He blamed it on the drugs. While he was capable of moving through life pretending not to be high as a kite, Dante had long ago given himself over to his addiction. It was an expensive habit, but it allowed him to get through each day, to deal with the shitty hand he’d been dealt. People thought it was easy being the son of a politician, but they were wrong. So many rules, so many expectations. Everyone thought he had it easy because his parents paid for most of what he had—his two-bedroom apartment overlooking Lady Bird Lake, his brand-new Lexus LS.
Dante didn’t see it as them providing for him. It was more of a payment. For him to continue to play the dutiful son. After all, his father expected so much, said he had to always be on his best behavior. Whenever he went to a strip club, he’d get read the riot act. God forbid he went to a club and was seen with a hot chick who wasn’t some debutante. No one should have to live like that.
“Once they see all that blood, they’ll think you’re dead,” Marcus mused.
They would. And that, Dante knew, could be a problem. The intention had been to make them believe he was seriously injured, to plant the idea that the kidnappers weren’t playing around. But the amount of blood they’d left in JJ’s house … no way would anyone survive an injury like that.
The majority of the blood—which was supposed to beallthe blood—that they’d decorated JJ’s house with had been that of animals. Dante hadn’t been a part of the blood-gathering process, thank God. Marcus had gladly offered to gather what they needed to make the scene believable. As for what they’d do when the task force decided to run a DNA test on the blood and found out it wasn’t human, Dante had no idea. But he seemed to be the only one worried about it. According to Marcus, it was handled.
Only a little while longer. Another hour. Two. Then it’d be time to call his father, demand money. Once it was delivered to Marcus—a plan that, in Dante’s opinion, was also rather foolproof, too—Dante would be returned safely.
At least that was what Dante was telling himself. He absolutely did not want to think that Marcus could actually be a crazed killer and, in doing this, he’d unleashed the beast.
*
Juliet Prince sat cross-legged on thebed in the cheap, run-down motel room, her pawn-shop-purchased laptop open in front of her.
No, her accommodations weren’t what she was used to, but she’d been learning how to deal. She had enough clothes to last her three days, enough quarters to wash those clothes when it became necessary again, and free Wi-Fi. What more could a girl ask for?
Everything.
That was what Juliet wanted. She wanted every goddamn thing. And she wanted Travis Walker to give it to her.
Lifting her head, Juliet caught sight of the peeling tan wallpaper just beneath the water stain on the ceiling in the corner.
Yeah, she fucking hated it here. It smelled like cheap booze and piss, and she refused to think what they might actually wash the sheets with. If they washed them at all.
But it was easier staying in the rent-by-the-hour, no-questions-for-cash motels than worrying about identification and whatnot. Since she’d been forced to give up her identity thanks to that bastard Travis Walker, she was honing a new skill: adaptation.
In the interim, of course, because this damn sure wasn’t how she intended to live out the rest of her days. Nor did she intend to spend a minute in a cage.
She glanced at the burner phone sitting beside her, saw that Marcus had moved on to the raunchy portion of their conversation. Juliet was happy to ignore it. No way in hell would she touch that man. Not with another woman’s vagina, thank you very much. However, he’d become the perfect patsy when she’d hit a roadblock during her attempt to seduce Dante Greenwood.
Juliet wouldn’t say it’d been luck that had brought Dante to her attention. No, that was due to an incredible amount of research into the life of Travis Walker. Through myriad connections to various people, Juliet had lucked out in finding the one she thought would be the perfect target. When she had learned that Travis Walker’s cousin was the one who had found Kate and forced Juliet to run, she’d looked more into him. It was then she learned that the governor of Texas had created a task force and put Brantley Walker in charge of it.
Meaning there was a connection between Travis Walker and the governor, andthatwas an avenue she found far too intriguing to ignore.
She’d reached out to the governor’s son, Dante, via an online dating profile he’d created, which was rather bleak if you asked her. The guy honestly had nothing much going for him except for material things. Not that Juliet cared. She wasn’t looking for love or romance, nor had she been when she came across him.
Unfortunately, the man was far too wrapped up in himself to be of much use to her. When she had attempted to get details about his past, he’d shut down real quick, fostering more discussions about sex in order to find out what her various fetishes might be. And since the only reason she’d made the connection was to get dirt on Travis Walker and those he associated with, and Dante wasn’t willing to dish, she decided not to waste her time.
Granted, striking up a conversation with the Marcus guy had been pure coincidence. Or luck, either way. She’d been making one last-ditch effort to connect with Dante when she got a response from this guy.
Based on the few text conversations they’d had, she was pretty sure he was batshit crazy, but Juliet figured that could certainly work in her favor. When he mentioned a plan to extort money from the governor of Texas, she’d thought he was delusional. Nope. He wasn’t. They had in fact concocted a fake kidnapping scheme that they were hoping would net them a million dollars.
What was amusing was the fact Marcus actually thought a million dollars was enough to incentivize her to screw him.
In that hewasdelusional.
But she couldn’t write Marcus off just yet. When he had informed her they were using Dante’s ex-girlfriend—Jessica James, also an acquaintance of Travis Walker—in their plan, she knew she’d hit gold.
Well, a little bit of the credit had to go to Samuel Aldering, a man who Juliet had gotten acquainted with a couple of months back. He happened to be a computer genius and quite the hacker to boot. Getting him to assist had required some effort on her part. But who was she if not dedicated?
Fucking the man so she had something to hold over him had been relatively easy. Being that he was married with four kids and didn’t wish to have his wife find out he was a lying, cheating bastard, he had gladly given Juliet the access she requested.
Which was how she’d ended up sitting here watching the scene at Jessica James’s house play out. It was disappointing that two of the cameras weren’t working, so she was restricted to only seeing what was going on in the front yard, but it was getting interesting. She’d just watched one man whisk Jessica away while Brantley Walker, the Navy SEAL who had spoiled her plans in Mississippi, and his partner, whose name she still did not know, did a cursory search around the house.
“Come on. It’s time to go back inside,” Juliet whispered to the men on screen. “Don’t you want to take one more look?”
