by JA Huss
“Somewhere?” I ask, forcing a laugh as I try to calm down. “What do you mean somewhere?”
“I mean, the call was real, it came in—but beyond that I don’t know much. I wasn’t really…” He sighs. “I wasn’t really paying attention earlier today. I had shit on my mind, OK? So I’m not clear on the details, but however it happened that you got on our radar, that was real, Issy. There was chatter.”
“What chatter?” I’m really not doing well right now. My heart is skipping beats inside my chest. My breathing is picking up and starting to become erratic.
“Look,” he says. “I’m not the best FBI agent, OK? The reason I’m in Denver was because I was demoted. I lost my father a few months back, I’ve been drinking too much, sleeping too little, and… and… yeah.” He lets out a breath that says all the things he couldn’t.
I think about that for a few seconds, but my mind is racing, and my heart is pounding, and my hands are shaking and… I hate this. I fucking hate this. I hate that I’m rattled, I hate that every fiber of my being is screaming RUN!
I don’t run. I don’t run, I don’t run, I don’t run…
“Untie me, Issy.”
“No,” I say, swallowing down the fear. “No, I’m leaving you here. I’ll make an anonymous call telling people where you are and—”
“No,” he yells. “You can’t leave.”
“I can leave.” I laugh. “I’m going to leave. So you better just come to terms with that, buddy.”
He rests his head on the floor, craning his neck to look at me. Then he laughs.
“What’s so funny?”
“I mean that literally.”
“Meant what?” I snap. I’m busy running probabilities in my head. Probabilities of getting out of this alive. What are my chances of survival right now?
“You cannot leave here.”
“Watch me.” I laugh.
“Go ahead and try.”
“What?”
“The door is made of steel. It’s on a digital lock and you don’t have the code to open it.”
“I can go through a window, genius.”
“Like I said. Go ahead and try.”
What the fuck—? I walk over to the window, tear open the curtains and see—
“Reinforced security shutters, Issy. On every single window. Also on a coded lock. This is a goddamned safe house, OK? No one can get in without blowing a hole in the wall. Which means no one can get out, either. And if you’ve got some harebrained scheme for giving that a try, I’d like to take this opportunity to caution you against it. They will make you pay for damaging government property. So I hope you’ve got money stashed away for that. Because fucking up a priority one safe house is gonna cost you dearly.”
A sharp pain fills my chest, making me double over. My breathing is far, far beyond erratic now. I start to hyperventilate. My whole body begins to tremble. My knees buckle, and reality flickers, and before I know what’s happening—
CHAPTER TEN - FINN
She falls to the floor. Like collapses into a heap. Her head misses the coffee table by mere inches. “Issy!” “I yell. “Issy?”
I struggle in the zip ties, but my hands are secured behind my back and I’m not in the right position to break out of them. So I don’t bother. I’m a little more worried about her right now than myself. I wriggle across the floor until I am close enough to get a good look at her face. “Issy?” I whisper, trying to see if she’s breathing. “Issy?”
She moans.
Thank fuck. “Issy,” I say again. “Can you hear me?”
“Whaaaaaa…”
“I think you fainted, Issy. Open your eyes. You’re OK, do you hear me? You’re OK, you just fainted. You’re fine. Just open your eyes.”
She shifts her body, turning over on her side. I can’t see her face because it’s covered by her long, dark hair.
“You’re OK,” I repeat. “You’re fine, all right? You just fainted. It’s gonna pass. Just… try to breathe and open your eyes.”
She does more than that because suddenly she’s up on her hands and knees, her whole body swaying.
“Don’t get up!” I say. “Just be still, breathe, and open your eyes and look at me, Issy. Do you hear me? Look. At. Me.”
She collapses again. Her breathing is heavy, almost a pant. Like she’s having a panic attack or something.
“What… what happened?” she mumbles.
“You fainted, that’s all. No big deal. Happens to everyone. It’s gonna pass really quick, OK? You’re fine.”
“My heart,” she moans.
“No,” I say. “It’s a trick. I promise. Your heart is fine, just breathe through your nose for a few minutes. It’s a trick. You got overwhelmed and—”
“Shut up!”
Her yell catches me off guard. So much so that I do. I shut up.
“I don’t need your help. I don’t need your words. I don’t need you to tell me when things are and are not OK. So shut the hell up!”
“There she is.” I chuckle, relaxing my head on the floor again.
She starts making mad grabs at her hair, pushing it away from her eyes. We’re only inches apart—face to face—when her gaze finds mine. Her beautiful blue eyes look like shining sapphires right now. “I don’t need your help.”
“Obviously,” I say. But I feel better. Relieved. I mean, yeah, if she was really hurt and didn’t wake up, I’d be stuck here trying to get myself free. And then, with my luck, Declan would show up before I managed that and… yeah.
The last thing I need is a rescue.
But that’s not why I’m relieved.
She’s OK. She just fainted. She got overwhelmed and scared and who can blame her? It’s been a pretty messed-up night for her.
“You can untie me now,” I say.
“No.” She gets back on her hands and knees, her head hanging, her long hair brushing against the floor as she sways a little. And then she’s on her feet. One hand covering her eyes, the other holding onto the back of the couch so she doesn’t fall over again.
“I’m not gonna hurt you.”
Her hand flies away from her face and she spits, “You can’t hurt me.”
“I know,” I say, pulling every FBI trick out of my hat to keep her calm and see reason. “I mean, I know that now. You’re pretty tough, chick. Anyone ever tell you that before?”
She huffs air, stumbles across the room, hand outstretched, reaching for the small dinette table, and feels her way around it until she’s leaning on the formica kitchen counter in front of the sink. She turns on the tap, sticks her mouth into the flowing water, and drinks.
“Hey,” I call. “I could use a drink too.”
She pulls back, wipes her hand across her mouth—little droplets of water spilling down her chin—and laughs. “Do you keep whiskey here?”
My neck is tired, the muscles in my shoulders strained from lifting my head off the floor. “Untie me and I’ll look.”
She ignores that. Just starts going through cupboards, slapping them closed after looking through each one.
“Nothing,” she says.
Well, duh, I want to say. “It’s a safe house. Not a bar. But we can go get a drink if you want. Talk this over, relax a little, and come up with a plan.”
“I already have a plan,” she says.
“Ya do?” I laugh. “What is it?”
She grabs at her hair, trying to straighten it out. Doesn’t help, it’s tragically disheveled. Beautifully unkempt. “You’re going to let me out of here, I’m going to take your car, and then we’re never going to see each other again.”
“Nope,” I say. “Not gonna happen that way.”
“I’ll hurt you,” she says.
“No, you won’t.”
This makes her laugh. But then she cuts it short and seethes, “Underestimate me, Agent Murphy. I dare you.”
“Look,” I say. “I can see that you’re not happy with the arrangements we’ve made for you—”
“—so let’s just renegotiate, OK? You want to make it to that seminar tomorrow, right?”
She says nothing. Just stares at me.
“We can do that. You untie me, we leave here, go back to your place, you grab a little sleep, and then I go with you to the seminar. I’ll just pretend to be a student and that way I can keep you safe and—”
She cuts me off. “How many times do I need to tell you? I do not need your protection.”
“I get that,” I say, trying to remain calm and reasonable. But the truth is, my fucking neck is killing me, I’m pretty sure there’s no circulation in my hands because the zip ties are too tight, my nose might be broken, there’s blood all over my face, and she might’ve fucked up my jaw when she clocked me. So I’m really fucking sick of this shit.
But I deal. Because that’s what I’ve been trained to do.
“I get that now,” I amend. “But it never hurts to have someone on your side, right?”
“You’re not on my side,” she sneers. “You lied to me! You lied to get me up here! And you fucked me!”
“You fucked me back. And you kinda beat the shit out of me, so suck it up, buttercup. We’re in this together whether you like it or not. Because this night, Issy, this night isn’t a game, OK? It’s fuckin’ real. I’m not after you but people are after you. So put your big-girl panties on and un-fucking-tie me.”
I kinda lose it at the end. Because ‘un-fucking-tie me’ comes out as a threat.
But it works. At least it might be working. Because she takes a deep breath, looks down at her shaking hands, and exhales out a sigh of resignation.
CHAPTER ELEVEN - ISSY
I try to keep calm. Run my options through my head. They fly by, like one of those old-time ticker tapes from the early twentieth century that telegraphed important news to people before the internet made information ubiquitous.
What the fuck is going on? There’s no way they came looking for me. I’ve been too careful. I’ve been too clever. And yeah, I have a decent business going with the whole Go F*ck Yourself thing, but I’m not high-profile. I’m a big fish in a very small pond. I mean, I don’t even advertise. My books sold a lot of copies, but I was never on talk shows and shit. So if that FBI raid wasn’t part of the game, then who called that tip in?
“Issy,” Finn growls. “I’m not going to ask you—”
“You will ask me again if I feel like making you, OK? So just be quiet and let me get a handle on things.”
“You can do that after you untie me. Because I’m telling you right now, if I have to break out of these myself, you’re gonna regret it.”
“You probably don’t even know how to break out. You told me yourself. You’re not the best FBI agent, right, Murphy?”
“I meant,” he seethes, “that I’m not on track for promotion, Issy. Not that I was incapable of something as simple as getting myself out of zip ties. I have seen seven-year-olds get out of zip ties using their shoelaces, so let’s not pretend.”
I think about this for a moment. He’s kinda right about the zip ties thing. I mean, you gotta have time, and be in the right position, but they’re pretty simple to get out of if you have those two things.
“Let me out or I’ll… I’ll…”
I almost laugh. Because he doesn’t even have a threat ready.
“I won’t fulfill your fantasy,” he finishes.
My guffaw is loud enough to startle him. “As if!” I yell. “I’d never let you that close to me again.”
“You will, Ms. Grey.” He kinda snarls that part. “Because whatever is happening to you right now has nothing to do with some stupid sex game you’re playing with your lawyer.”
“I’m not playing with him. He’s just the—” Grrrrrr.
“He’s just the what? Facilitator?”
“I can’t talk to you about it, I already explained that.”
“Untie me and I’ll make sure you can talk about it. You do realize that an NDA is invalid if it involves a crime, right?”
“That’s not even true. Lots of people sign NDAs for like… settlements. And it usually involves a crime.”
“Those are usually civil actions. Not criminal. Look, you’re fucked if you don’t get someone on your side real quick, because this shit is happening. Someone called you in tonight. Someone set you up. Someone is out to get you. And if you want to add me to your enemies list, then great. Do that. But when you’re sitting in jail wondering where it all went wrong, I’ll come visit and remind you.”
I let out another long breath of air—
“Untie me.”
—and decide that he’s right. “Fine,” I say, walking into the kitchen to grab a knife from the silverware drawer, and then walk back over to him and bend down. “But if you make any sudden moves—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, fuckin’ yeah. You’ll take me out. Got it.”
Asshole.
“Jesus Christ. Are you trying to saw my fuckin’ wrists off or what?”
“It’s a dull knife, OK? Just hold still.”
“Ow.”
“I never knew the FBI hired such wussies.”
But then the plastic snaps and I back away, because I’m pretty sure he’s lying about not trying anything.
They all lie. That’s the nature of people.
He’s quick too, up on his feet, reeling around to glare at me in seconds. But I’m all the way across the room.
He smiles. It’s one of those you-fucking-bitch smiles. I recognize it. Seen it plenty of times in the past.
But then he takes a deep breath, looks down at his wrists, holds them up as exhibit A, and says, “Just FYI, next time you zip-tie someone, don’t cut off their circulation.”
I sneer at him.
“Now,” he says, still glaring, but walking towards the door, “let’s go.”
“Go where? I’m not leaving until you explain just why the hell you decided to play along with my game when you knew you weren’t part of it!”
But he’s already punched in the key code and has the door open. “We’re going back to your place so I can regroup with my boss and you can get some sleep. You want to make that seminar tomorrow? Then let’s go.”
Is he serious? Does he really think I’ll buy that?
“OK,” he says. “Bye.”
And then he walks out the door and slams it closed behind him.
It’s only then that I realize it locks automatically. Because it beeps. Just the way it did when we came in.
And now I’m trapped.
“You motherfucker,” I yell.
CHAPTER TWLEVE - FINN
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying myself. Issy is pounding on the door screaming every obscenity she can think of. Every threat too. But I just lean back on the hood of the car and smile.
Teach her to zip-tie me. Teach her to kick my ass.
Not that she kicked my ass. She didn’t. She just caught me off guard, that’s all. I look at my watch and start timing her. “Stop screaming and calm down,” I yell.
“The hell I will!”
“Stop screaming for five minutes and I’ll let you out. But I’m not letting you out until you calm down. And it’s a scientific fact that it takes five minutes to calm down.”
She says something back to that, but I don’t catch it. And then she stops.
I wait, clocking her.
We’re at a little over four minutes and I’m feeling pretty proud of myself when the fire alarm goes off inside.
“I bet that’s coded to the fire department, isn’t it?” she yells on the other side of the door.
I close my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose, then walk over to the door, punch in the code and cancel the alarm. But that unlocks the door, and she’s got it open before I realize what just happened.
We stand there, not eye to eye because she’s tiny and I’m tall, but close enough. Glaring at each other. Daring each other. Planning seven different ways to k
ill each other.
After almost a minute of silent, mutual hate, she sucks air in through her teeth and says, “Now you may take me home.”
“I should leave your ass here on principle.”
“I should zip-tie you back up.” She waves a fistful of zip ties at me.
“Go ahead and try. You only get the element of surprise once.”
“I love to be underestimated.”
More mutual hatred.
And then I say, “Fuck it. Get in the car.”
I turn my back on her and decide I’m done. If she gets in, I’ll drop her ass off at her house and go find Declan. If she wants to stay out here in the goddamned forest, fine by me.
We get in at the same time. Slam our doors at the same time. I start the car and she pushes herself up against her door, like she doesn’t want to turn her back on me, not even a little bit.
I back up, spinning the tires in the dirt, and head back out the way we came.
“Well, that was fucking stupid.”
“Which part? The part where you turn into a batshit crazy person?”
“No, the part where I waste my night with a stupid FBI agent.”
“Well,” I say, reaching the end of the driveway and turning onto the highway. “I did fuck you pretty good.”
“Shut up.”
“Admit it, it was the best part of your night.”
“Shut. Up.”
“I mean, you came hard, right?”
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Didn’t your mother teach you manners?”
I laugh. “Is there a protocol for this I’m missing?”
“Yes, it’s called shut the fuck up.”
“Oh, I get it. I’m supposed to pretend it never happened.”
“You don’t need to pretend,” she says. “It was… what do they call it? Oh, I know, entrapment.”
I roll my eyes. “Jesus. For a smart person, you sure don’t know very much about the legalities of things. Like your dumb NDA. If he really did set all this up and used the FBI to play this stupid sex game with you—”
“I’m not playing with him, I told you that.”
“—then you have every right to report him. He can’t touch you. Really. I’m not lying. This is my job.”
