Chapter 4
Movies and television make kidnappings look so easy. They totally weren’t, as it turned out.
Which was why River was cursing Hollywood to hell and back as she dragged the absurdly hot, unconscious mafia man into her backseat.
She’d even watched a YouTube video about female firefighters to study the logistics of how they were able to carry much-larger fire victims to safety before undertaking this stupid kamikaze mission, and she was still grunting, sweating, and muttering under her breath like Yosemite Sam by the time she got him situated in the backseat of her ancient Honda Civic.
If she was Jack Reacher, she would’ve shoved him into the trunk.
But, hell, she wasn’t even as competent as Stephanie Plum.
So, the backseat would have to be good enough.
All she could do was hope she could get to the meet-up point with that Russian asshole who threatened her before her victim woke up and slit her throat.
He didn’t look like someone who’d slit her throat, though. Not while he was unconscious. He looked kind of…peaceful. Much younger and much less threatening than when he was awake and staring at her like she was a tasty little rabbit, and he was the big bad wolf.
It all made her feel like a villain straight out of a Stephen King novel.
If he’d been mean to her or abused her in some way, maybe she’d feel less like Pennywise for kidnapping him and turning him over to the Russian mafia.
But no, all he’d wanted to do was get laid.
He’d been kind to her. Gave her the most passionate kiss of her life.
And here she was, stuffing him into her car like he was a bag of groceries from the Piggly Wiggly.
She didn’t have the luxury of feeling sorry for him, though. She couldn’t remain in debt to the Russian mafia because of her stupid, self-destructive asshole of an ex.
And the threat they’d made if she failed to complete this little mission was the stuff of nightmares. And true crime podcasts.
So, with one last look at the sexiest unconscious man who’d ever lived, she got out of the backseat, slammed the door, and climbed into the driver’s seat.
When this was all over, she should find that idiot ex of hers and kick his ass so hard his future kid’s grandkids would have her size-seven boot print on their asses when they came out of the womb.
She wouldn’t, though. Confrontation wasn’t her thing.
Never had been. She simply lacked main character energy, even in her own life.
Main characters were plucky and feisty. No one would ever call River plucky or feisty.
She was more like…a sidekick. Dependable, but not extraordinary.
Like, Garfunkel. Oates. Robin instead of Batman. Boo Boo instead of Yogi Bear.
Normally, that was fine. Being a main character sounded exhausting. But today? Today was no ordinary day, and some feisty pluck would really hit the spot right about now.
It took her a minute to get over her pity party and input the directions she’d received from the Russians into her phone and get a route, but she finally managed to leave the strip club in her rearview and drive toward getting this whole fiasco over with once and for all.
“So…where are we going?”
River let out a shriek of the damned as the totally not unconscious man in her backseat leaned forward close enough to rest his chin on her shoulder.
Unfortunately, she also accidentally jerked the wheel to the left so hard she almost drove directly into oncoming traffic.
The only thing that kept that from happening was her passenger, who shot forward, grabbing the wheel.
“Pull over before you kill us, fiorellino,” he said in an annoyingly calm voice, settling back into his seat, giving her control of the car.
She swallowed hard and did as she was told, pulling into a hardware store parking lot.
It was just her foul luck that the store was closed.
If she died here, no one would even find her for at least twelve hours.
And having her dead, bloated body discovered by some poor contractor who’d just showed up to buy spackling on his way to a job site sounded awful.
“Shut the engine off and hand me the keys.”
“And if I refuse?” she whispered.
The unmistakable sound of a gun cocking made her flinch. “You won’t.”
She considered it for a second. She could hit the gas and drive right through the store’s front window. That’d alert the cops. And the gun-toting maniac in her back seat might get thrown into the windshield. That seemed like a win.
“Think it through,” he said in a voice so calm it pissed her off. “Do you really want to do anything that might bring the cops into this? After you kidnapped me?”
Which was…a disturbingly logical point. She sighed and slammed the car into park, then shut down the engine and dropped her keys into his waiting palm.
She had to stifle a nervous laugh at the sight of her plastic “I read monster smut” keychain in his big, manly hand, though.
He glanced down at the keychain, nonplussed, before tucking it into his jacket pocket, along with—much to her relief—the gun he’d threatened her with. Then he got out and climbed back in on the passenger side.
That was much less of a relief.
River tried really hard not to say anything.
To let him speak first. That would’ve been the smart thing to do.
It was just her curse in life—well, one of her curses, anyway—that when she was especially anxious, she tended to blurt out weird random factoids.
It made dating challenging. And dentist appointments. Which wasn’t the point.
Point was, she was blaming her strange affliction for what she said next.
“Did you know scientists monitor whale stress levels by analyzing their feces, and that after the 9/11 attacks, when shipping traffic halted, they were much more relaxed because the ocean was quieter?”
He cocked his head to one side and studied her for a moment before saying, “I did not know that.”
“It’s true. And whale feces are used in perfumes.” Oh, Jesus, why can’t I stop talking? “Ambergris, too, which is a waxy material that’s found in the digestive tract of a sperm whale. So, unless you want to wear whale crap and stomach goo, you probably shouldn’t wear any perfume.”
His brow furrowed, but he nodded. “Good to know.”
River managed to swallow a few extra facts about castoreum, which came from the anal glands of a beaver and was also used in perfumes, by asking, “Are you going to kill me now?”
One corner of his mouth tipped up. “Why would I kill you when I’m learning so many interesting facts?”
“Because I tased you and kidnapped you,” she answered before she realized he was being facetious.
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Yes, there is that. But I have a few things I might be able to teach you, too. For example, did you know that tasing someone doesn’t make them pass out?”
Which meant he’d been pretending to be unconscious while she struggled to get him into her car. He’d made her go through all that sweaty, cussing, back-breaking work for nothing. What an asshole!
Then it occurred to her that she was being a smidge hypocritical. She had, after all, lied to him. And tased him. And kidnapped him. In this situation, she was definitely the asshole.
“No, I did not know that,” she grumbled. “Obviously.”
“So,” he began, looking disgustingly at ease and rational, “let’s start over. What’s your name?”
It went against every instinct she had to tell him. What kind of idiot tells a violent killer their name? But since she was probably going to die tonight anyway, she supposed it didn’t matter. Not anymore, at least. “River. River Lang.”
He smiled. It really should be illegal for a man to look that good before he murdered you. “Lovely. Now, tell me, River, why did you kidnap me?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does to me,” he murmured. “When someone comes after me, I take it personally.”
She bit her lower lip. “Well…my ex owes some really bad people money…”
That’s all it took to open the floodgates.
She told him about coming home from work one day and finding a giant Russian in her kitchen, threatening to kill her if she didn’t tell him where her ex was.
Then she told him about arguing with the guy, telling him she hadn’t seen that dipwad since the divorce was finalized.
Told him about the guy saying she was now on the hook for those debts and giving her a choice.
She could either pay them off by working for them—on her back—or lure a stranger, a killer, to his potential doom, and all the debts would be wiped clean.
His eyes never left her face as she spilled her guts. She wasn’t even sure he blinked. All she knew was that his eyes got harder and harder as he listened.
Now he really looked like a killer.
When her nervous spill of words finally stopped, he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “So, why did you tase me instead of just taking me to the Russians?”
“They told me you were dangerous,” she admitted. “And that if you suspected I was lying to you, you’d kill me, so I better make it convincing. But I’m total shit at lying. I mean, you obviously weren’t convinced I wanted to have sex with you, right?”
His gaze dropped to her lips. “No, fiorellino, I wasn’t. But I was hopeful.”
That was a fact she’d file away in her brain for future evaluation. It was way more than she could process at the moment. “I wasn’t confident in my ability to control the situation for any longer than I did,” she said quietly. “I was afraid you’d hurt me. Or worse.”
He studied her for a moment, but eventually nodded. “I understand.”
“So, what are we going to do now?”
“We’re going to figure out what the Russians were planning to do with me,” he said, pulling out his phone and firing off a text to someone. His big friend from the bar, probably. That gave her a little bit of hope. Together, those two could easily take down the Russian who’d threatened her.
“And I’d like to ask him why he thought he could take on Nico Fortunado and the Italian mafia,” he went on, still texting.
Record scratch in her brain.
“Wait a minute…who is Nico Fortunado?” she asked.
He glanced up from his phone and frowned at her. “I am, of course. Why?”
Her heart skipped several beats. Her lungs stalled.
This. Was. A. Disaster.
“What’s wrong?”
River blinked back tears of rage and frustration as she looked the head of the Italian mafia right in his long-lashed, sinfully rich black eyes and whispered, “I kidnapped the wrong man.”