Page 68 of Marked

“Feisty.” He steepled his hands under his chin. “I like that.”

“This isn’t a date, Zak.”

He lost a bit of the playfulness in his tone. “No, it’s not.”

Silence ensued, only broken by the arrival of our server a few minutes later.

“Can I start you both with a glass of wine?” she asked, batting her long eyelashes at Zak. I rolled my eyes, thinking about the verbal smackdown she would’ve gotten if this were an actual date.

“I’m afraid we won’t be staying.” A text alert sounded on the phone in my purse at the same time Zak’s words registered.What the fuck?He dismissed the server and leveled his icy gaze on me. “You’re going to want to check that, Alaina. Don’t worry, your friends in the van outsideare getting a similar message as we speak. Seems I have a death wish after all.”

Slowly reaching into the sparkly red purse, I pulled my cell out and swiped my thumb across the screen. My hands began to shake as I studied the picture. Henley, Jade, and Keaton; all fast asleep inside the hospital room. Each of them with the red dot of a sniper rifle in the middle of their foreheads. It took every bit of my self-control not to launch myself over the table and shoot this motherfucker right betweenhiseyes. He was lucky there hadn’t been enough room to strap a gun to my thigh under the dress.

“I’m truly sorry for deceiving you, milaya.” My head snapped up when he spoke. I didn’t know much Russian, but I knew the word for dear. “For what it’s worth, I have no intentions of harming you or allowing harm to come to you. Machail, nor his men, will get anywhere near you. You’re safe with me.”

Safe with him? I’d be safer in the middle of a minefield. I laughed. Not a snort, not a chuckle. A full-on belly laugh because this could not possibly be my life.

“You’re out of your fucking mind, Zakhar.” I couldn’t stop laughing. “In about three seconds, four very pissed-off FBI agents are gonna storm in here and kick the shit outta you.”

“They won’t.” He shook his head.

His confidence sobered me. “What makes you so sure?”

“Their text message, which included a picture of you marked with the same red dot, instructed them not to.”

My eyes narrowed, though truth be told, I was impressed. Not many people could have bested us the way he did. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to put his balls in a vise grip if I survived whatever hell he had in store for me. It was happening so long as Noah didn’t gut him first.

“So what’s your big plan here, Zakhar? You're just gonna walk right out the front door with me?”

“In a manner of speaking…yes.” He snapped his fingers at someone behind me. Two seconds later, my chair was being dragged out from under the table. “As much as I’m enjoying the view of you in that remarkable dress, it’s gotta go. There’s a change of clothes in the ladies’ room. Leave your phone, purse, and any jewelry in there. Oh, before you go, take the wire off and place it on the table, please.”

I stand corrected. It didn’t matter if Noah killed him, his nuts were still getting squashed like boobs during breast cancer awareness month.

“Are we there yet?”

“You just asked two minutes ago, Agent Biggs.”

“A hundred and twenty seconds is a long time. Things change.”

“The time of our arrival hasn’t.”

“And that would be…?”

Annoying the shit out of a Russian mobster wasn’t on my to-do list this evening. However, since the asshole made me change my clothes––which I wasn’t upset about since it would be easier to run in sneakers than heels––then snuck me out the back door of a restaurant before he fed me, which explained my hangry attitude, then he’d earned every ounce of smart-assery I could muster. I was also pissed that his behemoth of a driver had cold-cocked Nelson. Poor guy hadn’t even seen it coming.

“You’re acting like a child, Alaina.”

“Well, you kidnapped me, so there’s that.”

“Technically you got in the car of your own volition.”

“Semantics, Zak. Or didn’t they teach you about that in mobster school?”

Our driver barked out a laugh, or what sounded like a laugh. I couldn’t be certain. For all I knew, he was choking. Either way, he wasn’t my concern. My sole focus was on the piece of shit sitting to my right. Well, him and how the hell I was going to get out of the handcuffs he’d gingerly put on my wrists so I could kick his arrogant ass when the time came. Should I have been worried? Sure. Maybe even a little scared, given the fact I was cut off from my team, and I was. My snark seemed to work overtime in stressful situations. For some unknown reason though, I actually trusted this douche when he said he wouldn’t let anyone touch me. Just call me naïve because it was my new middle name.

Giving my captor a moment of reprieve, I flopped back into the seat with a huff. Noah had to be losing his mind. I would be if the situations were reversed. There was no doubt in my mind, they’d have my location figured out in a matter of hours. The problem was, did I have hours to wait? So many questions…too many unknowns. I hated being in the dark.

Reprieve over.

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