Page 110 of Lethal Abduction

Shadows have colored Abby’s eyes as long as I’ve known her. They come and go like clouds over a still sea, sometimes so fast I think I’ve imagined them. But now the shadows don’t pass over the top of the sparkling blue. They lie in the depths, a constant reminder of whatever unnamed hell she’s been living for the past months.

Despite a savage, all-consuming desire to wreak bloody vengeance on every motherfucker responsible for that hell, I force myself to smile. “Any ideas, Skip?”

The last thing she needs from anyone right now is more savagery.

Abby rummages around the boat and comes up with a faded scrap of material that was once brightly patterned but has clearly been used more recently as a rag to clean the boat. “Tell them our bikes got stolen,” she says as she wraps it around her head like a scarf, tucking her blonde hair beneath it. “You can say I fell off when it happened. That will explain why we have no bags with us and why we’re arriving on foot. You can say we paid for a ride on a local boat, which droppedus off nearby.” She frowns. “Pity we didn’t get sunglasses with the costume change.”

I fish around in the various cubbyholes on the dash and come up triumphantly, waving a pair of old aviator sunglasses. “Ask, and you shall receive.”

She rolls her eyes. “More like stand and deliver, when it comes to you.” She puts on the sunglasses, and I swallow hard as the haunted eyes disappear behind them, along with the worst of her bruises.

We wade through the muddy estuary and wash the mud off our feet in the silty water before emerging onto a dirt track. I keep up the banter on the half-hour walk to the homestay. Anything to keep her smiling, and myself from noticing her concave belly over the fisherman’s trousers or the horrific bruises everywhere my eyes touch.

Not to mention the burns.

They haven’t escaped me either. But if I look at those, I will lose it altogether.

Finally the wooden roof of the homestay comes into view. “Keep your head down,” I murmur as I spy a woman lighting an incense stick on the wooden walkway. “And wait here.”

I approach the woman, smiling reassuringly, and in true idiotic tourist style, bumble my way through the explanation with a combination of sign language, her broken English, and my use of a clearly inadequate translation app. I pay the two-night minimum and extra to have our meals brought to us. The woman leads us along a wooden walkway to a small three-sided hut on stilts over the water. It has an open-air bathroom, a veranda that juts out over the canal—and a very large bed in the center of the room.

The woman leaves us standing alone in the hut, both of us looking anywhere else but at the bed.

“You take first shower, if you want.” I say it as casually as I can manage. “According to our hostess, the bar fridge is fullystocked with local beer. It works on an honor system, apparently.”

Abby snorts. “They clearly weren’t expecting you, then.”

“Hey!” I open a mercifully cold beer and flip the cap off in her general direction. “At least let a poor sailor drink before you start insulting him.”

“It’s not even midmorning,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You’re terrible.”

I reach into the fridge and come up waving a bottle of chilled sparkling wine and a carton of orange juice. “I can also make mimosas, Miss Snobby Britches.”

Abby gives the gurgle of laughter that has always melted my insides and walks toward the bathroom. “Just don’t put ice in it, muscle boy, or we’ll both wind up with Thai belly for real.”

19

Abby

Thailand

Istep under the shower, my heart tripping in a way that has nothing to do with my recent escape, the sultry heat, or the sleepless night.

It’s tripping because of the lone, very large bed in the middle of the hut.

And because not even Thai fisherman’s trousers can hide the fact that Dimitry in the flesh is even hotter than anything my months of fantasies have managed to serve up.

And he’s off-limits, I tell myself sternly. Or at least he is until we’ve had a chance to talk through all the things we’ve managed to so far avoid.

Except that somewhere between Dimitry bursting through my hotel door in a blaze of smoke and gunfire and the long night of exchanging easy banter as we putted slowly down the river, my desire to have any kind of deep conversation has completely left the building.

Oh, be fucking honest, Abby.

I don’t want to talk. All I want to do right now is pull Dimitry’s clothes off and take shameless advantage of that bed.

Which is inappropriate at best,my stern voice says as I lather myself with a delicious coconut-and-lemongrass-scented soap.And utterly irresponsible at worst.

But a light breeze plays across my skin, the sun warms the wood beneath my feet, and the scent of incense from our hostess’s sacred offerings wraps around me in a sweet seduction, all of which makes it far too easy to forget that I’m here because deadly, evil men are chasing me.

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