“I keep telling you, this is not where he is, Carter. This is our speshul—ahem, special—spot. Dunn wouldn’t take Jenn here, even if he was mad at me.”
Carter was not listening to me.
“I’ve got an ETA of two minutes, Daisy Duke,” he said into his phone. “And on a five-point drunkenness scale, we’re at…” He glanced at me consideringly, and the car hit another nasty bump. “Eh. I’d say a 4.0? Mostly sober, but I had to help him into his seat belt, and he’s ornery as hell.”
“Ornery! Yeah, I’m ornery! You’d be ornery too if you were basically being kidnapped and taken in the wrong direction—” I began.
I heard a voice answer back that sounded suspiciously like Cindy Ann’s. “We’ll be there in three, Doctor Strange. And we’re at a 4.8 on the drunkenness scale: massively hungover and snarling like a black bear.”
Carter glanced at me again and hesitated. “Daisy, are you sure this is… wise, all things considered?”
“Meh. Wise went out the window a while ago. It’s necessary,” the possibly-Cindy Ann-person said firmly.
“And it’s fucking fun,” a voice that was almost definitely Brooks’s added.
“Carter. Rogers. What is going on?” I folded my arms over my chest.
“You’ll find out in 1.5 minutes,” he said.
When we reached the front of the cabin, the driveway was empty in the twilight.
“See? I told you.” I unfolded myself from Carter’s little sports car and spun in a circle. “No Dunn. No Jenn. No cars. No—hey!” I exclaimed as Carter reached over and slammed my door, then locked it. “Carter, what the hell are you… Where are you going?”
Carter drove twenty feet away, then stopped and rolled down his window. He threw something onto the driveway at my feet. “You’ll thank me for this, Tucker Wright! At least… I really, really hope you will.”
“Get back here!”
But it was too late. Carter’s car was nothing more than brake lights on the driveway.
“I am going to kill him. I am going to tell Cindy Ann to set him up on three dates a day. I am going to make him a hundred dating app profiles. But first I am calling for a ride.”
I patted my pocket for my phone, which I knew for sure had been there when I got in the car, because Carter made me show it to him before he helped me with my…
“Oh my God, you stole my phone, you fucker?” I screamed to the night. “This is betrayalllll!”
I kicked the ground and found that I’d actually kicked… “My wreath?”
I bent down and picked it up. How the hell had Carter gotten it? And what the actual fuck was going on?
The sound of an engine roaring up the driveway made me straighten.
Thank fuck.
I’d gotten as far as yelling, “This is the most irresponsible excuse for a practical joke I have ever—” before the car made it into the clearing… which was when I noticed it wasn’t Carter’s sports car—it was a plain, white van, and it barely slowed down before the side door slid open and a very large something hopped out and hit the dirt with a squeal.
“Deesus Cwist!” the something said, and I’d know that pissed-off voice anywhere.
“Dunn? Oh, holy shit. Dunn, baby, what’s happened?” I dropped to my knees beside him in the dirt. In the dim light, I saw that he was kneeling with a bandana tied loosely around his mouth and another around his wrists in front of his body.
“Love you, boys!” Cindy Ann Johnson called from inside the van. “Be back tomorrow!”
“Haul ass, Mama,” Gracie called from the passenger seat. “Before either one of them sobers up.”
“Mama, you are the worst kidnapper ever,” Brooks muttered. “Now hurry up and close the door so we can get the van back to the Devoted Dogs. They’ve gotta prep for their Meals on Wheels delivery tomorrow.”
The door slammed shut, and the van disappeared down the driveway.
“I’m seriously, seriously gonna kill everyone involved,” I muttered, fighting to loosen the ties around Dunn’s wrists. “I’m pretty sure I could make it look like an accident.”
“Gwet in wiine,” Dunn muttered from behind the gag. He shot me a baleful look that said I was definitely on the list of “people involved.”
“Excuse you!” I said, immediately going from concerned to annoyed. “This is not my fault. I was dropped here, same as you.”
“Yoo don ha a gag.”
“Yeah, well, maybe because I wasn’t being as loud as you.”
The ties on his hands came free, and he reached up to pull the gag over his head, then threw it on the ground, gave me another disgruntled look, and headed for the cabin door.
I pushed out a breath and turned to follow him, half expecting him to close the door on me.
He didn’t.
Instead, he stopped just inside the doorway and stared down at the cabin’s hardwood floors, which had somehow been covered in… rose petals?