13. Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Thirteen
When Kathleen woke, her mouth was full of a strange, unpleasant taste. Although she had a throbbing headache, it wasn’t the kind she typically associated with a hangover. That was the first thing that clued her in that something was wrong.
The second clue was the fact that her wrists were bound.
Her eyes snapped open, a wave of dizziness washing over her. The third clue was that she was in an unfamiliar bathroom.
Kathleen squeezed them shut again. That felt like a hangover response—only she recalled precisely what had happened.
Kathleen had arrived in the parking garage of her building, and someone had come at her from behind. She’d fought, but he was impervious to her attacks, forcing her to breathe from the cloth.
The room she’d woke in was a white-tiled bathroom. The plastic flex cuffs that held her hands bound had a chain threaded through them that wrapped around the base of a white porcelain toilet. Nearby was a sink and mirror, and beyond that, a bath with a pull-around shower curtain decorated with birds.
Kathleen had been lying on a pair of blankets, which did nothing for comfort, but at least it meant she wasn’t cold. A quick check reassured her that she was still wearing all her clothes, but her weapons were gone.
Once the dizziness passed, she carefully stood. The cupboard beneath the sink was her first stop, where she hoped she’d find something—anything—she could use as a makeshift weapon. All she found was toilet paper rolls.
Kathleen shifted her wrists, but the flex cuffs had been tightly bound, with no give to them. She moved away from the toilet but couldn’t quite reach the door. That wasn’t by coincidence; the part of the chain wrapped around the toilet was padlocked to a specific length.
I will not panic. I will not panic.
Kathleen repeated the mantra in her head as she inspected the rest of the room. There was a faint, acrid scent of cleaning product in the air, as if someone had recently scrubbed the place, but there was no sign of cleaning liquid or anything else useful. She could pull down the shower curtain and use it to wrap over the head of her kidnapper, but that would require the strength to hold it in place, and she already knew he vastly outclassed her.
So she sat.
Her hands were shaking.
She exhaled at a deliberate pace, counting. It was an old trick, one of the few helpful things the mandatory police therapist had taught her.
She recognized what this was. Her condo, the whole complex, was a safe space for her. In all the years she’d lived there, she had invited no one over. Growing up, she had never had a place that was hers, where she felt safe. She had never had a home. But the condo was her home.
And now it felt violated. She felt violated.
Kathleen wanted to lash out in response, but she knew that was unhelpful. Violence wouldn’t win her freedom. To stay not dead, she needed to play weak, as much as she loathed the idea. Too many homicide cases had ended that way because the victims tried to fight their way out before an opportunity presented itself. She just had to placate her kidnapper until she found a way out.
The lock clicked, and the door swung open.
It was him. The assassin from the Imperial Silk Palace. Kathleen was caught off guard by his presence here. Her eyes flickered over his lowered head. The night before, he’d had the perfect opportunity to grab her—a dark side street, no one around—yet he fled like he was afraid. Why now? Something must have happened in the interim. The question was—what?
Regardless of her confusion, she was prepared to take advantage of the situation, but she needed to be cautious. Kathleen already knew he was strong and fast. She could fight well, but she was outmatched—more so with her hands bound.
She needed to play the long game.
He carried a bag into the room, head tipped down, hair falling across his face and obscuring his eyes. She got the sense he was still watching her, though.
“Hi,” Kathleen said softly.
He didn’t react. Seconds passed before he stirred to movement and reached into the bag. He put a bottle of water and a small takeout container within her reach.
The urge to act was strong, but Kathleen tempered it. Instead, when his hand withdrew, she reached out to clasp it between her bound hands. His skin was warm.
“Thank you,” she said.
He froze like she’d done something to startle him.
“Are you okay?” Kathleen asked, recognizing that only part of the question was playing along with the idea of killing him with kindness.
She was genuinely baffled by his reaction to the contact.
He held still for a few seconds before he pulled his hand away from her grasp, turning his back on her. Kathleen’s eyes ticked across his broad, muscled shoulders, the tension visible to her.
It was tempting to try something, but even with his back turned, he was still far deadlier than her. She stayed where she was. “Do you want to stay while I eat?”
Kathleen saw his head half turn to reveal his profile. He was watching her in his periphery, trying to decide.
Her heart pounded, and she fought to project calm. She reached for the container and opened it. Chow mein noodles—her favorite. How did he know that?
There was a plastic spork inside. Kathleen preferred chopsticks, but she imagined he didn’t want to risk giving them to her. Smart. She took a small bite, alert to anything he may have laced it with.
One block from her condo, there was a noodle shop accessible through a tiny door, easily overlooked. Kathleen had learned about its existence from Ben, her doorman. She’d been eating there at least once a month, sometimes once a week, since she moved into the building.
The noodles were from that same shop.
“You bought these from my favorite place,” she said. It came out more accusing than she meant to, and she tried to moderate the tone.
He didn’t notice, though. Instead, he looked pleased. His posture eased, and he turned, leaning his back against the door and shoving his hands into his pockets. His gaze settled somewhere above her head.
It was unsettling the way he wouldn’t look directly at her.
Kathleen’s stomach rumbled. The first bite of food ignited her appetite. She ate slowly and steadily, washing it down with the bottled water. The food tasted as good as ever—even better than normal—and she didn’t hide her satisfaction.
He was silent the whole time. When she finished, he came forward and took the trash, putting it back into the bag.
Then, finally, he looked right at her.
Kathleen had forgotten how blue his eyes seemed, how intense. She saw hesitation in his manner, some sort of conflict. More than that, it was like he was searching for something in her eyes, and the longer they gazed at each other, the more she felt a sense of familiarity. She couldn’t look away for fear it would scare him off. An absurd thing to feel. He was a murderer and a kidnapper.
She was so fixed on his eyes that the movement of his hands only registered when the gleam of a blade pulled her attention. Kathleen recognized it: a Ka-Bar knife, the kind used by Marines.
Her eyes flickered back to his. Whatever conflict was in his expression had vanished, leaving a quiet determination. Terror seized her.
“Wait,” she begged. “It’s not too late. We can talk through this.”
He took a step toward her, lifting the palm of his hand. His eyes remained fixed on hers as he sliced a long cut along the palm of his hand.
Shock poured through her veins. “What the fuck!”
He reached behind him, sheathing the knife, then advanced on her.
Kathleen scooted backward until she hit the wall. It took everything in her not to fight as he neared.
He crouched next to her. As he reached for her face with his bloodied hand, she froze. He smeared his palm against her cheek, then her forehead. He looked at her with a sharply aware criticism in his gaze, and none of that lost uncertainty from earlier.
The assassin at work? Yet his eyes lacked the cold distance of the Palace—meaning there was a chance she could reach him. “What are you doing?”
He flexed his hand to get the blood flowing and once again pressed it to the side of her face. Kathleen felt the wetness dampening her skin, and he finally seemed satisfied. He retreated, standing.
“Play dead,” he ordered.
They were the first words he had spoken to her. Part of her had wondered whether he was mute, but his baritone voice had a deep, rough cadence like he didn’t use it often. Play dead? Kathleen stared at him, confused, until he pulled out a phone and pointed it at her.
She understood what he wanted. Kathleen slumped against the wall, her head bowed, eyes staring sightlessly. He took three photographs.
An assassin faking a kill? Everything he was doing was perplexing, but she intended to play along.
“Let me take care of that,” she said.
His head lifted from his phone, cocked to one side.
“Your hand.”
He glanced down, his expression blank. He tucked the phone away, then took off his jacket, laying it on the ground near the door. He pulled up the black, tight-fitting shirt to reveal a seriously impressive six-pack of abs. She was so distracted by them that awareness of his too-pale skin and the scars that marred him registered as an aftershock.
Her mouth parted before Kathleen caught herself. “What?”
But he answered the question with a flash of the knife, cutting a long, vertical line along his hip. Blood spilled from him. He reached into the wound with his thumb and forefinger and pulled out a small silver cylinder. He sat it on the sink, then grinned at her.
The gesture was oddly boyish, like someone happy to be showing off a new thing. He glanced down, and Kathleen followed his gaze, only to suck in a sharp breath.
The bleeding had slowed significantly already, and as she watched, it tapered off entirely. That sort of cut would normally require stitches and days to close up, but his wound coagulated faster than should be possible.
“How?” Now it was Kathleen who was lost for words.
He just grinned at her in satisfaction and walked toward the sink to wash his bloodied hands.
His strength, how fast he moved, and now this rapid healing? It was both amazing and a little terrifying.
“What are you?” she whispered.
He heard her. It was obvious in the way he stiffened, in the way his expression closed up.
Whatever small steps Kathleen had made toward gaining his trust, he had just snapped all the way back to his default, closed-off self.
Well, shit.