Page 27 of Stolen Faith

Chapter Seven

“God. This waiting is interminable.” Izabel’s temper finally snapped.

She was cold, hungry, and scared. She felt helpless, and she hated that. If she thought too long or hard about the situation, an unfamiliar feeling of panic threatened to swamp her.

She forced herself to focus on the moment, tried to ground herself the way she would if she was meditating. She pressed her feet hard against the floor…

Except she was barefoot, the bottoms of her feet cold, and she could feel the gritty, dirty floor…ugh.

She took a deep, long inhale and the boning of the corset in her favorite, now ruined, Alexander McQueen evening gown stabbed her in various places.

Leave it to her to overdress for a kidnapping.

To add insult to injury, her nose itched and because of these damn zip-ties, she couldn’t scratch it. Something had to give.

She updated her list of woes. She was cold, hungry, tired, sore, and she had to pee. She deleted scared from the list.

She had to get her mind off all of it, and the silence was starting to feel oppressive. “How much time do you think has passed? Does anyone have a sense of how long we were unconscious, either time?”

Rowan looked at the barred window. “It’s noon, or just after noon, based on the angle of the sun.”

“Sunday afternoon,” Brennon said.

“Monday,” Rowan countered.

Izabel’s whole body stilled. They’d been gone a whole day? That couldn’t be right…

But it was. She just hadn’t let herself think about it.

“Monday?” Brennon breathed. “Okay, hold on. It was what, one a.m. when we were kidnapped.”

“Closer to two,” Rowan said.

“Two a.m. Sunday, we’re kidnapped. We wake up in the mansion…when, what time? The window was covered, so we don’t know if it was day or night.”

“It was either dawn or dusk,” Rowan said.

“How do you know?” Izabel asked.

“The windows in the foyer.” Rowan’s calm voice and demeanor should have made her feel better, but it was actually making panic flutter in her stomach.

“That’s right, you got the hood off.” Brennon leaned forward. “Okay, so we were in the mansion at dawn on Sunday. That’s what…five a.m.?”

“Possibly.”

“Then they drug us again, move us here. So maybe it’s noon on Sunday,” Brennon said.

“No,” Izabel countered. “Because we were at the mansion for a long time.”

“Five to noon,” Brennon said. “Maybe we napped from six to eleven a.m., they transported us an hour away, and here we are.”

“We were in that room for more than five or six hours,” Rowan said.

“We were there most of Sunday?” Izabel asked in horror.

From the look on Brennon’s face, it was clear he’d already figured that out. He’d just been trying to make a shorter timeline work.

After all, she’d said they’d be home in twelve hours.