Page 1 of Dangerous Affair (The Phoenix Three #2)

“I have to go to work.” Liam O’Rourke gave his new girlfriend a quick kiss as they stood on the school grounds after the final bell.

He was going to be late, and his father wasn’t going to be happy.

When Patrick O’Rourke wasn’t happy, no one was.

Late to work at his father’s Kansas City pub meant he was going to be put on dishwasher duty as punishment, the job he hated the most.

“You always have to work,” Christina whined. “Can’t you come with us just once?”

“I can’t.” She wasn’t going to stay his girlfriend for long if he never got to spend time with her outside of school.

She and their group of friends were meeting up at Charlie’s, their favorite after-school hangout. While he was buried up to his elbows in suds, they would be eating cheese fries, drinking milkshakes, and having a great time. Sometimes, he hated his father.

His senior year in high school should be all about having fun with his friends, having a girlfriend he could spend time with, and being a carefree kid.

Instead, he was in training to learn all about the family business from the ground up so that someday he’d be qualified to take over Danny Boy’s Irish Pubs International.

Someday being in the far distant future because his father would have to be on his deathbed before he gave up control of his empire.

Liam left Christina and his friends and ran the one mile to work.

It burned that he wasn’t allowed the time to just be young.

It also burned that as rich as his father was, he’d refused to give Liam a car so that he didn’t have to run everywhere just to be on time when at his father’s beck and call.

A lot of the senior kids had cars, and Patrick O’Rourke could afford to buy Liam a fleet of them, but no…

he couldn’t even have one measly used car.

Resentment bubbled up in his chest as he raced for the pub.

No matter what he might want to do with his life, the choice wasn’t his to make.

His resentment wasn’t that, as the only child, he was being groomed to take over the business one day.

He was good with that. He just wanted to be like his friends who were allowed to have fun the way teenagers were supposed to.

Two blocks from the pub, he glanced at his watch as he ran. He was only going to be five minutes late, but as far as his father was concerned, five minutes might as well be an hour. His backpack bounced against his spine as he picked up speed.

He was crossing the street at the last intersection before reaching the pub when a white van screeched to a halt in front of him, and unable to stop in time, he ran into the side of it. His head bounced against the van and, dazed, he stumbled back.

“Hey, watch where you’re going,” he yelled as white stars floated in front of his eyes. He rubbed his forehead, and already, a lump was forming. Great, he was going to have a big fat egg right between his eyes.

The side door of the van slid open, and before he could comprehend what was happening, he was yanked inside.

He was pushed face down on the floor, and a knit cap was pulled over his head and halfway down his face, covering his eyes.

He’d been stunned, unable to comprehend what was happening, but when he realized someone was binding his hands behind his back with a plastic tie, the first wave of panic hit.

He struggled to get his arms and hands away before they could be bound, making him helpless.

Something small, round, and cold was pressed into his cheek. “That’s a gun, Mr. O’Rourke,” a man with a gravelly smoker’s voice said. “Unless you want to die right here, you’ll stop fighting us.”

Us? How many were there? Had anyone seen them abduct him?

Was someone calling the police right now to report a kidnapping?

He hadn’t noticed anyone around, but he hadn’t really been paying attention to his surroundings as he ran.

His father was going to be so pissed when Liam didn’t show up for work.

The van hit a bump in the road, and the rough metal of the floor scraped his chin and the tip of his nose. That hurt. Through the fear pounding in his chest, he tried to focus on the van’s direction, but he didn’t have a clue. He needed to calm the hell down and think.

Wait… They’d called him O’Rourke. They knew his name?

This wasn’t a random kidnapping. He’d been targeted.

Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Danny Boy’s Irish Pubs International was worldwide, consisting of over five hundred pubs.

His father was a millionaire many times over, and that wasn’t a secret.

Was this a kidnapping for ransom? If so, that was good, right?

They’d need him alive to collect any money.

“What are you going to do with me?”

Someone kicked his thigh. “Shut up.”

“Ow.” The plastic tie was too tight, making the tips of his fingers tingle, but he didn’t want to get kicked again, so he kept quiet.

He lost track of time as the engine droned on, and even though he was frightened out of his mind, he dozed off. He didn’t know how long they traveled, but it had to be two or three days, and he mostly slept the miles away.

He never had a chance to escape because they never let him leave the van. The knit cap was kept over his eyes, and he was good with that. If he never saw his captors’ faces, they’d have no reason to kill him.

The plastic ties had only been removed long enough for him to go to the bathroom in a bucket and to let him eat the hamburgers they’d gotten for him at fast-food drive-throughs as they traveled.

“If you try to yell or call for help, we’ll shoot the worker,” one of the men said the first time they got food.

Since that was something he couldn’t live with on his conscience, he kept quiet.

Where were they taking him? Sometimes he heard the low murmur of voices from the front of the van, but he could never make out what they were saying.

He thought there were only two men, but there could be three.

If he tried to talk, he got kicked, so he stopped asking questions.

On what was the second or third day, the van stopped, and he was roughly dragged out.

Standing for the first time after so many hours of lying face down on the floor, his legs buckled when he tried to stand on them.

Rough hands grabbed his arms on both sides, and he stumbled along between two men as they dragged him into what he thought was a house because a door slammed behind them.

After walking for a minute, he was pushed down onto a hard floor.

It felt like wood under his face. The ties were cut off his wrists, and then he heard receding footsteps and a door closing.

Afraid to move, he lay there for…he didn’t know how long. He’d lost all sense of time.

He was hungry, his body was sore all over, and he was scared out of his mind. He’d give anything to be at his dad’s pub washing dishes. If he ever got out of this, he’d never complain again.

His family would know by now that he was missing and would be searching for him.

Would they even know where to look? He had no idea which direction they’d traveled, but he did know he was far from Kansas City.

He tried not to cry, but tears welled up and spilled down his cheeks. He wanted to go home.

Suck it up, O’Rourke. Crying wasn’t going to get him out of this, and he needed to figure out a way to escape. At least they’d untied his hands. It felt like he was alone, and he tentatively pushed the knit cap up, uncovering his eyes. When a kick to his body didn’t come, he sat up.

The room was dark, and he crawled until he found a wall.

On still shaky legs, he stood, leaned against the wall, and waited until his legs agreed to do their job of keeping him on his feet.

Once he was steady, he circled the room, trailing his hands at the height that light switches were usually located.

He came to the door and tried the knob, unsurprised to find it locked. Switches were usually near the door, so he searched to the side of it. “Yes,” he exclaimed when he found it, and a light came on. It was nothing more than a single light bulb hanging by a cord from the ceiling, but he could see.

There was nothing to see.

Other than a bucket in the corner, the room was empty. No bed, no chair, no blanket or pillow. Nothing, nothing, nothing. The windows had thick boards nailed over them. How was he supposed to escape?

Fear and helplessness washed over him, and he slid down the wall. He cried, and he hated himself for being weak. He wanted to go home.

* * *

“Oomph!”

Liam startled awake when the silence of the room was broken. He’d left the light on, and he blinked to clear his eyes, doubting what he was seeing. A boy his age was sprawled on the floor, and another boy, also his age, was standing, glaring at the closed door.

“Am I dreaming?” He had no idea what day it was, how long he’d been asleep, or if he was even awake now. Maybe he was hallucinating.

The standing boy tore his attention from the door to Liam. “Who are you?”

“Liam.” He pinched himself as he got to his feet. Okay, that hurt, so not dreaming. “Did they kidnap you, too?”

“Yeah, me and Cooper. I’m Grayson. Do you know who they are and what they plan?”

“I don’t know. Where are we?”

“South Florida. It’s spring break here.”

“No shit? Florida?” He’d always wanted to go to spring break in Florida, but willingly. Not as a kidnap victim.

“Yeah,” Grayson said. “You didn’t know that?”

“They took me in Kansas City, where I’m from. I’ve been blindfolded and in the back of a van for two or three days.”

Grayson frowned. “This all seems really odd. Why take you from Kansas and me from Florida. What’s the connection?”

“Yeah, weird.”

“They knew my name,” Grayson said.

“They did mine, too. What do you think that means?”

Grayson shrugged. “Who knows, but I’m hoping it means that they kidnapped us for ransom. Is your father rich?”

“Very. Yours?”

“Same.”

He studied the other boy. His clothes didn’t seem to be as expensive as Liam’s and Grayson’s. Maybe he was from a rich family, too, and was just slumming? Cooper caught him staring, and Liam jerked his gaze away.

“He wasn’t targeted,” Grayson said. “He was with me when they took me, and they grabbed him, too. They didn’t know who he was.” He tapped Cooper’s foot with his own. “Sorry for that.”

“Not your fault.” Cooper rolled over and sat up.

“Is your family rich?” Liam asked.

Cooper laughed as if that was the funniest thing in the world. “We don’t even know what money looks like.”

He and Grayson glanced at each other, and even though they’d just met, they both understood the message passed between them. If this was to get ransom from their rich families, what did that mean for Cooper if his family couldn’t pay?

That was the moment Liam was more worried about someone other than himself. Somehow, he was going to get out of this and take his new friends with him.