There are certain things a smart woman worried about any kind of dangerous situation should have with her.
A gun, if laws allow.
A knife, even if it doesn’t.
Pepper spray, just in case.
A tactical multitool.
And, of course, an escape bracelet.
I’d seen many of the cheaper versions—a nylon strap with a tiny bead meant to break car windows in case of entrapment or other emergencies and the handcuff key.
But I’d searched far and wide to find one that had the key and bead but also where the nylon itself was hiding a piano wire. You know, the type of thin metal wire that garrotes were made from. I could use it to saw through many materials used to bind me, to strangle someone, or worse.
I never took it off. Not even to shower. Not to sleep.
And thank God for that.
It had been a little harder to get the cuffs off in an emergency situation than it had been on the many trial runs I’d done at home. But it worked.
That, along with the perfectly (almost suspiciously) timed biker, and I was free.
Thankfully, I’d been smart enough not to say a word to the cop when he’d arrested me. Not even my name.
If there was one thing I knew from working with hundreds of clients over the years, it was that they always caught charges when they opened their mouths around law enforcement. It didn’t matter if they asked you your name, how you were feeling, or if you committed the heinous double murder, you kept your damn mouth shut until your lawyer got there.
So, unless they got some good quality security footage of me, and something to compare it to, they had nothing to go on.
Not even a court order could give them the footage from the unit I’d been using. I used closed-circuit security systems, not app-based ones, for a reason. They were old-school and backed up on actual DVDs, so no one could track them down or have access to them without first tracking down me.
By the time the bike pulled out of traffic and down a side street, I managed to take a few deep breaths, enough to calm the shakiness out of my limbs and slow my heartbeat.
So when we climbed off and started toward the building, I was thinking as clearly as possible.
Which meant I was acutely aware of how hot this guy who’d swooped me up was. He hit all the marks: tall, fit (corded arm muscles, broad shoulders, and I knew there were abs under his shirt since I’d felt them myself), dark eyes, dark hair, tattoos, a well-maintained beard that he kept from growing too long, a wide jaw, and strong, stern brows.
Not just hot.
Stupid hot.
Add in the way he just… helped out a cuffed woman with no questions asked? That pushed the hotness to the stratosphere.
You’d think my line of work would have cured me of my somewhat adolescent attraction to bad boys. Alas, I never grew out of it. Dammit.
So, yes, I did notice how nice his ass was when he turned to unlock the door.
Fortunately for me, though, I did have some red flags.
And being a slob? Top of my list.
I mean, I wasn’t perfect. Sometimes I let a dish ‘soak in the sink’ overnight to ‘get the stuck-on bits off,’ when, in reality, I was just too lazy to wash it. And my hamper always seemed to be full, no matter how much laundry I did.
But nothing festered.
And this apartment the hot guy led me into? It wasfestering. Like moldy cups, old sweat, and rotting garbage.
I was half-expecting roaches to scamper when the light flicked on. Or a big old rat to be munching on something in the piles of trash.
