Page 36

There’s nothing. Just a woman enjoying a drive.

I grip the wheel tighter and put my eyes back on the road.

I replay the moment right after, her back pressed against the mattress, gasping for air, body flushed with pleasure.

Was that up to your husband’s standards?

It was a good line. I know it was good. That line should have put her right back in her place after she tried to slip her cuff and run from me.

She didn’t look put in her place.

I don’t think she even heard me.

I glance at her again, wondering if she’s far better at hiding things than I’ve given her credit for, and if underneath that infuriating calm she’s cracking apart where I can’t see it.

Or maybe my best line in years just bounced straight off her like I said nothing at all.

She catches me looking at her this time, raises an eyebrow, and goes back to gazing out the window like I’m not even worth a comment.

Unbelievable.

And she’s married. I haven’t been able to put that thought out of my mind since she told me. I wonder who this mystery man is. He’s rich. Has to be. Whoever’s paying for her return must be if he can afford me. He wants her delivered back to him by someone who won’t make a single mistake. Someone who will bring her back through bullets, fire, blood, and bodies. I feel his possessiveness like a physical thing all around her, in my fucking car.

I’m the most dangerous man in any room I walk into, but I feel like I’m sharing this car with a ghost who’s smirking at every move I make.

Prick.

“Zevran?”

Her voice cuts through the ugly spiral I’ve worked myself into. I glance at the speedometer and find it sitting higher than it should, and ahead of us, red brake lights are stretching to the horizon in a long, glowing wall.

I take the next exit, peeling away from the highway onto a narrow two-lane road cutting through woods and farmland. I don’t particularly want to sit in a four-mile-an-hour crawl with my own thoughts for company.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“Shortcut.”

I have no idea where this road goes.

Over my shoulder, the sun sinks past the horizon. Dusk is drawing in. The back road is empty, just with fields, the occasional mailbox, and a sky going rosy at the edges. My foot gets heavier on the gas without me consciously deciding it should.

“Do you know where this road goes?” she asks doubtfully.

“I know exactly where it goes.”

Lights flare into life in the rearview mirror, flashing red and blue.

I’m doing ninety on a road built for tractors. For one absurd second, I don’t pull over, telling myself the car might pull past me and chase down some other unlucky bastard. There’s no other bastard. There’s nothing on this road but fields and fences and the cop sitting stubbornly on my ass.

I run through my options. Take a side road and race back to the highway. Shoot the cop, though cops have their own guns, and if the first bullet doesn’t finish him, he’ll empty his clip into me, or into Viktoriya. Both of these plans are terrible.

There’s a sinking feeling in my gut. I want to blame the cop for this, the traffic jam, Viktoriya, but I have no one to blame but myself.

When the cop adds a warning blast from his siren, I ease off the gas and pull over, and the cop follows.

In the side mirror, the trooper’s door opens. He takes his time, adjusting his belt, doing the slow walk of a man who knows he has all the power in this situation and wants me to feel every second of it.

A knuckle raps against my window.