last ditch effort to save my life.  Others have speculated that I had a nervous breakdown, attempted suicide, and am now confined, under lock and key, in a small, exclusive, private sanatorium in Gstaad, Switzerland that caters to the obscenely rich.  In other corners it’s believed that I suffered a drug overdose, from either heroin, cocaine, crack, or maybe LSD, it’s unclear which, and am in rehab going through withdrawal and trying to get my head on straight.  My personal favorite, however, is that I might be in Sweden undergoing a sex change operation.

Some jerk with a blog who wants to make a name for himself, put up a wanted poster of me online and offered a reward to anybody who could tell him where I was hiding.  I guess a lot of people came forward.  Either they recognized me from the picture or by name.  I never hid who I was when you were in the hospital, maybe I should have, but I swear to you I never expected some fucking ghoul to take pictures of you like that.  The only thing we can figure is that some hospital employees took them with their cell phones when they came into the room to clean, check the monitors, or change your IVs.  I’ve had Brady looking into it and it appears the photos were taken at different times of the day, indicating they were taken on different shifts.  We’re pretty sure it was more than one person because the quality of the photos vary.  We think at least three different phones were used.  What kind of a sicko do you have to be to do something like that?  At any rate, last night someone who knew about the attack on you and the connection to the New York murders, maybe the detective in Rochester or a cop who’d heard scuttlebutt about the ongoing investigation, came forward anonymously and talked to a couple of TV reporters.

So…the cat is out of the bag and the shit has hit the proverbial fan.  There are some stories on the web today that identify you as my editorial assistant and say you were attacked by a serial killer.  The same man responsible for the deaths of my late fiancée, three former girlfriends, and a female reporter who’d been investigating the case.  The one good thing is that they don’t know where we are.  At least for the time being.  I talked to the New York City Police Commissioner and the Feds early this morning.  They’re at a loss to say who leaked news of the investigation to the press.  It’s telling that there’s no mention of my parents’ deaths or the murders that occurred around the country in any of the articles; but still, it lets the killer know the cops are on to him, that they’ve established a connection between you, me, and five murder victims.’

‘Do you think all the publicity will scare him into stopping?’

‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’