Page 28 of Ricochet

Battling the urge to fall into a heap and bawl my eyes out, I gripped the sink and flipped on the faucet, desperately filling my mouth with cold tap water that damn near sizzled over the dryness. “C’mon, Aubree,” I whispered. “Time to make a Plan B. You’re not a quitter. You’re a survivor. You’ve survived worse than this.” Maybe. Who the hell knew what the rest of the house had in store for me? I looked up, staring at the section of wall where a mirror would’ve been, and was kind of thankful I didn’t have to look at myself right then. “You’ve become good at reading people.” I blew out a breath , but a whimper of hopelessness echoed somewhere in the back of mind. I quickly batted it down with my uncanny skill for deceiving the logical side of my brain.

Quick analysis. He was tall, dark and broody. Wore his hood up over his head. Maybe he was hiding something? Zero sense of humor. I mean, zero. Could be pissed. At me?

Could be sexual frustration. No, he’s too good-looking. “But his attitude is shit,” I muttered in response to my thoughts.

I buried my face in my hands. Unless the guy was a total torture-baby-animals sort of mental case, the best bet would be to try appealing to his empathetic side. Did hitmen feel guilt? Was killer’s remorse such a thing?

If that didn’t work, there’d be only one thing left to try.

Seduce the bastard. You’ve done it before and survived. You can do it again.

I’d been held captive by the apex predator, in the messed up jungle of dysfunction, and had gotten out. Not entirely free, but out. The guy on the other side of the door was nothing more than a temporary roadblock on my path to freedom. A peon, probably hired by the head Tyrantosaurus himself, my husband.

A quick sweep of the small room showed nothing that I could use as a weapon. The guy had stripped it down to the barest essentials, going so far as to remove the mirror that could’ve been cracked into jagged pieces for stabbing. Shit.

At two knocks on the door, I jumped back, nearly falling on my ass. “Just a sec!” I quickly hiked my dress, relieved myself, and scooped two more handfuls of water into my mouth.

When I exited, he was standing beside the door, arms crossed, practically growling as I snuck past him to the other side of the bed.

“Were you hired by my husband?” I asked.

His jaw shifted, as though he chewed on the question for a moment, before he spat back, “If I’d been hired to kill you, you’d already be dead.”

True, and shame on me as the kidnappee for not having come up with that brilliant deduction myself.

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t intend to kill you … eventually.”

I’d heard that phrase before. Many times before. The delay resided in thinking smart and staying one step ahead in the game. After all, my father once told me the world was a hunting ground, and the only way to identify the predators was to set a bait pile.

Just as I’d learned to do on cue, I summoned tears in my eyes and fell to a sitting position at the edge of the bed. “Please. I don’t … I don’t know if you have a family or … someone you care about. If you do, then … you know how devastating it would be to lose them.”

I glanced back, expecting to find apathy at my pathetic ad-libbed performance. Instead, he looked furious, as if he might just tear my throat out and eat it in front of me.

A tremble beat through my body as I slowly rose from the bed.

Prepare to run.

CHAPTER 12

Nick

With nothing more than a bed between my hands and her throat, I stared at Aubree Culling in her flashy, expensive dress and three carat diamond ring, and tried to process her spewed bullshit about losing a loved one, as if she had any concept of giving a fuck about anything more than herself.

The rational side of my brain tried to convince me that she didn’t know a single thing about my past, didn’t know who I was, so how could she possibly be taunting me?

The irrational side urged me to use her comment as an excuse to cross her off the list. Maybe she did know. Maybe she and her husband sat in their hot tub, drinking champagne, toasting every life they’d stolen for their own personal greed. Maybe the two of them fucked to crime scene photos and the steady drip of coin in their wallets—their own personal pornography for the rich and remorseless.

“On the bed. Now.” The words pushed through my clenched teeth while a round of gunfire sat cocked at the back of my throat. Should she say one fucking word.

One word.

Her neck bobbed with a swallow, and she slid onto the bed.

Yeah, I knew all about losing loved ones. I’d lived the shit every day for three years, but I wasn’t about to fall victim to her manipulation. Even I could see she’d become a master of two faces—the bright white smile for the camera concealing the forked tongue of a serpent.

Standing beside the bed, I bent over her, placing a hand firmly at either side of her head. Below me, she seemed to press her head back into the mattress, as if to get away. I’d have laughed, except that her knee smashed my groin and her head collided with my nose.

Jolts of electricity raced to my nuts and I cupped my nose with one hand. “Fuck!” Ignoring the pain, I smacked aside her flailing arms and random kicks to my side and nabbed both of her wrists, pinning them hard against the bed.