Page 2 of Risk It All
“Not that it’s any of my business if you have or not.”Why are you still talking???her brain screamed at her, but it was no use. This freight train had left the station and was hurtling down the tracks. “Now, if it were Marvin, my friend, then itwouldbe my business, but you’re not Marvin. You’re a stranger. A stranger I don’t know. Not that you’d be a stranger if I did know you, so, um, you don’t have to answer that, if you don’t want to. Don’t feel obligated.”
“Martin.” His voice was unexpected. Deep and smooth and perfect for narrating adventure movies or commercials for gourmet chocolate.
“What?” That unexpectedly delicious timbre threw her off. It didn’t match what she’d expected a killer to sound like.
His chest lifted with a silent sigh as he straightened away from the door. “Martin. Not Marvin.”
She tensed at his movement, but he just stepped sideways, opening a path to the door. “Right. Martin.” She couldn’t believe that she’d messed up her fictitious friend’s name. It was a stressful situation, yeah, but surely she could keep track of her made-up lock-picking study partners for five minutes.
“You need to stop following me.”
Great. Not only had he caught her breaking into his motel room, but he was aware that she’d been tracking him across town. Her sisters were right. She was not cut out for fieldwork. If she managed to survive this encounter, it’d be best if she just stayed home and researched.Thatwas what she was good at, not the chasing, tackling, and wrestling parts of bounty hunting.
Cara deflated with a soft sigh, kicking herself for failing so spectacularly. Then she noticed he was eyeing her with the slightest hint of amused resignation, and she realized she hadn’t responded to his accusation.Oops.
“Following you? What are you talking about?” It was weak, she knew, but everything about this interaction was throwing her off. She didn’t know if he was going to kill her slowly and painfully or give her tips on shadowing fellow criminals. It was disconcerting. “I’m here to meet…uh…?”
“Martin,” he offered helpfully.
“Right.” She eyed the door and then snapped her gaze back to him. It was so tempting, having the path to the exit clear, but she worried that he was just setting a fun little trap for her. Still, she dared take a step forward. When he didn’t grab her, she edged forward again. “Since Martin isn’t here, I’ll just go find him.”
Despite those icy eyes and the hard line of his mouth, she was pretty sure he was amused. Strangely, she wasn’t as terrified of Kavenski as she’d initially been, and she wondered if she was in shock or, perhaps, under the effect of some fast-acting strain of Stockholm syndrome. Telling herself to wait until she was safely outside the motel room to analyze her jumbled emotional state, she took another cautious step toward the door.
Then he moved, and she froze, her mind clamoring that she should’veknownit was too good to be true. Of course the brutal killer with the ice-cold stare wouldn’t just let her walk away after catching her breaking into his room. She’d fallen into his trap, and now she was within grabbing distance, and she was going to die.
When his hand grasped the doorknob instead of reaching for her throat, she stared at him, both relieved and befuddled. With a twist of his wrist, he yanked the door open and looked at her expectantly. A hard breath shuddered into her lungs. Had she not been breathing this whole time? She supposed it was an easy thing to lose track of while waiting to be murdered.
“Oh…um.” She took the final step to the now-open door. “Thank you? Sorry for…ah, intruding.” Slipping through the opening, she hurried away from the room, jumping as she heard it close behind her with a loudsnap. Although she managed not to run, she walked fast enough that it hardly mattered. Her heart still wasn’t convinced that she was out of danger, and it pounded in time with her footsteps as she tried very hard not to break into a sprint. It was only after she’d reached her car and was cocooned in the familiar safety of the driver’s seat that the danger really hit her, and her breathing sped up until she was taking in short, rapid puffs of air.
That was the closest she’d ever come to dying.I’m such a bounty-hunting failure!If it had been Molly or Felicity or Charlie trapped in the room with Kavenski, her sisters would’ve had him tackled and cuffed before he could even glare. It was mortifying that the only reason Cara managed to escape was because aknown killerhad stepped aside andopened the door.
As her breathing gradually slowed, she started the car, her fingers trembling just a little now. “It’s okay,” she told herself out loud. “You just need to walk before you can run. Work your way to the upper levels, rather than jumping right into them.” It was clear, now that she’d seen him in all his up-close power and glory, that Henry Kavenski wasnota skip for a beginner bounty hunter. He’d known that she’d been following him, and he’d obviously set her up, intending to catch her breaking into his room. She needed to find a skip who was a little less deadly and a lot more dumb.
Remembering to bring her Taser would be a good idea, too.
As she pulled away from the curb, Cara felt a strange curl of disappointment in her belly. She should’ve been relieved by her decision to leave Henry Kavenski to other braver, more experienced bounty hunters, but a part of her didn’t want to give him up. After following him around and learning everything she could about him, she’d become, oddly enough, a touch possessive.
She firmly quashed the thought. It was time to focus on a new skip, one whose worst crime was jaywalking or tearing the tags off mattresses.
Pressing down on the accelerator, she left the run-down motel and Henry Kavenski far behind.
* * *
Two days later, Cara was regretting her decision to leave Kavenski to the professionals…well, the moreprofessionalprofessionals. She clicked through the pile of jobs she’d lined up and made a face. None of them were even close to the bail bond he’d skipped on, and the fifteen percent fee seemed paltry compared to what they’d get for bringing in Kavenski.
“That’s the problem, genius,” she muttered to herself, tapping the side of her laptop with an anxious fingertip. “You’d have to actually bring him in.”
With a Taser or her sisters’ help, she probably could manage that, but the real issue was that a part of her honestly didn’twantto. There weren’t a lot of murderers—or criminals of any sort—who would’ve just let her walk away unharmed. It made her wonder if he really was the vicious killer he was accused of being.
“You’re such a sucker.” With a sigh, she shut down her computer. “You just think he’s pretty.”
“Who’s pretty?” Her twin, Charlie, charged into the kitchen, heading directly to the fridge. Warrant, their very large and very hairy Great Pyrenees mix, immediately hopped up from his sprawl under the table to follow her, obviously hoping for snacks.
Trying to disguise her guilty jump by standing and slipping her laptop into her backpack, Cara blinked innocently at her sister. “One of the skips.” It wasn’t a lie.
Charlie frowned at the contents of the fridge before closing the door and grabbing a banana. “Whose turn is it to get groceries? Things are looking a little desperate in there.” Leaning her hip against the counter, she raised an eyebrow at Cara. “Speaking of desperate… A skip? Really?”
Despite her discomfort about talking—even indirectly—about the mess she’d made of her encounter with Kavenski, Cara had to laugh. “Come on. You can’t tell me that, of all the hundreds of skips we’ve handled, you’ve never found any remotely attractive?”
