Page 17 of Steal Me (Rebel Hearts Heists 1)
I don’t want the guys to decide that taking me with them is too dangerous both because with them I feel protected and because I actually like them. I know it’s crazy that I feel safe with the guys who kidnapped me at gunpoint while robbing a bank. Maybe I’m fucked up in the head, maybe Pierce’s constant psychological abuse messed with me and I see knights in shining armor in a group of criminals. Kaden’s eyes meet mine again and my body reacts immediately with goosebumps, at the memory of last night, of the way he kissed me, he touched me and of how he held me in his arms all night.
I know he’s no Captain America, that’s just the mask he wears when he robs banks but my instinct tells me that there’s good in him, despite the kind of life he’s chosen. I feel the same way about the brothers: somehow they make me feel safe, so safe that I feel bad about not opening up completely.
But there’s still a chance that they’d consider me completely expendable, despite protecting me from Pierce earlier. River? He scares the shit out of me but as long as the others are around, he wouldn’t do anything stupid. So I close my eyes and decide to wait and see what decisions are made and hope that Pierce won’t find me again.
Because this is what bothers me the most: how did he actually find us at the hotel? Did he follow us this whole time? It doesn’t make sense. How did he get Sasha to call me? No one knew where I was just to avoid him catching up with me.
Kaden stops the car in the parking lot of a Hampton Inn kind of hotel a couple of hours out of LA and we all wait in the car while he goes to check us in. The guys’ reasoning is that the less people see us together the easier it is to go unnoticed as a large group definitely draws more attention. No one speaks and the tension is palpable in the car. Royce’s phone pings with a text message a few minutes later and he signals us to get out of the car.
“He said room four-zero-seven, the entrance is out back.”
We turn around a corner of the parking lot and as I’m walking between Royce and Blaine and River tails us, I think that it’s really ironic that every time my mind tricks me into forgetting the whole ‘hostage situation’ the guys do something that reminds me how we got here.Or maybe not, because I barely finish the thought when Royce takes my hand in his and squeezes it soothingly.
The suite has two adjoining rooms overlooking the rear parking lot and while it’s spacious and clean, it’s definitely a far cry from the penthouse at the Beverly Wiltshire. Each room has one king size bed and one sofa bed and the two rooms share a tiny kitchenette and a bathroom.
We wait about ten minutes before Kaden shows up with the duffel bags with the heist money and two huge bags full of food. He passes me one and then apologizes to me. “Sorry that your Thanksgiving dinner is In-n-Out rather than something a little more upscale but it’s the best I could do in the circumstances.”
I smile as I grab a burger and a basket of fries: we don’t have In-n-Out out East and I’ve fallen in love with it since I got to Cali. So it could be much worse. I shrug making him smile. “I actually prefer this in some ways.” What? River had been right, I’m not a salad kind of chick.
After we finish eating and Blaine disposes of the food containers, Royce sits us all down to discuss the situation. Or rather they discuss the situation and I wait to learn what’s about to go down.
“So this is quite the shit storm we’re in. Am I right?” I feel River’s gaze on me and I’m about to snap at him but Royce notices too and tells him to cut it out.
“Look Sloane, I admit that ideally we wouldn’t have taken a hostage and I’m sure that if you’d been given the choice, you wouldn’t have spent your Thanksgiving on the run from the police and the FBI, am I right?” I don’t meet his gaze: right, because if I weren’t in this room with my kidnappers right now, I’d be alone in an empty dorm on campus or even worse, Pierce would have found me. And that’s a thought that I don’t even want to explore. So unbelievably the guys are the lesser of two evils, and I’d choose them over Pierce every single time.
And of course I don’t even have the chance to finish that thought when River butts in. “This is exactly why I suggested—”
Royce turns one withering look toward River but Blaine is the one who speaks. “Dude, no one’s killing no one. Is that clear? We might be bank robbers and kidnappers, even if we didn’t set out to be but we ain’t killers.”
River insists stubbornly. “She has the FB-fucking-I chasing her. Mark my words, she’ll be the reason why we get caught.”
Kaden has been silent up to this point but he snaps at River, irritation seeping from every word. “Rivs, I know they don’t teach you this shit in pre-med but armed bank robbery is a federal offense, so the FBI has jurisdiction in our case. They’d be after us with or without Sloane. So take a motherfucking chill pill, a’right?”
River snarls at him that the future big shot lawyer is talking but I can’t help voicing the thought that comes to my mind.
“You? A doctor?”
River looks at me pointedly and he sounds defensive when he asks, “Yeah. Why the fuck not?”
Where do I start? The deranged, crazy look in his eyes? The tattoos that creep up his neck and adorn his arms and hands all the way to his knuckles? The fact that a doctor should have a caring personality while River’s solution to every problem is ‘let’s kill someone”? But I don’t have the opportunity to tell him any of those things because Royce intervenes again.
“River, focus please. Kaden is right, the FBI would be after us even without Sloane. We need to make a fucking plan now, we’ll discuss our career choices later on.”
