That smile, so charming and friendly when we met, and then so sexy when we were in the bar, wasn’t actually charming or friendly. Or rather, it probably was—but only so I would trust him long enough for him to do whatever it was he was doing.
And this apartment? Oh yeah, I’d definitely been right about that. This wasn’t the apartment of someone who actually lived here. Or if it was, it wasn’t the apartment of someone who actually cared what people thought about his apartment. Because he probably never brought people here. And if he did, he didn’t care what they thought because they didn’t stay here long enough to form an opinion.
And then another possibility jumped into my head. One that I liked even less. Maybe he didn’t care what they thought of his apartment because they didn’t live long enough to tell anyone what he did here. Maybe my instinct about him being a serial killer had been right, after all.
Maybe it had freaked him out so much that he’d decided he needed to handcuff me faster than he’d expected to. Maybe he’d realized that I’d figured him out and had jumped the gun.
My blood, running so hot and steamy up to this point, turned icy at that particular thought, and I stopped struggling.
Oh God, oh God, oh God. Was he going to kill me? Was that what this was all about? Was this actually how it all ended? Me being really, phenomenally stupid for what might have been one of the only times in my life—my horrible first marriage notwithstanding—and actually paying for it with my life?
Because that seemed like an awfully high price to pay for one freaking mistake. And actually… no. Now that I thought about it, no. I wasn’t willing to die here, not like this.
There was just no fucking way. I’d worked too hard and too long to get to where I was in life, and I had a daughter I had to take care of. I wasn’t going to leave her in the world by herself. I wasn’t going to go out just because some guy had got a power trip into his head and thought he wanted to do something stupid.
Which meant that whatever he was planning was something I just had to talk my way out of. I’d never met a situation I couldn’t get out of. This would be no different.
And at that, my brain suddenly snapped back into place and started working again.
“What do you want?” I asked coldly, my emotions shoved back behind the brick wall of my willpower.
He gave me a look that said that he’d seen—and respected—the struggle I’d just gone through. Well, fuck his approval, I thought. I wasn’t here for that. I just wanted to go home.
“I’ll make this very simple for you,” he said bluntly, already starting to move through the apartment and collect various things. A bag that he’d had shoved under one of those unused tables. A pack of bottled water out of the kitchen. A sack of what looked like groceries.
“I didn’t lie to you when I said I owned a contracting company. I just didn’t tell you what kind of contracting it was. I take contracts to do work for other people—work that they don’t want to do for themselves. I get the job done, and then I get paid. And this time…” He spun around and looked me up and down once. Without any of the heat that he’d been using earlier. “You’re the job.”
My mind stuttered to a stop at that, and then whirred back to life. What did that mean? Not murder, I didn’t think, because if it was, my limited knowledge on the matter suggested that he would have just done it without all this fanfare. Unless he was one of those guys like in the movies, where they wanted to do a whole lot of talking—bragging, more like—before they actually got down to business. He didn’t seem like one of those guys, though. He seemed more practical than that.
And that meant… well, there were a couple of other options. None of them good. I needed to know which of them I was looking at. Needed more information if I was going to form a plan.
So I started talking. “What? What exactly are you being paid to do with me? Use your words, if you don’t mind. If you’re so keen to talk through this, I’d appreciate all the details.”
His mouth twitched, no doubt at the fact that I was demanding more details like I was the one in charge when I was in fact the one wearing the involuntary handcuffs in this relationship. But then he tipped his head back and forth, giving in to the request.
“Kidnapping,” he said firmly, and walked toward me. “The people I work want ransom. A lot of it. And your company’s going to pay it.”
“What?” I gasped. “Are you freaking kidding me? There’s no way my company will pay anything—and there’s every way that you’ll be arrested for this. Do you actually think you’ll get away with this? They’ll zero in on you in five seconds flat.
“We left my car sitting in the parking lot at the rose garden, and it’s long past closed now. Someone’s bound to have noticed and tracked it. Hell, they’ve probably already called the cops. That car is registered in my name, and leaving it sitting in the parking lot after-hours means they’re already searching for me. My assistant has probably already had me declared a missing person. They’re tracking my phone, got it? They’re tracking me down right now! Are you actually that stupid?”
I was shouting by the end, and I’m not even ashamed to admit that. I was furious—and scared. And I’m not ashamed to admit that part, either, because you would have been, too.
Yes, I was a powerful woman, and I had an awful lot of money and influence. But none of that was going to stop this man from picking me up and literally carrying me out of there. And that was the part that made me think I had to hit this from all angles. Because shouting at him had been like shouting at an actual rock wall—and had done just about as much good, judging by his expression.
“Look,” I said in a more reasonable tone. “Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll double it. Triple it. I can afford it. And then you don’t have to risk anything. Jail time, court, all of that will go away. I won’t tell anyone that this happened. I’ll give you enough to live on for the rest of your life and you can get out of this business and just go into… I don’t know, regular contracting. Let’s just make a deal.”
Honestly speaking, no one had ever turned me down when I’d offered them something like that. Which was why I was so surprised when he merely shook his head, stepped forward, and heaved me up and over his shoulder.
Chapter 8
Alice
The first thing I did was bite him, right in the shoulder, and when that didn’t work, I started kicking and punching. I’d warned him that the shoes I was wearing could double as weapons, and if I could have reached them to take them off, I absolutely would have stabbed him with one of them.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t, since they were on one side of his body and my head and arms were on the other. Handcuffed. So I settled for trying like hell to turn my foot enough to at least gouge him with the heel of one of the stilettos on the way down. And I succeeded at least once, given his grunt of pain.
The problem was, it wasn’t enough. He was a big man and no matter how much I struggled and kicked and spat at him, I was still quite a bit smaller than him—and in a very vulnerable position. I was also hampered by the pencil skirt I’d been wearing. It had seemed like such a good idea in the morning when I put it on, but now…