She wouldn’t, though. Confrontation wasn’t her thing. Never had been. She simply lacked main character energy, even in her own life. Main characters were plucky and feisty. No one would ever call River plucky or feisty. She was more like…a sidekick. Dependable, but not extraordinary. Like, Garfunkel. Oates. Robin instead of Batman. Boo Boo instead of Yogi Bear.
Normally, that was fine. Being a main character sounded exhausting. But today? Today was no ordinary day, and some feisty pluck would really hit the spot right about now.
It took her a minute to get over her pity party and input the directions she’d received from the Russians into her phone and get a route, but she finally managed to leave the strip club in her rearview and drive toward getting this whole fiasco over with once and for all.
“So…where are we going?”
River let out a shriek of the damned as the totally not unconscious man in her backseat leaned forward close enough to rest his chin on her shoulder. Unfortunately, she also accidentally jerked the wheel to the left so hard she almost drove directly into oncoming traffic. The only thing that kept that from happening was her passenger, who shot forward, grabbing the wheel.
“Pull over before you kill us, fiorellino,” he said in an annoyingly calm voice, settling back into his seat, giving her control of the car.
She swallowed hard and did as she was told, pulling into a hardware store parking lot. It was just her foul luck that the store was closed. If she died here, no one would even find her for at least twelve hours. And having her dead, bloated body discovered by some poor contractor who’d just showed up to buy spackling on his way to a job site sounded awful.
“Shut the engine off and hand me the keys.”
“And if I refuse?” she whispered.
The unmistakable sound of a gun cocking made her flinch. “You won’t.”
She considered it for a second. She could hit the gas and drive right through the store’s front window. That’d alert the cops. And the gun-toting maniac in her back seat might get thrown into the windshield. That seemed like a win.
“Think it through,” he said in a voice so calm it pissed her off. “Do you really want to do anything that might bring the cops into this? After you kidnapped me?”
Which was…a disturbingly logical point. She sighed and slammed the car into park, then shut down the engine and dropped her keys into his waiting palm.
She had to stifle a nervous laugh at the sight of her plastic “I read monster smut” keychain in his big, manly hand, though.
He glanced down at the keychain, nonplussed, before tucking it into his jacket pocket, along with—much to her relief—the gun he’d threatened her with. Then he got out and climbed back in on the passenger side.
That was much less of a relief.
River tried really hard not to say anything. To let him speak first. That would’ve been the smart thing to do. It was just her curse in life—well, one of her curses, anyway—that when she was especially anxious, she tended to blurt out weird random factoids. It made dating challenging. And dentist appointments. Which wasn’t the point.
Point was, she was blaming her strange affliction for what she said next.
“Did you know scientists monitor whale stress levels by analyzing their feces, and that after the 9/11 attacks, when shipping traffic halted, they were much more relaxed because the ocean was quieter?”
He cocked his head to one side and studied her for a moment before saying, “I did not know that.”
“It’s true. And whale feces are used in perfumes.” Oh, Jesus, why can’t I stop talking? “Ambergris, too, which is a waxy material that’s found in the digestive tract of a sperm whale. So, unless you want to wear whale crap and stomach goo, you probably shouldn’t wear any perfume.”
His brow furrowed, but he nodded. “Good to know.”
River managed to swallow a few extra facts about castoreum, which came from the anal glands of a beaver and was also used in perfumes, by asking, “Are you going to kill me now?”
One corner of his mouth tipped up. “Why would I kill you when I’m learning so many interesting facts?”
“Because I tased you and kidnapped you,” she answered before she realized he was being facetious.
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Yes, there is that. But I have a few things I might be able to teach you, too. For example, did you know that tasing someone doesn’t make them pass out?”
Which meant he’d been pretending to be unconscious while she struggled to get him into her car. He’d made her go through all that sweaty, cussing, back-breaking work for nothing. What an asshole!
Then it occurred to her that she was being a smidge hypocritical. She had, after all, lied to him. And tased him. And kidnapped him. In this situation, she was definitely the asshole.
“No, I did not know that,” she grumbled. “Obviously.”
“So,” he began, looking disgustingly at ease and rational, “let’s start over. What’s your name?”
