Page 60 of Strangers in Love

What wasn’t natural was the fucking stupid smile I had pasted on my face just in case I ran into another guest. If I’d looked how I did before my injury, I might not have needed to smile, but with my scar, I was…well, scary if I didn’t make an effort to turn my lips up at the corners.

Hell, I looked scarywitha smile, just a bit less.

I’d gone about halfway down the hall when I heard it. Heardher.

“Help!”

Shit.

I took off, cover be damned. As I went, I wondered if this was going to be a habit. She started yelling, and I came running.

Dammit!

She screamed again, and I realized the sound was coming from the small central courtyard. I turned at the corner and went through the double doors, my hand already reaching back to grab my gun before I even saw what was happening.

Seconds later, I took in the scene in quick, short bursts, but everything came through crystal clear.

The fountain in the center with its water spouting into the air.

The brightly colored floor tiles.

The red exit sign on the other side of the courtyard.

Aline struggling to get away from a dark-haired man dressed in black.

He was dragging her toward the exit that led straight to the road rather than the lobby. That could only mean one thing. He cared more about getting her out without anyone seeing her fighting than he did about the alarm that would go off the moment they hit those doors.

I hoped that also meant he wanted her alive. If he didn’t, the moment he saw me, he would kill her here rather than at his intended destination. If he was supposed to keep her alive, he’d be less likely to do something that threatened her safety. Which meant I had a better chance of killing him first.

Aline was shouting and twisting to get away, keeping all the man’s attention trained on her. Those movements served as a distraction, and she was the one who saw me first. Her eyes met mine for just a second, and then she dropped. If I hadn’t seen the gleam in her eyes, I might have worried that she’d gotten hurt, but my gut said she’d done it on purpose.

I didn’t think too hard about it, though. My attention was on driving my fist into the kidnapper’s face as hard as I could. Since my gun was in that hand, my punch had more power behind it. I actually felt his jaw give, and the man dropped like a stone.

“You okay?” I reached down to pull Aline to her feet. Not for the first time, I realized how fragile she was. My hand wrapped around her upper arm completely.

She was out of breath from the struggle, but her voice was confident. “I am.”

Voices came from the door that led to the lobby, and they didn’t sound happy.

Shit.

“We have to go.”

I let go of her arm, and with just one glance at my face, she took off in the direction of our room. I followed, hoping she wouldn’t try to use our need to rush as a way to slip away again. I didn’t know what the hell she’d been doing, but it didn’t matter.

We were fucked.

I’d be pissed about it later, though. Right now, we had to get our asses out of here. If our covers weren’t blown to hell already, they would be as soon as anyone found the unconscious man with the broken jaw.

“Grab what you can carry,” I said as she ran into the bathroom. “Thirty seconds.”

She came out with a purse and stuffed it into the same bag that had once held her clothes. I didn’t see what else she was packing because I was getting as many of the weapons as I could. We hadn’t brought any identifying information with us off the plane, so weapons were the top priority. They couldn’t be traced back to us, but we definitely didn’t want anyone getting their hands on extra firepower.

“I just wanted to help.” Her voice was small, and I was glad she was standing behind me. I wasn’t ready to see her face just yet.

“Well, you didn’t. You basically fucked everything up because you wanted to take a stroll.” I zipped up the bag and hung it across my body. The gun at the small of my back stayed there, and another went into the most accessible pocket in the bag.

“I wasn’t taking a walk.” She practically snarled the words. “I wanted to ask my parents to get started on getting those other ransoms paid. Didn’t seem right I was safe and clean and…” her voice broke a little, “everything. Not while the others could be in even more trouble.”

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