Page 30 of A Captive Situation

His lip twitched, reaching up and resting his hands on the bed, the one I was still tied to.

“There’s a contract out on me.” He was all stonewalled to me, but his jaw clenched again, and his gaze fell to my chest, staring hard at me. I caught movement to the right and saw his hand making a quick fist before smoothing it back out and taking a firm hold of the bed. He pulled on it, standing up, and went over to a chair in the corner.

A contract? Ahit? “Why do you have a contract out on you? A contract for what?”

I didn’t like that he sat down, back in the shadows. I liked having him in front of me. I liked being able to see his face, trying to get a read on him.

It gave me one sense of control, just an iota of it, and that’s all I had. I was clinging to it.

His voice went back to monotone, talking to me as if we were discussing our favorite breakfast food. Maybe that was a little exaggeration. There was a terse edge to his tone, but I grunted in frustration because I had no idea how he felt about any of this and sinceIwas the kidnapped one, I needed to know the mindset of my kidnapper.

He was saying, “—there are things about me that you don’t know.”

“No shit, Sherlock. You’re a psychopath.” I seethed. “What kind of a person are you that’d get a contract put on them?”

He ignored that. “It’s for two million, so that means until pictures of my dead body hit the internet and my death’s been verified, they’re not going to stop coming. Two different shooters in the same day? I was worried if I left you at your cousin’s, then whoever was coming at me would take you and try to use you as bait. You’d be collateral.” He paused, briefly, his voice grating. “I was right. A picture was taken ofus when we were leaving the station and an hour ago, another one was uploaded to the contract file. It showed us leaving the diner.”

I . . . What?

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Who the fuck are you? I don’t—none of this makes sense.”

His stark expression was telling me that there had been two shooters. He wasn’t lying about that, no matter how much I didn’t want to believe him.

My heart sank. There was a contract out on me? “Where?”

His chair scraped against the floor as he got up, walking over to me, walking all slow and ominous until he sat on the bed by me. As he did, his face moved into the moonlight, and I could see him again. A part of me sagged in relief. Another part of me froze up because there was nothing on his face. No facial expression. No regret. Nothing.

He was just all-business, all clenched and chiseled jaw.

He leaned down, his elbows on his knees. His hip pressed into my side. “It’s a website. We’ve been trying to get it taken down, but it never works. It pops back up. So now we mostly monitor it. I am so fucking sorry that you got pulled into this.”

God.

He meant it. He wasn’t showing me anything, but his tone was ragged.

That tore through me, for some reason.

I was tied to a bed. Two guys had been killed in front of me, and now there were pictures of me on some website?

My eyes welled up. A tear rolled down my face.

He watched it go, his jaw clenching again, but his shoulders only rose and held before he let out a soft exhale. He tipped his head up, meeting my gaze. “I have to be blunt with you. You can’t leave.”

No . . .

I asked, “Where’s my phone?”

“You can’t call anyone. You can’t havethemcall you. Once you’ve been identified, there are going to be men searching for you as well.That means tagging your family, intercepting any call they might get from you. Tracing it. Law enforcement can’t help, not in this situation. You walk out that door, and they will kill you. They’ll kill you because they’ll try to use you to get to me, and Sawyer”—he leaned in, his eyes going almost primal—“they’re not going to be successful. You got me? I’d like to tell you that I’m a good guy, but the truth is that I’m not. I sold my soul a long fucking time ago, and while I’m not scared about dying, there’s a few things I’m going to do before I let that happen. So if you want to stay alive, your best bet is doing what I tell you.”

My heart had paused, waiting to hear what he’d said. It fell now, along with letting some fear slither in.

He would let me die to save his own ass.

“The house is on lockdown.” He stood, his voice dropping, back to business. “Every door. Every window. We’ve got seven miles of woods around us so if you run, I’ll hear the minute you try leaving. Trust me, I will hunt you down.”

My mouth went dry as he loomed over me.

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