Fifty metres between us reduced to forty. Thirty.
The problem was, I’d never felt so alive. Which was so messed up. I should’ve been concerned for the state of my brain.
Spotting my car beside the damp pavement had never felt so good. I already had my keys in my hand, and the lights flashed when I hit the unlock button.
For a dizzying second, I let myself imagine what it would be like if Kane grabbed me. This time, with me fully aware of whose clutches I’d fallen into.
He was twenty metres away and closing.
Fright gave me speed, and I popped the door and fell inside. Locked it a second before he hit the frame.
Kane wrenched at the handle. When it didn’t give, I expected him to smash my car with one big fist.
Instead, he lowered himself to my window so his face was inches from mine. He breathed hard, braced on those thick arms of his.
Then the bastard winked.
Damn, my kidnapper was getting cheeky.
Holding my gaze for a beat longer, he pushed off my car and walked away, his huge shoulders rippling under his black t-shirt when he passed under a yellow streetlight.
I stared after him, my fingers trembling.
What the hell was that? Where was his demand to give up what he wanted?
It was almost as if he’d chased me for fun.
I sagged, fought to control my wild pulse, then switched on my engine and got the heck away.
Throughout my trip back to Deadwater, I kept peeking in my rearview mirror, examining every pair of headlights that came close. None of them were Kane’s black car, though. He’d quit. There was no justification for the disappointment that burned in my chest.
Shortly after eight p.m., I arrived at the hipster bar Molly had given me the address for and stepped into a buzzing interior with a DJ pounding the decks. Lights flittered over the queue for the bar that was three people deep, so I picked my way to the very end and waved at a bartender at the till, shouting my request. He gestured to a wrought-iron staircase. I climbed it, finding a slightly less busy space with the smaller bar at the top.
Behind it, a short, curvy woman with a blue pixie cut handed over a pint of beer to a waiting customer. The man beckoned tospeak in her ear, and she bent forward, a line forming between her eyebrows, one of which was decorated with a ball piercing.
Molly, because it had to be her by the fact there were no other bar staff up here, recoiled from the man. Whatever he’d said clearly pissed her off, because she reached for a cardboard drinks coaster from the polished bar top and flicked it between his eyes.
It bounced off his forehead.
My kind of woman, turning a coaster into a weapon.
Molly laughed and stuck her thumbs in the waistband of her tight jeans, a cropped top with the name of a band across it exposing inches of her stomach.
The jerk who’d offended her rubbed his forehead then swung a furious gaze at her, muttering something through gritted teeth.
She shrugged and reached to neatly take his pint glass back behind the bar.
The guy raised his hand.
Oh, hell no. She was a third of his size. I hurried over in time to hear his slurred words.
“Fucking slut. You can’t do that to me.”
Molly widened her eyes, her tone mocking. “An insult? So original. What are you going to do with that hand, jackass?”
He formed it into a fist.
Shit. What did I do? There needed to be a bouncer up here, but if I ran back downstairs to get one, I wouldn’t be able to help her.
