Under His Domain by Kelly Favor Page B

room as if they thought it might be some sort of trap they were entering.
    “Kennedy, is anyone else here?” Red asked
her.
    She shook her head no.   “I’m sorry,” she was able to utter, and
then the tears and sobs wracked her body and she began to sink to the floor.
    Nicole came next to her, hugging her,
whispering soothing words in her ear, brushing her hair.   “It’s okay, honey.   Tell me what happened.   It’s all right, you’re safe now.”
    “It’s not me,” Kennedy told her, in
between sobbing gasps for air.
    “ What’s not
you?”
    “I’m not the one in trouble.”
    “Something happened to Easton?” Nicole
said.
    Kennedy could only nod, embarrassed that
she kept crying and sobbing, but she was going to break down if she had to say
the words aloud.   Saying it to Red
and Nicole would make it all too real.
    Red left the room and came back a few
moments later with a box of tissues.   He handed them to Nicole, and Nicole held the box while Kennedy dried
her eyes and wiped her nose.
    The two of them were on the floor
together, and Kennedy suddenly had the most disorienting experience of déjà
vu.   It was as though she could
remember them as children together—toddlers—playing on the floor of
some old house, and the way the carpet smelled and how familiar Nicole was,
like they’d known each other forever.
    “I think Easton’s been hurt, or
maybe—maybe even worse,” Kennedy said, finally
able to keep from bursting into tears again as she said the unthinkable.
    “Where did he go?” Red asked.
    “It’s a long story,” Kennedy told him,
looking up, almost afraid to meet his gaze.
    He was staring down at her, his face a
mask of impatient concern, his stare heavy with controlled emotion.   “You better start talking, then,” Red told
her, checking his watch.   “Every
second counts in this type of situation.”
    Nicole glanced at her husband.   “Don’t frighten her,” she said.
    “I’m not trying to frighten anybody.   But we need to act quickly if we think
something’s happened to Easton.”
    “Okay,” Kennedy said, nodding and getting
slowly to her feet.   Nicole stood
with her, holding one of her hands lightly.
    “Just start at the beginning.   Why don’t you sit down and tell us?”
    “I’ll tell you everything I can
remember,” Kennedy said, walking to the table by the window where her and
Easton had just eaten that wonderful dinner the night before.
    Now, he was gone and in his place was a
worried looking Nicole and a barely composed Red, waiting for her to begin her
story.
    “It started,” Kennedy said, swallowing
hard as she sat in the chair that faced the window, “when this woman came into
the office and demanded to see Easton.”
    And so Kennedy began telling them about
Sheri, and how Kennedy had followed her and gotten her license plate,
researched her, found out the sordid details of the money she and Dean owed to
creditors.   Kennedy didn’t spare any
detail, didn’t try to make herself look better.   Instead, she told them all of it, only
leaving out the sexually explicit moments that had transpired between her and
Easton.
    By the time she got to the part where
Easton told her he was going to meet with Jimmy DeLuca, Red stood up.
    “He never came home,” Kennedy finished,
checking her cell phone and seeing that it was now nearly ten in the
morning.   “I tried his phone and it’s
off.”   Her jaw shook and her voice
broke.
    Nicole glanced at Red, and Kennedy could
see the hopeless look in her sister’s eyes.   Nicole thought something very bad had
happened to him, that much was clear.
    “What should we do?” Nicole asked Red.
    Red sighed.   “I need to make a call,” he said.   He put his own cell phone to his
ear.   “Kane, it’s me…and I have a
very big problem.”   He stood there
for a short time, listening.   Then
he continued.   “A friend of mine is
in trouble and I think you might be the only person who can