by Nikki Logan
“So you keep saying.” Boredom flattened his voice.
Understanding finally dawned. He had no intention of helping them. “I’d be happy to—”
“I think not,” he said.
Her breath quickened and she stumbled to try to block his body with hers. Lifting her eyes to his, she implored him. “Please.”
He sighed and turned to go. “I’ll bring you food soon.”
“Wait!”
He stopped but didn’t bother to turn around. This wouldn’t be pretty. She took a breath and risked speech.
“I do need the bathroom.”
…
Simon deVries leaned against the door to the washroom, crossed his arms, and got comfortable for a long stay.
Christ! A hostage. Not part of the plan. It had been a good plan, too, detailed and thorough. Until now.
Now there was a gaping, five foot two flaw with big, brown weepy eyes. To complete the insanity, he had cast himself as chief babysitter. Not like he’d had any choice. There wasn’t one man on this crew he would trust if Miss Irish USA decided to wield her only weapon—herself. Including him, and he was the best of the lot. He didn’t owe Dyson, Corby, and the others a thing, but his loyalty and his entire focus had to be on this job, not on their unexpected guest.
The toilet flushed and, after a moment, he heard the sound of a tap running. He was vaguely aware of the state of the bathroom when they’d first returned, and figured the room couldn’t be any better now that five men had used it.
She’s a hostage, deVries. I don’t think it matters what she thinks of the facilities.
God knew its function was more important than its form at this point. His hormones might be suckered, but his nose was working just fine. The woman smelled positively gut-turning thanks to the feral blanket she’d been covered in for the ride, and having held her close to him a couple of times now, so did he. His own wash could wait until the main business of the day was complete. Thankfully, it almost was.
He settled back against the doorframe and dug his hands deep into his pockets.
The transporter—the evidence—would be fifty miles away by now, en-route to a fiery destination far from the farmhouse. Just as well she was occupied in the bathroom, otherwise she’d be bleating about those damned dogs. He wasn’t convinced the gravity of the situation had dawned on her yet. There was only one thing they wanted from those animals and it wasn’t their rare genes.
The door creaked open and he straightened, ignoring how small she seemed in the opening. “You need a shower,” he said. He stood a little taller when she didn’t move. “Now. You stink, and thanks to you, so do I.”
He followed her gaze into the bathroom to see it was devoid of both shower stall and tub. Instead, there was a square patch of ancient tile with a broken drain hole in the center that opened to the cavity under the house. Nothing more.
“You’ll have to use the bucket,” he said, irritated. When she hesitated, he lifted an eyebrow. “I promise not to peek.”
She flushed scarlet. “I don’t have any clean clothes, or a towel…”
Neither did he—not for a woman. An unexpected and unplanned-for woman. He cursed under his breath. “Wash your clothes. I’ll bring you something to wear while they dry. Get started.”
She closed the door quickly and, seconds later, he heard the sound of the tap running and the old plastic bucket filling. He was about to head to the bunkroom when he paused. Was she crazy enough to wait until he’d moved from the door, and then make a break for it?
He groaned. Not crazy, maybe, but certainly desperate.
He put his fingers to his lips and belted out a whistle, not risking calling anyone by name within her earshot. He hoped it would be Dyson, the least worrisome of the three. Dyson liked his women more masculine. Completely masculine, in fact. Didn’t make him a better human being particularly—the man was still a creep—but it made him just trustworthy enough to guard a naked, vulnerable woman behind a door with no lock on it.
He heard the thump of steel-capped boots on the wooden floor.
Shit. Corby. The worst possible choice. He’d have to move fast.
“You rang?” Mockery ran thick in the weedy voice.
Simon kept his voice low but threatening. “Stay here. Make sure she doesn’t come out.”
“Sure, sure.” Corby studied his nails, a badly disguised smirk under his pointy nose.
Sarcastic little maggot. “Do not go in there.”
Simon turned and headed for the bunkroom where five camp beds were set up. Rummaging in his pack for his towel and the biggest T-shirt he had, he’d just turned back to the hallway when he heard coarse laughter. That couldn’t be good. Rage boiled as he approached the bathroom door, now standing wide open, to see Corby leaning on the doorframe soaking up the view.
Son of a bitch.
“I didn’t go in—”
He grabbed Corby by the hair and hauled him out. The mirror framed her, backed pitifully into the corner of the room, no shower-curtain, no towel, nothing but an empty bucket to afford her some privacy. She wielded it like a weapon. She looked—what?—angry, embarrassed. Definitely frightened, and so she should. But there was something else.
Defiance.
The rigid set of her arms—refusing to cover herself—and her heated glare that burned right back at the laughing weasel. That took guts.
He shoved Corby down the outside steps where the scum slammed into a steel water trough beside the house. The skinny pervert swore up a storm and rose to take him on, but Simon pushed him back down and snarled, one hundred percent primitive instinct. “You pathetic degenerate. Go near her again and I will peel your skin off with a carving knife.”
He marched back into the house before his fingers did actually reach for his blade.
“You’re the new guy, asshole,” Corby shouted at his retreating back. “You don’t run this show.”
“Yeah I do,” Simon muttered to himself. “Just none of you have caught on yet.”
He lowered his eyes as he approached the bathroom. She hadn’t moved far—where could she go completely naked?—but she had picked up the towel and shirt he’d dropped by the doorway and now clutched them against her. They did nothing to wipe the tantalizing mix of alabaster curves, pink flush, and downy shadow from his mind. That was going with him to the grave.
Now that the streaks of dirt were washed off her face, he could see a dark bruise blooming on her jaw where Corby had kicked her on the highway. His lips tightened. He reached for the wet clothes she’d piled on the closed toilet lid.
“I’ll return them to you when they’re dry,” he said, his gaze fixed firmly over her head.
She nodded, silent and dignified. Not many women would have managed that, naked. Or men.
Bundling up her clothes, he closed the door behind him and waited, his heart pounding at the back of his throat. Echoing parts of him farther south.
Fuck.
Keeping this job on track had just gotten a hell of a lot harder. Corby had changed the ground rules. Within minutes that little piss-ant would be spilling his guts to the others, and they’d think Simon was keeping her for himself. He’d have to be ready with some damn fine reasons not to share her around.
Obligation burned deep in his belly. He was all that stood between her and a nasty end. Maybe it would’ve been better to leave her dry, smelly, and out-of-sight.
She emerged a few minutes later, his T-shirt ridiculously oversized yet still not covering as much as he’d hoped. Her wet, dark hair tumbled around an oval face in which three features stood out notably—a luscious pair of lips, the darkening bruise, and enormous brown eyes which glittered whilst resolutely avoiding his. His stomach churned. He’d left her exposed and vulnerable, and she’d only been under his care for a few hours.
Not your care, he had to remind himself. Your supervision.
Nonetheless, not a good start.
At the door to her holding room, he retrieved his tow
el and turned her to face him. Brown eyes fixed on his left shoulder, the color now high in otherwise ashen cheeks. He wrapped a new piece of cable-tie in a figure-eight around her wrists and yanked it tight in front of her.
Then, without a word, he closed her in the room.
He couldn’t have felt more like a bastard if he’d been the one enjoying the show back there in the bathroom. Not that he’d looked—liar!—at least not for long, and certainly not on purpose.
He returned the damp towel to his bunk and fumbled the padlock off his pack. It would fit fine. Not particularly robust, but secure enough to slow Corby down, or anyone else who might take a shot at getting lucky. It would at least lend some warning they were busting in. Not that she could do much with that heads-up except to maybe yell the place down.
A little voice asked him whether she would be any safer with him holding the key…
In a few hours, he’d moved from minor physical contact to having seen her as God intended. Minus the bucket. She’d been scared, vulnerable, and stark naked, and to his shame he’d hardened up in that moment. Not a sterling recommendation of his character.
But he wasn’t here to win awards for chivalry, he told himself, shoving a kitchen chair out of the way as he passed through. You’re here to secure the shipment. There was a reason he’d been assigned this job, a reason he was working with men he couldn’t stand on a project that turned his stomach.
He was the best.
And the best should be able to multi-task. Get the assignment done while minimizing collateral damage. Human and otherwise.
He moved down the back stairs to the house, ignoring Corby’s surly regard.
As he stalked across the dusty, nighttime compound with her soggy clothes in his hands, he suppressed an unbidden mental picture. Not of her standing defiantly in the bathroom, her perfect, lush body dripping wet—although he’d keep that one handy for later. It was the image of her gazing up at him with bottomless brown eyes, pleading for someone to tend to those damn dogs.
Chapter Two
Clare spent the better part of the night painstakingly working two of the glass louvers loose from the aluminum slots in the window frame with bound hands. Years of fine dust, desiccated insects, and the occasional rain had glued them in hard. She’d waited until the moon was three quarters of the way across the sky, terrified every noise would bring one of the men, along with certain punishment.
The first louver was troublesome, but once she’d achieved one, she knew how to approach the others. She’d need to remove three, better yet four, in order to squeeze out through the window, and she’d have to do it in the small hours of the morning to ensure the men would be asleep but dawn wouldn’t be far off. The last thing she was equipped for was a barefoot dash through the pitch-black bush. Though it galled her to admit it, Alpha was right; a vehicle was the only way she was getting out of here safely. That left her with the ancient bakkie or the giant transporter. She’d drive either if she had to. But the keys were almost certainly with the men, and she had no clue how to hot-wire a vehicle even if she could get to it unseen.
The dust-glue gave a distinct crack as the fourth louver came free. She coughed belatedly to disguise the noise, and waited, her heart thumping, for the sound of approaching feet.
Nothing. Adrenaline fled her body fast as it had come, leaving her wobbly and breathless. She took her time, slowing her breathing. She’d been working hard to keep the fear at bay, channeling the natural chemicals pumping through her to keep her responses acute. She hadn’t wanted all that norepinephrine wasted on hysteria. Time enough for losing it later, once she was safe.
She eased the narrow pane of glass out of its housing as she had the other three and then carefully replaced it, surveying her progress. All four louvers looked unchanged despite now only sitting loosely in their housings.
The door lock rattled, and Clare’s heart exploded to action in her chest. She whirled around and lurched closer to the bed, crouching defensively. A moment later Alpha pushed through, dragging a chair and carrying a plate of steaming food. She failed miserably at not staring at it, but she’d be damned before she’d take one step toward it.
Or him.
Her stomach betrayed her by gurgling.
He held the food out. “You’re hungry.”
“You’re filth,” she spat back.
He smiled and set the bowl of stew on the lumpy mattress, then spun the chair into the corner to straddle it. “Here I was worrying you’d be traumatized from yesterday’s bathroom incident.”
His size, the way he owned the room just by being in it. It was compelling and infuriating all at once. “I might have been if it wasn’t so obvious.”
Twin creases appeared between his brows. “You think I set you up?”
“You think I can’t spot a good-cop, bad-cop routine when I see one?” Bravado came rushing up from somewhere welcome, deep inside.
His eyebrows lifted. Clare looked away. The relentless morning chorus of bush insects filled the uncomfortably long silence that followed.
“Eat.”
She glanced at the bowl he’d placed on the mattress, then back to him. “Aren’t you going to leave?” Her voice sounded every bit as vulnerable as she felt.
“Nope. Why, you hoping to tunnel out of here with your spoon?”
“I can’t. This shirt…” It may have been extra wide, but Alpha’s T-shirt barely covered her when she was standing. Sitting down respectably and eating with her hands bound was going to be a challenge. His eyes flicked to where the fabric ended, high on her thighs. They both knew she was naked beneath.
A sick feeling built in her stomach.
Wordlessly, he stood and then walked out of the room, leaving the door ajar. She knew better than to try to make a break for it—that was probably exactly what they wanted, running tended to excite predators—so she sat while he wasn’t watching. He was back within moments, and placed a neatly folded pile of clothes and some other items on the bed next to her.
Underwear! Might be an illusion, but the thin fabric was as welcome as chainmail. She vowed in that moment not to let it out of her sight again, no matter what. She picked up her green cotton tank-top, pressed it to her face and breathed in the scents of wild sage and morning. It practically choked her to do it, but she thanked him.
“I thought it better for everyone that you stay fully dressed.”
She would dress—the moment he wasn’t watching. For now she just laid her cargos across her naked thighs and looked at the other items he’d delivered—a crime novel, a pre-loved comb and a box of tampons. Her momentary optimism evaporated. The idea that she would be here long enough to finish a book or get her period…
Unthinkable.
His eyes drifted to the windows, and two new lines appeared between his brows. Was he trying to puzzle out what was different? Had he paid enough attention when he thrust her in here to notice? Her pulse hammered and she scrabbled for the first thing at hand.
“Crime novel,” she blurted to cover the screaming silence and distract him from her overnight handiwork. “Getting some tips?”
His gaze came back to her. There was almost warmth in it. “I thought a book might give you something to do with your time other than hatch crazy escape plans.”
She forced herself not to look at the windows and hunted around for something further to keep his attention diverted. She held up the tampons. “A full-service abduction, then?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “We keep them just in case.”
“Just in case you kidnap a woman at the wrong time of month?”
He locked eyes with her. “Just in case one of us gets shot. They fit bullet wounds perfectly.”
The dismal image snapped her back to reality. If she got out of here at all, who knew what she’d be escaping into? They could be in the middle of a war zone.
Her eyes went to the window. To the bush stretching to the horizon beyond the yard fence. “Where are we?”
&nb
sp; He sighed. “You’re not very good at following instructions are you?”
“Not a specific location. I just wondered about this place. It must have been somebody’s home once?” She looked around the old room.
“A lot of families have abandoned their farms. What does it matter who once lived here?”
“It’s less scary thinking ordinary people once had ordinary lives here,” she said. “That children grew up and…that good things might have happened here, too.”
Something indefinable flashed briefly behind his eyes but he said nothing more. She twisted away from his gaze, her mind tripping over its crowded thoughts. They must still be close to the border if Zambian farmers were fleeing their land. The couple of hours she’d spent squashed on the bakkie floor bore out that notion. They couldn’t be more than a hundred miles from where the convoy had crossed over from Zimbabwe.
Still a mighty big area, but thinking about concrete things like locations and crossings and distances gave her a boost. Just enough to keep her spirits up. She worked hard to look annoyed, knowing he wouldn’t believe half-warmed leftovers were bringing the excited flush she could feel glowing in her cheeks.
But he wasn’t buying it. Naturally.
“Do I need to remind you of the dangers you would face outside this compound?” He leaned forward. “I’m sure you know more than I do about African predators, since you were having afternoon tea with a truck full of them. But there’s also disease in this area—yellow fever, typhoid, malaria—all waiting for a defenseless, underdressed woman to happen past. What are you doing coming into Zambia so poorly prepared, anyway?”
Clare bristled under his condescending gaze. “Perhaps if you had also been kind enough to hijack my luggage I’d have a selection of clothing more to your liking. Would you care to see my list of inoculations?”
“You may have resistance to typhoid but you have no money, no vehicle, no passport, no visa, no weapons, no shoes, and no suitable clothing for days in the bush. I want to be sure you fully understand your predicament.”
“You doubt I’ve given thought to how much danger I’m in?” she shot back.
