Silence stretched between them until he finally answered. “Stay in the room if you know what’s good for you.”
He wasn’t sure that she did know what was good for her. She let him put his hands on her, after all. Somehow, in her mind, she had thought that was a good idea. That such a thing might work out to her benefit.
She didn’t know who . . . what she was dealing with. She had no clue.
With another foul curse, he yanked open the door and stepped out into the hall. Shutting the door behind him, he stood there for a moment, breathing in and out of his nose until he felt a measure of calm. Until his raging erection subsided.
Satisfied, he advanced into the kitchen and living room area. Bodies were strewn everywhere, passed out in positions that didn’t look comfortable. One guy near the door was sleeping beside a pool of vomit that was already stinking up the room. They would all be hurting when they woke up. That is, until they drowned their aches in booze and drugs again.
Not everyone was asleep, however. His brother sat at the kitchen table nursing a longneck, with Rowdy sitting across from him. Dirty dishes littered the table, and Rowdy picked at the scraps, stabbing at various bits of food with the end of his knife.
Zane’s eyes lighted on him. “Up early, bro.”
Rowdy leered. “Have you even slept? Figure you put her to good use. Still not up for sharing?”
Everything inside him tensed, but he trained his face into a neutral expression. “Sorry. Not quite done with her.”
Zane grinned, momentarily looking like the boy Reid remembered. “Well, you might want to go back in there and get her out of your system. We got plans for her.”
“What would those be?” he asked, trying to sound casual. The food they had cooked earlier sat out on the counter. Rather than eat anything that had spoiled hours ago, he reached for a bag of potato chips.
“Sullivan wants us to keep her alive for a while and make her suffer. Really stick it to Reeves, you know?”
Reid bit into a chip, struggling to show no reaction to this information.
“I think we need to move her,” Zane said. “Too many people know about this place and come in and out of here for business.” He gestured around them. Business as in drug deals. “FBI, local law enforcement . . . Texas Rangers. They’re crawling everywhere.”
“We should just hurry it up and get rid of her,” Rowdy supplied. “Been saying it from the start. Sullivan wants her dead in the end. We should just do it and be done with her.”
Reid stopped chewing for a moment. It was the only outward sign he gave that Rowdy’s words affected him. He knew his brother. He knew these men. At least he thought he did. He’d known them eleven years ago. Granted, a lot could change over the years—he certainly had—but he never thought they were killers. He never thought his brother could become that.
“I told you,” Zane grumbled, as though he could read Reid’s mind, “I ain’t a woman killer.”
That was good to hear. He knew what kind of man Sullivan was. He was without a code. Nothing was off-limits for him. But Reid had thought his brother was better than that. Their grandfather had been a good man. Reid had thought they spent enough time with him for some of his goodness to rub off on Zane.
Rowdy kicked his boots up on the seat of a neighboring chair. “Man, you need to grow up. What did you think was going to happen? You were standing right next to me when Sullivan said what he wanted done to her. Besides, she’s seen all of our faces. We just gonna hand her back at the end of this and call it good?”
Reid already had that same thought. They weren’t acting like men who were trying to protect their identities around her.
Zane gave a reluctant nod and scratched his scraggly attempt at a beard.
Rowdy cracked open a jar of queso and swirled his finger inside the orange goop. Sucking his finger clean, he looked at Reid. “If you want another go at her, you better hurry up, man. Looks like I’ll have to do it. Zane has never had the stomach for this.”
Reid knew Rowdy wouldn’t blink over ending her life, especially if that’s what Sullivan wanted. That guy always followed Sullivan’s dictates. For all that, it felt like he had swallowed a box of rocks. Reid kept munching on chips, clinging to his poker face and acting like this didn’t touch him.
His mind raced, groping, searching for something to say to knock Rowdy off this path. “She’s the president’s daughter. You really want to off her? That’ll get you the chair.”
Rowdy’s lips curled. “I’m not scared.”
His brother went pale. “I don’t know. I’m having second thoughts, man.”
“There ain’t no going back now. Might as well go rough her up like Sullivan wanted.” Rowdy started forward.
Reid’s hand shot out to push on his chest, stopping him. “He wanted her abused for days. If her body turns up later today, he’ll know you didn’t listen to him.”
“What do you suggest?” Rowdy demanded, thrusting his chin out at a belligerent angle.
“Take her someplace else . . . go to ground with her. Head west.” Reid nodded at his brother. “Our grandfather had that house in the mountains. Use it,” he suggested, still trying to act like he didn’t care that much. Right now his goal was simple: delay them from killing her.
Rowdy glanced around the house, his gaze pausing on the guy near the door snoring beside his own vomit. “Guess we could send Mike off with her.”
Thankfully, his brother snorted at that proposition. “Mike? He can hardly take care of himself. Even with a map he probably couldn’t find the place.”
The two of them started debating who should go, who should take the First Daughter out west. To the middle of nowhere. Isolated from the world. Which dangerous, drugged-out criminal among them would be alone with her and have her totally at his mercy?
A bitter taste coated his mouth. The promise he’d made to Grace ran over and over in his head as he stood there holding a bag of chips in his hands. Before he could even think about what he was saying, he heard himself speak. “I’ll do it. I’ll take her.”
Seven
Grace didn’t wait for daylight to get dressed again in her badly wrinkled clothes. Dressed, she sat on the edge of the bed, hands clutching her knees as she stared at the closed door, and tried not to jump at every sound that came close to the door barring her from a room full of criminals. Her knees bounced anxiously until darkness faded. She wondered what was going to happen to her. Wondered if the Secret Service were closing in even now. Wondered what her parents thought had happened to her. Holly must be out of her mind. Even Charles had to be concerned. Their relationship might lack sparks, but she knew he cared about her.
By the time daylight arrived, her nerves were drawn tight, imagining every worst-case scenario that might happen. The worst was Reid leaving, abandoning her among these men.
Tired of sitting, she paced the small space, stopping several times to attempt to open the wedged-tight window. Each time she failed and she cursed the lack of hours she’d spent in the gym, pumping weights so she could be stronger.
She examined every corner of the room, opening the closet and exploring every drawer, thinking she might find something she could use as a weapon. She listened at the door and walls as voices rumbled from somewhere in the house. The words were impossible to identify. She was near the door when she heard footsteps, and she scurried backwards, fortifying herself with a deep breath for whatever was about to happen.
The door opened and Reid stepped across the threshold, shutting the door behind him. As much as the sight of him discomfited her it relieved her, too. He was the lesser evil.
With the morning light streaming through the window, she was forced to confront his good looks again. Not that she had forgotten. Nor had she forgotten her shameful reaction to him in that bed. Two facts that only made her more uncomfortable.
She stood in the center of the room, well away from that bed. Humiliation washed over her as his hazel eyes raked her. His expre
ssion revealed nothing but she knew he had to be thinking about what they did, what she let him do, what she had encouraged him to do. She’d told herself to submit so she could win his favor. She’d told herself that was the only reason. And then he had touched her and she came out of her skin and forgot everything logical and right and sane.
In that moment, she forgot why she’d told herself it was okay to fool around with one of her abductors. She forgot because the only thing that mattered were his hands on her and the throb between her thighs. God. She was all kinds of messed up.
Thankfully, that was behind her now. Sanity had returned.
She hugged herself, chafing her hands up and down her arms. Lifting her chin, she asked, “Are you getting me out of here?”
A corner of his mouth kicked up for the barest moment before disappearing and flattening into a hard line again. “That’s not what I promised you.”
“That’s exactly what you promised,” she said in affront—as though his lying somehow shocked her and was the final indignity. “You promised to keep me safe.”
“I did. You’re safe for the moment.”
“For the moment?” she flung back at him, the volume of her voice climbing. Again, not super heartening. “The best way to keep me safe would be to get me out of here. Like you promised!”
He glanced over his shoulder as though expecting someone to be standing there. Seeing nothing (or no one), he stepped closer, his voice a sandpaper growl. “Do me a favor, princess. Do us both a favor. Quit saying I promised to keep you safe if in fact you want that to be a reality.” He let those words hang between them.
As his meaning sank in, she looked over his shoulder to the shut door. Understanding dawned. He was concerned with the men outside this room, too. He couldn’t control them. For the time being, they were tethered animals. If they should become free—if they decided to direct their savagery on her—there was nothing he could do.
It was a grim, sobering thought.
They definitely didn’t need to hear her shouting that he had promised to keep her safe.
Pressing her lips together, she nodded jerkily. “I understand,” she said, her voice much more subdued.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said as he moved to one of the dressers she had examined earlier and started rifling through it. She braced herself, trying to control the sudden surge of satisfaction at his use of “we.” She couldn’t help it. It lessened her fear. Made her feel not quite so alone in this nightmare. It made her feel like she had a friend. An ally.
He pulled out some T-shirts and jeans, holding them up as though verifying whether they would fit him well enough. He was a big guy. She didn’t imagine he could wear the clothes of the guys in the other room. He was apparently satisfied with what he found, however. He moved to the closet, pulled out a duffel bag and dropped it on the bed.
“I’m getting you out of here,” he announced as he started stuffing clothing into the bag. “We’re going to leave—” At her relieved expression, he stopped and held up a finger in warning. “Try not to look so excited. You’re supposed to be afraid of me, remember? When I haul you out of this room, you better look terrified.”
She nodded. “Who says I’m not?”
He smiled then, slowly, mocking. To her mortification, she knew he was remembering last night and just how very unafraid of him she had been in that bed. “Sure you are.” He slung the bag over his shoulder and snatched up the cord from yesterday. “Hold out your hands.”
She hesitated, shaking her head slowly from side to side as he approached her. She didn’t want to be restrained again. Her wrists were still sore from the last time. “I don’t want—”
“Come on. Thought you were going to trust me. I can’t have you skipping behind me like we’re suddenly friends. You need to be tied up again.”
He made sense, but that didn’t make her feel any better. In fact, it made her feel sick.
His stare fixed on her face, unwavering in its intensity.
“All right,” she agreed, holding herself still as he looped the cord around her neck and then her outstretched hands. He wrapped the cord several times around her wrists in a figure eight until it was so snug she couldn’t freely move her hands. He left a long stretch of cord dangling. She had to know what he was going to do with it before he even picked up the end, but that didn’t stop her flush of shame as he took that end in his hand and led her like a dog.
He opened the door, but before walking out, cast her a look full of silent warning, and something else. Something that made the back of her nape prickle, something that made her wonder if he really was the lesser evil.
Turning back around, he stepped into the hall. She sucked in a deep breath and followed him out.
More guys were awake and stirring when he emerged from the back of the house with Grace Reeves. He schooled his features into that mask he always wore. The hard look that warned no one to fuck with him. That was more important than ever here. Now. His ability to walk out with her was at stake. She was at stake.
He sent her a quick glance. The stench in the room was so foul that she brought her bound hands up to cover her nose. Yeah, her nose probably only ever smelled roses and fancy soaps. This place wasn’t for her. These men shouldn’t even be in her radius. He shouldn’t be either, and yet here he was, leading her around by a leash. He felt like the biggest bastard, which in all the years of his life was saying something.
“Lookee there.” A guy he didn’t know stepped alongside her and picked up a thick lock of her flowing hair, rubbing the dark, matted strands between his grimy fingers. A growl rumbled up from his chest.
It took everything in him not to lunge at the jackhole. Break him. He resisted, knowing that would raise more than a few eyebrows. He shouldn’t care so much about one female.
“She looks well-used.”
The words lit something feral inside him.
Grace’s mouth curled in a grimace and she knocked the guy’s hand away with her bound hands, those brown eyes sparking fire. The guy scowled and made a move toward her, his hand raised as though he was going to strike her.
Reid snapped. He moved quickly, yanking her behind him with a sharp tug. He didn’t care how it looked. Then he grabbed the guy’s hand and brought it down with a severe twist. The guy howled.
Reid kept twisting, placing his mouth close to his ear. “I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you don’t touch what doesn’t belong to you.”
“What? You tapped her and now she’s yours?” he blustered, his face flushed with pain.
“Pete!” Zane shoved him in the shoulder, freeing him from Reid. “Go sit down. This don’t concern you.”
Pete staggered away, clutching his injured hand close to his chest, his gaze shooting daggers.
Zane looked at Reid, glanced at Grace, and then looked back at Reid. It was a familiar look. His face might have hardened and matured beyond boyhood, but with his brows drawn tight with concern, he was achingly familiar, even if Reid hadn’t seen him or the worried expression in years. He remembered his brother’s young face as he crouched in the corner, watching wide-eyed as Reid took a beating he thought would kill him for sure. Reid used to think he would die. He used to wonder if maybe he didn’t want to. One more blow, one more of his father’s raised fists, and he’d break, shatter in half. Thankfully, his father only blew in and out of his life sporadically. If that had been their lives day after day, he might not have made it.
“You got this?” Zane asked.
“Yeah. I’m taking care of it. Taking care of her. Like I said.” Reid shook his head with what he hoped sounded like a casual huff of breath. “Some of your boys need to learn a little respect.”
“Man, they don’t know you, bro, that’s all. You been gone a long time.”
Yeah, and he didn’t want to know them. His brother’s crew had taken a hard nosedive since he’d last seen them, years ago. They’d always been rough, but this was a new low.
H
e felt another stare on him. Deep and scouring. He looked up and his gaze collided with Rowdy’s, from where he sat at the kitchen table. The guy jerked his chin upward in a single nod of acknowledgment.
Zane slapped a phone and wad of cash into Reid’s hand. “Here’s a burner and some money. I’ll be in touch after I talk to Sullivan again.”
Reid tore his gaze away from Rowdy. “You do that. I want to talk to Sullivan. Get me a meeting.” The man kept himself as guarded as the pope. Reid knew he couldn’t just go after him. Surrounded by bodyguards, they’d stop him before he could even get within fifty yards. Reid wanted—needed—to look the man in the eyes. He’d only have one chance, and he couldn’t mess it up.
“Yeah yeah. I’ll tell him.” His brother clapped him on the back. “I’ll let him know. What you’re doing now will go a long way with the ol’ man.” Zane hesitated, looking concerned. “You up for this?” He nodded toward Grace. “You were never one to rough up the girls.”
Reid ignored the stab of guilt at deceiving his brother. Zane was lost to him. He wasn’t his same kid brother anymore. He served Sullivan now. Reid held Zane’s gaze. “Prison changes a man. I’m back. Sullivan wants this done, then I’ll get it done.”
“Yeah?” Rowdy released a harsh bark. “For how long? You’re a wanted man. An escaped convict. How long you expect to be around? You can’t just slide back in here and be one of Sullivan’s top men again.”
“Why not? Afraid I’ll make you look bad, Rowdy?”
Rowdy’s smile slipped. Even Zane looked uneasy. Rowdy uncrossed his booted feet from where they rested atop the table and dropped them heavily to the floor. He propped his elbows on his knees, his deep accent more pronounced as he said, “I ain’t afraid of shit. Least of all you.”
Reid shrugged and moved to the door, still holding onto Grace Reeves by a fucking leash and hating himself for it. But then that was just more reason to hate himself. The list was long.