But Bishop was already manhandling Kit out of the kitchen and through the reeking mausoleum of the house.
He led Kit out back through the alley. Unworried about surveillance—they found most of the nearby cameras already smashed up by Addersen’s gang when they first cased the joint. James’s jammer took care of anything else, and part of James’s cleanup job involved grabbing the jammer itself.
Bishop yanked Kit’s hoodie over his head and grabbed him by the back of the neck, keeping his head down as he pushed him forward. No cameras, but he didn’t need any witnesses to him leading a guy around with duct tape over his mouth.
“You’re doing great,” Bishop said quietly. “Almost there.”
Kit made a tiny, muffled noise.
Bishop’s unassuming gray sedan was parked at the end of the alley, and getting Kit into the car was easy. Bishop buckled the seatbelt awkwardly over his bound arms, then watched carefully as he circled around to the driver’s side—but Kit made no attempt to escape. Just watched him, with those wide green eyes.
Like emeralds. Not just the color, but the depth. A cold, lifeless beauty.
Shards stuck in Bishop’s mind as he drove away.
Kit’s panic ebbed and flowed, alternating with a strange excitement. He was more fucked up than he thought, if this experience was anything besides utterly terrifying. But not nearly as fucked up as Bishop, who talked so gently as he cuffed and gagged Kit. Who called Kitgood boyas he abducted him.
There wasn’t much traffic this morning. Maybe it was a weekend. Kit couldn’t remember. He tried to curl up more comfortably on the seat, but he was bound too awkwardly with the seatbelt over his cuffed wrists, his bag twisted up over one thigh. Every time he moved, he felt Bishop’s gaze.
The sun was still too fucking bright. Kit never managed to grab breakfast or swallow the ibuprofen. He should probably keep an eye on his surroundings, but he ducked his head instead, avoiding the stabbing sunlight.
Maybe ten minutes into the uncomfortable journey, Bishop broke the silence. “Almost there.” As if he could hear Kit’s silent question, he added, “We’re heading to my place.”
Great. The murderer’s lair.
“I haven’t decided what to do with you yet,” Bishop continued. “But I’m not going to harm you.”
Kit choked on a laugh behind the itchy tape.
Five minutes later, they slowed in front of a squat, two-story house in the suburbs. The SoCal September hadn’t yet fully baked into the xeriscaped yards today. Bishop parked in the cleanest garage Kit had ever seen. As the garage door rattled down, Bishop leaned over the console.
Kit flinched away, pulse skyrocketing, until he realized what Bishop was doing—removing the duct tape.
Yes, please. He held still as Bishop peeled it from his mouth, though he couldn’t help scrunching his eyes at the sting. Bishop’s gloves were gone. Not worried about DNA anymore, apparently.
“Aren’t you worried I’ll scream?” Kit asked, though the thin rasp in his voice made that a pretty empty threat.
“Scream all you want,” Bishop answered evenly. “The soundproofing can take it.”
No soundproofing necessary. Kit remained silent as Bishop guided him into the house, a broad hand firm against the small of his back. Bishop was really unfairly tall.
Kit expected to be dragged down to a basement or something. Chained to a radiator. Instead, Bishop pushed him into a clean, ordinary kitchen and sat him down at a glass table.
All right, so Bishop redid the handcuffs, looping the chain behind the spokes of the back of the chair, so Kit couldn’t escape without dragging the chair with him. That part fit Kit’s expectations for a deranged murderer-kidnapper.
As did Bishop sitting across the table and staring.
A clock hung beside the fridge. A sunburst pattern, the hands shaped like rays of sunlight clicking from number to number. The tick was quiet. Incessant. Overwhelming in the silence.
Kit lasted seven minutes. “Well? Have you decided what to do with me?”
“I have,” Bishop said, and left the table. Pulled something out of a drawer, and something else out of a bag Kit couldn’t quite see.
“What is it?” Kit straightened up as well as he could with his wrists bound behind him. The metal pinched his skin. “Rape, murder, waterboarding? I’m hungry enough already, starving to death would be easiest.”
“None of the above.” Bishop tossed two items on the table between them. “I’m going to tell you the truth.”
“If this is an ‘I can tell you, but then I’ll have to kill you’ sort of thing, I don’t want to hear it.” Kit felt a strange sense of pressure from Bishop. Like there were impending consequences he wasn’t aware of. Like his life depended on his actions in the next few moments.
