“For the last time, it wasn’t dangerous until you got there, and I didn’t ask to be removed.”
Still, he had a point. I didn’t want my father’s dirty money, but would Julia even listen long enough to let me say that, or would she shoot me on sight?
I exhaled through clenched teeth. “Fine. Take me somewhere else then. Drop me off downtown.” Where I could regroup and decide how best to proceed with my homicidally estranged aunt. And get my car back.
“I can’t.” He rubbed his forehead with one hand. “I’m sorry, but you have to stay here until I figure out what to do with you. So...make yourself comfortable.” He twisted to wave one hand at the living room, and indignation began to smolder deep in my gut. “I’m guessing you’re about ready for that drink now?”
“You can’t be serious.” I followed him into the tiny living room, where a couch and several armchairs surrounded a worn coffee table, all facing a small television.
“I am,” he called over one shoulder as he crossed the living room toward the kitchen. “And could you be quiet for a minute? I need to think...”
“No I can’t be quiet!” That smolder deep inside me burst into a blaze, and I felt as though I could breathe fire. “I’ll tell the whole damn neighborhood I’ve been kidnapped if you don’t take me someplace public, right now!”
“There’s no neighborhood.” He turned to face me from the kitchen doorway, infuriatingly calm, and gestured to the sidelights flanking the front door.
I glanced through the glass and groaned. No other houses. No other buildings. No traffic. Nothing but starlight and a narrow gravel road, illuminated by the porch light. Where the hell were we?
“And you’re not kidnapped,” he continued when I turned, ready to roast him alive with the power of my rage. “You’re just...borrowed. I’m gonna put you back.” He frowned and his gaze dropped to the floor for a second. “Well, probably not back where I found you, but...My point is that you won’t have to stay here forever.”
“I don’t have to stay here at all. You can’t just borrow people!”
He glanced around the empty room, as if expecting someone to agree with me. “Kinda looks like I can. You want some coffee? Or are you thinking something stronger? I’m thinking something stronger.”
“What is wrong with you?” I demanded when anger defeated my attempt at something more articulate.
“My sister’s missing, my grandmother has Alzheimer’s, Julia Tower wants me dead and you’re turning out to be kind of a pain in the ass.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have kidnapped me!”
He rubbed his forehead, then raked one hand through his blond waves. “Well, hindsight is worthless, so could you just shut up so I can figure a few things out?”
“What things?” I demanded, but then I figured that out for myself. He’d broken into Julia’s house, guns ablaze—surely an unforgivable insult to the head of a Skilled crime syndicate—but she had yet to return the favor. Which surely meant she didn’t know where he was. “If you’re worried that I’ll tell Julia where you are, or something like that, you can relax. I don’t know who you are, or where we are, and she hasn’t exactly inspired my loyalty today.”
“Loyalty is compulsory when you’re bound.” He hesitated, but just for a second. “Are you bound to her?”
“No. I’m not bound to anyone.”
“And I’m just supposed to take your word for it?” His frown deepened and he glanced at my left arm, covered by my long-sleeved shirt. “I...um...need to see your arm.”
But even if I’d felt obligated to show him my unmarked arm—and I didn’t—I couldn’t have complied without taking my shirt off. And that wasn’t gonna happen.
“No.” Was this what my mother’s obsessive caution had spared me? A lifetime of suspicion, and dangerous loyalties, and lives defined by the color of the marks on my skin? By the constant need to prove I had no syndicate marks and served no one but myself?
“I’m asking nicely,” he said, but there was a warning threaded through his voice.
“And if I refuse nicely?” I backed up several steps, blindly aiming for the front door while my heart pounded in my throat. “Are you going to get less nice?”
Was I going to have to get less nice? He was bigger and stronger, but I had no problem fighting dirty, and I had nothing left to lose.
“No.” He exhaled in frustration. “Look, you don’t have to take anything off. We can cut your sleeve, or you can change into something of my sister’s. I just need to know that when I let you—” He stopped, then started over. “That when you leave, you won’t be obligated to go back and tell Julia everything you saw and heard here today.”
My heart thumped painfully. “Can’t you just take my word for it?”
He looked kind of sad. “I wish we lived in the kind of world where I could, but we don’t. Can’t you just show me? If you don’t have a mark, why is this such a big deal?”
That question cut straight to the heart of the matter, and suddenly everything seemed really clear. “Because I don’t have to. Because you don’t get to see anything I don’t want to show you. Because you don’t have the right to keep me here and make demands. Because the fact that I don’t have a mark means I don’t have to take orders from anyone. Including you!”
He blinked at me in surprise. Then he nodded. “All valid points. And in a perfect world, they’d matter, but here, they don’t. I can’t take you anywhere until I know you pose no threat to me and mine.” With that, he turned and stepped into the kitchen while I fumed from the middle of the living room floor.
“Fine.” My jaw already ached from grinding my teeth. “I’m guessing your range is no more than a few miles, so we can’t have gone too far.” I had some cash, my only credit card and my phone. No reason I couldn’t walk back to civilization on my own.
“Why do women always err on the side of underestimation?” he mumbled, pulling a bottle from an overhead cabinet as I headed for the front door. “My Skill could be huge, for all you know.” He had his back to me. He wasn’t even watching.
A second later, as I twisted and pulled on the front doorknob to no avail, I saw why.
“The door’s nailed shut!” Furious, I bent to examine the nails and my teeth ground together when I noticed the tiny crosshairs. “Those aren’t nails, they’re screws!”
And half of them had been countersunk. No one was getting through that door without an electric drill, a Phillips head bit and a spare half hour.
“Did that myself,” my kidnapper called from the kitchen. “Of course, we can probably kiss the security deposit goodbye. Ironic, isn’t it, considering that I actually made the house more secure.”
I stood to glare at him through the kitchen doorway, fingering my phone in my pocket. If I didn’t dread explaining the circumstances of my abduction, I’d have already dialed 911. “Look, I don’t recognize your particular psychosis, but trust me when I say this is a very special kind of crazy. Why the hell would you screw the front door shut?”
He shrugged, leaning with one hip against the counter, a half-empty bottle of whiskey in one hand. “We don’t use that exit.”
My focus found the door behind him, which presumably led to the backyard, and before I could decide whether or not to make a break for it—which would involve running right past him—he shook his head. “We don’t use that one, either.”
Both exits were screwed shut because he and his grandmother had no use for them? Bullshit.
He was prepared to house a prisoner, which meant this was premeditated. How could I have misread him so drastically? The fact that he cared about his sister didn’t make him less dangerous; it made him more dangerous. If his rash invasion of the Tower estate was any indication, he’d do anything to get her back. He’d gone in planning to take a hostage. The bastard wasn’t goin
g to let me go until he got his sister back!
But...that didn’t make any sense. Why trade me, if he didn’t want me to go back to Julia? Was that just an act? Or had he planned to kidnap someone she valued—someone she would bargain for—but got stuck with me instead? If so, what was the new plan? What good was a hostage who couldn’t be traded?
No good at all.
Panic raced through me like fire in my veins. This was real. The psycho with nice eyes had taken me, but had no use for me. Even if he truly had no plans for violence—and his grandmother’s presence seemed to confirm that—he had no intentions of letting me go, either.
Knowing the doors didn’t function made my skin crawl, as if I were trapped not just by this house, but by my own body. My own mind.
I needed fresh air. Space. Now.
Logically, I knew that was the panic talking. There was plenty of air, and the house wasn’t that small—the foot of the staircase in one corner of the living room meant there was an entire second story I had yet to see. And the hum of the air conditioner told me the ventilation was fine. Being locked up wasn’t going to kill me.
But being stupid might.
Think.
Assuming he truly loved his grandmother—and I’d seen no reason to doubt that—he wouldn’t leave her alone if she couldn’t get out of the house. What if there was a fire?
There had to be a functioning exit.
I took a deep breath and swallowed my panic. “Fine. If you don’t use the doors, how do you get out of here?”
He didn’t even look up from the soda he was pouring into a short glass, over an inch of whiskey. “The same way I brought you in.”
Damn it. “You’re both shadow-walkers?”
“Not all of us. But enough.”
All of us? How many were there? “And I assume the windows are...”
“Screwed shut. Which is overkill in some cases, because about half of them were already painted shut. This place is pretty old.”
Great. No one could get in or out of whatever weird-ass house he’d dragged me into without the ability to travel. Or something to throw through a window, and a good head start.
I’d call that Plan B.
Plan A needed to be smarter, and a little more tech-savvy. While my kidnapper rattled pots and pans in the kitchen, I dug my cell from my pocket and sank onto the couch. I opened the GPS function on my phone and waited while the map loaded, slowly, slowly, slowly narrowing down my location.
Cell phone reception in his stupid, screwed-shut house sucked.
“You still alive in there?” he called from the kitchen, after about a minute of silence from me.
I considered not answering, but then he’d come looking for me.
“Alive and pissed off!” I called back.
“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t plan this, but now we’re kind of stuck with each other for a bit.”
Yeah, right. And finally, the GPS centered on my location.
I didn’t recognize any of the street names, but that was no surprise, considering I’d never been to the city before and I’d let my car’s GPS navigate the whole way to the Tower estate.
I zoomed out on the map, searching for familiar landmarks, and when I couldn’t find any, I zoomed in again, hoping to narrow my location down to a street address. Or at least a close cross-street. Then I’d call the police and have this grandma’s-boy, kidnapping son of a bitch arrested.
I didn’t have to press charges, or even explain how I’d wound up in the House of Crazy. I just needed the cops to come open a door.
But there didn’t seem to be any cross-streets. We were truly in the middle of nowhere.
The loading icon spun and spun as the map tried to refresh, and I stared at it in mounting frustration and anger. My hand clenched around the phone so hard the plastic case groaned and my knuckles turned white, but finally the new map loaded, and—
My cell was ripped from my grasp.
“Hey!” I stood and reached for my phone, but he stepped back and my nails clawed his forearm instead, drawing four white lines, but no blood.
“Sorry. Can’t let you do that.” Then the bastard dropped my phone and stomped on it, grinding with the heel of his hiking boot until shards of metal and plastic were hopelessly embedded into the worn carpet.
Fury sparked the length of my spine and my right hand curled into a fist. I swung before I even realized what I’d intended, and my fist slammed into his jaw. “You owe me a phone!”
He stumbled back in surprise, rubbing his face, and I ignored the ache in my hand as I knelt to scrape up the remains of my cell, just in case. But it was trashed.
“This isn’t funny!” I shouted.
“Agreed.” He stomped into the kitchen and a second later I heard ice rattle.
“You can’t keep me here. If you think I’m going to twiddle my thumbs as your hostage, you kidnapped the wrong damn woman.”
“Would you please calm down?” He appeared in the living room again, this time holding an ice-filled plastic sandwich bag to his jaw. “I’m the one with everything to lose here, and you’re the one throwing punches. You’re not a hostage, and you’re not in any danger. In fact, you’re safer here than you were with Julia Tower, so please sit down and shut up!”
I heard his words, but I couldn’t process them. I wasn’t a hostage? I was in no danger? The facts didn’t support those statements—he’d dragged me through the shadows and locked me up in a strange house. My entire family died in a locked house. Their own locked house.
No exits, no neighbors and no phone. I was screwed. Unless...
Maybe there was a landline. Some people still had those.
When a glance around the living room revealed no phone, I stomped into the kitchen, and he only watched me, still icing his jaw. “What are you doing?”
There was a phone on the wall by the fridge. A really old phone, connected to the handset by a long, curly, yellow cord. I picked up the handset and started to dial—until I noticed there was no dial tone.
“We never hooked it up.” He picked up his drink, drained it, then set the empty glass on the counter next to an open box of macaroni and cheese. “No need, with cell phones, right?”
Speaking of which...I could see the outline of his in his back pocket. Maybe I could hit him with something, then take his phone and lock myself in another room long enough to call for help...
“It’s passcode protected,” he said when he turned and caught me staring at the seat of his jeans. “More useful as a paperweight than as a phone, if you don’t have the code. Or were you just staring at my butt?”
“I wasn’t...” I stopped, angered anew by how flustered I was. “Unless your phone is ancient, it’ll still make emergency calls.”
“True.” My kidnapper pulled the phone from his pocket and held it up. “Do I need to smash mine, too?” He looked reluctant, but willing. I shook my head because I couldn’t steal it later if he busted it now.
He pulled a clean rag from a drawer and wrapped his ice pack in it, then pressed it to his jaw again. “You throw one hell of a punch.”
“You smashed my phone.”
“Sorry. I couldn’t let you call Julia.”
“Julia?” I scowled and backed slowly toward a microwave cart on the other side of the room, where several steak knives were spread out on a folded towel, evidently set out to dry. “I told you I don’t work for her. I was calling the police.”
He shrugged. “Well, that’s almost as bad. I’m sorry about your phone, though.”
“What kind of kidnapper apologizes? And lives with his grandmother? And forgets to take away the victim’s phone?” My spine hit the cart and I slid one hand behind my back, feeling for the handle of a knife. “You’re the worst kidnapper ever.”
He watched me closely, but stayed back. “I’m not a kidnapper.”
“My unwilling presence in your home says otherwise.”
“Okay, yes.” He acknowledged my point with another shrug. “But there are extenuating circumstances. Why don’t we sit and discuss this over a drink? Or are you hungry? I’m not much of a cook, but I can handle boxed mac and cheese, if you’re interested.”
I wouldn’t eat or drink a damn thing he gave me, but...
“What happened to the stove?” I glanced pointedly at the front of the ancient appliance, where all four of the burner-control knobs were missing. Was nothing normal in his house?
“Oh. Gran nearly burned the house down yesterday, so we had to take the knobs off the stove, and now I can’t remember where Ian hid them...” He turned and took a cookie jar from the top of the fridge, and when he peered inside, I let my fingers skim the cart at my back, searching for the knives.
My kidnapper huffed in frustration and put the jar back. “They were in here yesterday, but now they’re gone...”
My fingers closed around the handle of a knife and my stomach roiled when I brandished it at him, trying not to think about the damage a different blade had done behind my parents’ locked doors. Could I do to my kidnapper what was done to my entire family? Even though he hadn’t laid a hand on me?
Yet.
He hadn’t laid a hand on me yet. And he claimed not to want me to return to Julia Tower, but hadn’t he already proved he’d do anything to get his sister back? Why wouldn’t he trade me for her? I’d do it in a heartbeat, if our situations were reversed.
“Give me your phone, or I swear I will gut you.” By some miracle, my hand was steady. The same could not be said for my stomach. I hate knives.
His pale brows rose and he crossed his arms over his shirt. “Then how will you get out of here? You don’t know where you are, and it’ll take the police forever to trace a cell phone. My grandmother doesn’t have one. And she’s not a Traveler.”
I frowned and glanced at the kitchen window, mentally working on a Plan C.