In other words, did she want to sit here like a lump while he launched into his probably futile and possibly suicidal attack, or did she want to join in and probably get hurt at the very least but possibly help it succeed? She wanted to trash his expensive signature coat some more for making her make that decision.
“Do you have an actual plan?” Fen asked.
To her surprise, he gave a confident nod. Indicating the door, he said, “I’ll pick that lock, jump the kidnappers, tie them up, fly the plane, use its radio to figure out where the hell we are, and land at the nearest airport.”
“Something goes between ‘jump the kidnappers’ and ‘tie them up,’ doesn’t it? What are you, a one-man army?”
Loftily, he said, “I’ll have you know that I’ve studied the practical type of fighting arts for years.”
“Great,” she sighed. “You do think you’re a one-man army. Okay, fine. Uncuff me. I’ll… shove them or something.”
Carter had knelt beside her ankles, lockpicks at the ready, the instant she’d given him the go-ahead. But when she finished speaking, he looked up, startled. “What? No, you’re not coming with me.”
“Then why are you unlocking me?”
“To give you a chance to escape if my plan doesn’t work out? So your feet won’t get cramped?” Her whatever-they-were-called cuffs fell to the floor.
She scrambled up, wincing at the pins-and-needles stinging that made her wobble on her stiletto heels. “Look, we don’t know how many of them there are. I don’t know kung fu, but I’m willing to hit them with any loose object I see.”
“Absolutely not. You’ll get in the way. And be a distraction. What if one of them holds a gun to your head and tells me to surrender? We’ll all be better off if you stay here.”
“Like a piece of luggage,” Fen muttered, but couldn’t argue with his reasoning. “Okay, fine. I’ll wait by the door to catch you if they toss you back in.”
“You do that.”
Carter strode to the door, his long coat flaring dramatically behind him. It swirled around his ankles when he stopped, making him look like some dashing action hero. She had to admit, her enemy knew how to dress.
She hoped he also knew how to fight.
Chapter 2
Fenella Kim stoodbeside Carter at the cargo bay door, staring at him like he was a lunatic. She’d been doing a lot of that ever since they’d woken up and seen each other, and he couldn’t exactly blame her.
He’d often imagined his first in-person meeting with her. Sometimes he’d pictured it in a courtroom where they were suing each other. Occasionally he’d envisioned them accidentally running into each other on the street. Mostly he’d figured they’d eventually be forced to have an in-person meeting in some huge boardroom, with a phalanx of lawyers and business associates on each side. Given that she was in process of attempting a hostile takeover of his company, he’d expected that meeting to happen sometime soon.
Clearly, his imagination had been insufficient. It had never once occurred to him that he’d get hit over the head and wake up on an airplane, hands cuffed behind his back and getting flown to God knows where, and discover that the woman handcuffed on the floor beside him was an angry and disheveled Fenella Kim.
And yet, there they were.
He probably could have averted some of the “you lunatic” stares if he could have explained what was really going on. But it wasn’t as if he could have said, “I’m a shifter, born with the ability to turn into a snow leopard. When I disappeared and then reappeared and said I’d been stuck on a desert island, I’d actually been kidnapped and experimented on by a black ops agency called Apex. They killed my snow leopard and turned me into a monster. There’s some very bad people out there who’d love to use me or experiment on me. This kidnapping isn’t about ransom. In fact, it isn’t about you at all. I’m the target and you somehow got swept up with me.”
He could have said that. He even could have proved it—the shifter part, anyway.
But he’d never let anyone see him shift once he’d escaped from Apex. As far as he was concerned, no one ever would. And if he ever was forced to reveal his new and very much unimproved shift form, it sure as hell wouldn’t be to that thorn in his side, that Lego under his bare foot, the gorgeous genius businesswoman Fenella Kim.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?” she whispered.
She was standing very close to him, and he could once again breathe in her scent. With her stiletto heels and black-and-white business suit and razor-edged, asymmetrical haircut, he’d have expected her to wear an expensive modern perfume with some jarring note like asphalt or sea brine. But it was light and ethereal and floral: old-fashioned water of violets.
Like so much about her, it was unexpected. Her voice was surprisingly easy on the ears when it wasn’t echoing across phone lines, sharp with hostility or icy politeness. Photographs and video emphasized her delicate bone structure, so he’d always thought she was tiny, but though she was slim, she wasn’t short. She had no idea what had really happened to him, but she’d never thought he’d rigged his own disappearance as a publicity stunt.
“You don’t have to do this by yourself,” she said.
And there was more unexpectedness. She had no idea how to fight and believed that it was safer not to, not to mention that she hated him, but she’d twice now offered to put herself in danger so he wouldn’t have to go alone.
Fenella lifted one hand. Her hands were beautifully formed, with slim fingers and nails that provided the only color in her black-and-white aesthetic. No cliché blood-red or feminine pink or 2edgy4U blue for Fenella Kim: her fingernails were glossy pewter, unexpected and striking. Like everything else about her, her nail polish was precisely calculated, cleverly chosen, and designed to impress.
“Carter?” She laid her hand on his arm.
