Chapter Four
“YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS.”
The words slip out before I can stop them, and my rescuer’s cold blue eyes cut to mine.
“About which part?”
“The p-part where you’re one of the bad guys!” I gesture wildly at the car interior, at the blood on my cardigan, at the girl still crying softly in the back seat. “Bad guys don’t rescue people! Bad guys don’t—”
“I was serious.”
Aargh.
I can’t believe this is happening.
But this is happening, and yes, the girl and I were idiots to have gotten inside this car and for trusting the wrong person, but...it’s not too late, is it? We can still get out and run—
“Don’t.”
Like I’m going to listen to him now.
So I find the door handle and give it a try—
ARGH.
I scramble for the window controls, but nothing’s working. Everything’s locked, and that’s why—
“Don’t try to do anything stu—”
I lunge for the steering wheel.
I know it’s stupid and suicidal, but what’s there to lose?
The other girl screams as the car swerves violently, but all I can think of is escaping.
Trees blur past the windshield at a terrifying angle, and then we’re spinning, gravel spraying everywhere, and I’m thrown sideways as the car slams to a stop inches from a massive oak trunk.
Silence.
My ears are ringing.
My heart is somewhere in my throat.
And then—
He moves.
Fast.
Faster than I can process.
One second he’s in the driver’s seat, the next he’s on top of me, straddling me in my seat, his hand clamped over my mouth, his weight pinning me in place.
I can’t move.
Can’t breathe.
Can’t do anything but stare up into those ice-blue eyes, which are blazing with something that looks terrifyingly like fury.
“You didn’t let me finish.”
His voice is low.
Controlled.
The kind of controlled that’s worse than shouting.
“I’m one of the bad guys because I was born to it. My father was a drug lord. He sold me to a rival gang when I was twelve because I was the weakest of his sons and he had no use for me.”
The words hit me like a bucket of cold water.
“I got out. Clawed my way up. And now I do freelance work with the FBI, taking down the same kinds of monsters who made me what I am.”
His hand is still over my mouth, his body still pressed against mine.
And as his words echo repeatedly in my mind, I become gradually and horrifyingly aware of how warm and solid he is—
“Do you understand now?”
I manage a nod, and he holds my gaze for a long moment, before slowly removing his hand.
“Why didn’t you start with that?” I blurt out.
“Why didn’t you let me finish?”
“Because I’m the act first, think later type. Isn’t that obvious?”
His gaze glitters, and I think...I think...
“Duly noted from hereon.”
Oh, okay, I thought he was going to smile, but obviously not.
My rescuer finally eases back, and the girl in the backseat lets out a shaky breath of relief.
“I’m sorry I almost crashed your car,” I say in a small voice.
“It wouldn’t have come to that.” He settles back into the driver’s seat like nothing happened. “So you don’t need to apologize.”
I almost smile despite everything.
Confident much?
“Before we get back on the road,” he says, “do you have any other questions?”
“You said you work with the FBI? Is that how you ended up rescuing me?”
“In a way.” He starts the engine, and the car purrs back to life like it wasn’t just seconds away from becoming a crumpled heap of metal. “How much do you remember of your abduction?”
I strangely feel like laughing when I hear the last word.
Abduction.
I actually forgot about that, and I’m not sure I like being reminded of it.
It’s never going to be my favorite memory, you know?
Being...abducted.
And now that the adrenaline is fading, I’m starting to feel the pain. A dull throb in my side that’s growing sharper by the second. I look down—
My rescuer sharply draws his breath as we both see it at the same time: the bloodstain spreading like a virus across my side, turning my cream-colored cardigan to crimson.
Whoa.
“You were shot,” he grates out.
I...was?
“Why didn’t you tell me you were shot?”
Because I didn’t know either.
Until now.
“I...”
I don’t know why that’s the only thing I’m capable of saying.
Don’t know why all I can do is stare up at him.
“I...”
Think I’m going to faint.
The world tilts sideways, and the last thing I see is his face—beautiful, furious, almost worried—before everything goes black.
****
WHEN I WAKE UP AGAIN, I feel blessedly numb.
But also completely confused.
This isn’t a hospital. There are no beeping machines, no antiseptic smell, no nurses bustling in and out.
Instead, I’m lying in what looks like the most expensive hotel suite I’ve ever seen: silk sheets, velvet drapes, crown molding on the ceiling, a crystal chandelier casting soft prisms across the walls.
But it can’t be a hotel....since no hotel would let someone unconscious check in.
Which means...
This must be someone’s house.
Maybe even...his?
I try to piece together how I got here. The last thing I remember is blood spreading across my cardigan, his face swimming above me, and then...
Where am I, really?
I don’t realize I’ve spoken my thought out loud until—
“My home.”
I hear him.
His voice causing me to turn my head—slowly, of course, because I just know the world will start spinning again with the tiniest mistake.
Ah.
My gaze finally finds him.
My rescuer.
He’s standing in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest like a warrior guarding either his treasure...or prisoner.
“Here in California, at least.”
Right.
How perfectly casual he makes it sound, like it’s completely ordinary for people to have spare mansions lying around for emergencies.
He’s changed out of his tactical gear into a charcoal cashmere sweater and dark slacks, the kind of effortlessly elegant outfit that probably costs more than my entire wardrobe. His gold hair is slightly damp, pushed back from his face, and without the mask and the Kevlar, he looks...
Mm.
Softer isn’t the right word.
Nothing about this man is soft.
But he looks human.
Almost approachable.
Almost.
“We’re about an hour outside Los Angeles,” he continues. “In the foothills.”
Los Angeles.
I’m back in California.
The auction had been in Vegas—I remember that now, fragments of overheard conversation from my captors, neon lights bleeding through a blindfold before they knocked me out again. But somehow he’s brought me home.
Or rather, his home.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“I’m—” I have to clear my throat. “Alive. I think.”
He crosses to the bed and, before I can react, presses his palm to my forehead.
I nearly jump out of my skin.
His hand is cool and dry and impossibly large, and having him this close, leaning over me, his face inches from mine—
“No fever,” he says.
“I c-could’ve told you that myself,” I stammer.
He grunts—that same unreadable grunt—and withdraws his hand to pour a glass of water from the pitcher on the bedside table. The water is pale and faintly fragrant, infused with cucumber and something herbal.
“Drink.”
I take a sip.
Oh wow.
It’s the best water I’ve ever tasted in my life, and before I know it, I’m gulping down the entire glass like I’ve been wandering a desert for forty days.
“Slowly, Mira.”
But then I’m choking instead, and he’s there, whacking my back with the flat of his hand, and I’m coughing and sputtering and wishing the earth would swallow me whole.
“I told you to slow down—”
“It wasn’t that,” I protest, still coughing. “H-how did you know my name?”
He straightens. “Your files.”
He pulls a chair to my bedside and sits, and even that simple movement is precise, economical. No wasted motion.
“My colleague and his team were first to learn of the auction. His informant tipped him off. You and the other girls were all handpicked.”
“The other girls...” My mind flashes to the girl in the back seat, her mascara-streaked face, her torn dress. “Is she—”
“Safe. All of them are. New identities are being arranged as we speak.”
Relief floods through me, so strong it makes my eyes sting.
“I don’t understand,” I manage. “Is this like...like a Zodiac Killer situation? We just had the misfortune of—”
“Your cousin sold you out.”
The words land like a slap.
I want to deny it. Want to say that’s impossible, that my cousin would never, that there must be some mistake—
But my mouth won’t cooperate.
Because deep down, in the part of me that still remembers her boyfriend’s hands on my shoulders, pushing me against a wall, and the look on her face when I tried to tell her what happened—
Deep down, I’m not surprised at all.
“It was too risky for us to prevent ten separate abductions,” my rescuer continues. “We had to wait for all of you to be in one place before making our move.”
I know I should care about the logistics. Should be asking questions, gathering information, being smart.
But I’m still stuck on the part where my cousin sold me out.
My only cousin.
The only family I had left.
“You don’t look too surprised,” he observes.
“We had a falling out,” I say jerkily, “when her boyfriend...he thought I was into him.”
“Were you?”
The mere thought of it nearly makes me shudder. “No. Never.” He was Trina’s boyfriend! And even if he weren’t...there’s always been something about Braxton that made my skin crawl, no matter how hard I tried to like him for my cousin’s sake. “I never led him on either. But he...he tried to...”
His lips tighten, and I’m relieved I don’t have to say it out loud.
“He didn’t succeed, but he had his revenge when he told Trina I tried to seduce him, and she...believed him.”
My rescuer looks at me in a way that makes me want to squirm. “You don’t strike me as the type—”
I know. I’m not. Anyone with eyes can see—
“—that a man would find seductive.”
Wait.
What?
I thought he was going to say I would never be the type to go after another woman’s man like that, but no.
I guess what he finds more striking about me was how—I don’t know—unseductive I am?