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“Whitney.”
I nodded to let him know I did, in fact, get it, but apparently that wasn’t good enough.
“I want you to repeat it back to me.” He leaned back in his chair, propping his ankle over his knee. The position drew his pants tighter around his crotch, and I ripped my eyes from his groin.
That didn’t help. Now I was thinking about kneeling between those long legs, running my hands up his thighs. Would his breathing pick up? What kind of noises would he make? Would he grab onto my hair, pull a little too hard? Say my name, soft and low, like he was desperate for anything I might give him?
Fuck.
I fell back into the cushions behind me, trying to push those thoughts away, and raised my arms in a what the fuck? gesture. “Are you serious right now?”
“I need to know you understand it.”
“You’re just telling me what I’ve already been reading in that packet you gave me.”
“Repeat it back to me, Whitney,” he instructed, calm as ever. “You say you’ve studied every bit of it, but I need to know that you know it. By heart.”
Why the fuck was I attracted to this asshole?
In a robotic monotone, I said, “I will enter from the vent at the south side of the house. The bunker is not visible from the outside. The only indication of its existence is the single vent that lies in between the bed of petunias and the shed. The vent is two feet by one and a half feet—are you even listening to me, Whitney? Stop picking at that pillow and pay attention. Good. The vent goes straight down for five feet before making a sharp right turn, then extends another ten feet. There’s another five foot drop, another right turn and then another ten feet. It ends after that. I’ll use the screwdriver to remove the plating and enter the bunker. The duct is ten feet from the ground, so be careful and find something to stand on to get back up. The safe is located in the main room. Once I’ve gotten it open—and I will get it open—then I will empty it of its contents and come back the way I entered. No dawdling. In and out.”
He stared at me for a long moment, blinked, then said in awe, “That was word for word.”
“I told you I got it.”
“No, you didn’t. You just nodded. Do you have a perfect memory or something? That’s incredible.”
He sounded amazed, and the fact that I’d impressed him with anything had heat building in my chest.
“I don’t know.” I threw my head back and stared at the ceiling, muttering a quick “dickwad” under my breath. Just because he’d made me uncomfortable with his praise.
“Sorry?”
“I said, dear god.”
“At least you hit the right number of syllables this time.” He laced his fingers together over his abdomen, green eyes dancing with mirth. He tilted his head. “Now tell me why you were so upset when I got home.”
I mimicked his position and crossed one of my ankles over my knee. “I wasn’t upset.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
I sighed. “Brooks told me about Sherry Bateman. How Thorne killed her. That’s why.”
A muscle ticced in his jaw, and his fingers tightened around each other. “And why the hell did he tell you that?”
Angry Court was exceedingly hot. But it sparked my own ire, because why shouldn’t he tell me that? How the fuck else was I supposed to know anything?
Pissed off now, I leaned forward and said, “I don’t know, maybe because I asked him questions about this job I’m doing with you guys? Maybe because I’m not getting a scrap of information elsewhere and these are things I should know? You don’t get to be mad at him for telling me what you should’ve already fucking told me. What else aren’t you guys telling me?”
Court’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Nothing. You know everything you need to know to complete this job.”
I scoffed and laced my hands behind my head. “Don’t lie to me, Court. Did it ever occur to you that I might not have jumped so readily at this opportunity had I known beforehand that you were targeting a sadistic serial killer, for fuck’s sake?” My voice was getting louder the longer I spoke, but the rush of frenetic emotions had broken free of its dam and I couldn’t stop now. “He almost—they were gonna—” A strangled sound came out instead of any more words.
I couldn’t say it. But I had thought it. Many, many times since Brooks had told me about Sherry. Since they’d shown me that footage of Thorne and Tom casually discussing kidnapping me to keep me as some kind of sex slave.
Her fate could have been my fate.
It would have, if they hadn’t saved me.
