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“Look, I’m the last person Julia Tower would be willing to trade your sister for.” Though she might strike a bargain for my corpse—not that I had any intention of admitting that to a man desperate to rescue his sibling. “So, I need you to take me back. But I swear if I hear anything about your sister, I’ll let you know what building you should break into next. So why don’t you just give me your name and number, and I’ll—”
“Sera, I can’t take you back there.” He held my gaze, and his statement had the grave finality of some indisputable truth. “They tried to kill you.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, reeling from the irony. “You can’t let someone else kill me, but you’re fine with the fact that you kidnapped me?” What kind of weird-ass moral code was he following?
“I didn’t really kidnap you.” He glanced over my shoulder into the bedroom where his grandmother was now snoring loudly in her recliner. “I just … removed you from a dangerous situation. You’re welcome.” He mustered up a grin, obviously trying to diffuse my mounting anger and frustration, but it didn’t work.
“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