“Well, I think my mother is still healthy and strong—she always was,” she said. “Hiking is one of her favorite things to do. When I was young, hiking in Mexico was all she’d ever talk about. She was a nurse, but I think she wanted to be an artist or art buyer of some sort. Whenever she came back from a trip, she’d have some random piece of jewelry or pottery to show for it that she’d found in some remote village, convinced she’d found the next great Mexican export.”
Zander snorted, but his gaze never left her face. “Sounds to me like she was smoking another great Mexican export, if she thought you guys were going to make it rich on pottery.”
“I know, right?” she said, shaking her head. “But that was Mom.” Her voice couldn’t shake the bitter note. “I think if she could figure out a way, she’d live here all the time.”
“A way that didn’t involve you financing it, you mean?” he said, and Erin’s lips twisted a bit.
“Something like that.” She glanced at her phone, then frowned. “Zander, it’s past nine o’clock,” she said, tension flooding her body as she sat up straight. “Why aren’t they here already?”
“Easy, there,” Zander said. “They could be stuck in traffic, they could be waiting for us to do something stupid. Or, they could be making sure no one else is watching.”
Erin’s eyes widened, but before she could speak, Zander reached out and held her hand with just a little too much force. “Relax, Erin. There’s no way they can see anyone but us, waiting here, just the way they told us to wait. And we’re going to continue waiting here, until we hear from them…or for another hour. Either way, your job is to hang tight, enjoy the lovely view of the parking lot, and relax.”
“But what does that mean?” she asked, genuinely confused. “What does that mean if they don’t show up? They have to show up. We’re doing everything right!”
Zander grimaced, sitting back as their waitress arrived with their juice glasses. He had hoped like hell the drop would go smoothly and the kidnappers wouldn’t dick around, but clearly, that had been too much to ask. Erin was trying to keep her shit together, but as the hour wore on, her breathing got more shallow, her glance more skittery every time a truck drove by the building, or a car door slammed. He watched her for signs of melting down, but mostly she was just…angry. Angry and scared and no doubt wondering what the hell she was doing down here, gutting her savings and putting herself at risk for a woman who showed up so infrequently that Erin didn’t even know whether or not she was breathing without a ventilator.
He knew he was one to talk. He and his dad had never exactly been poster children for Family of the Year. But he’d had his mom. His brothers and sisters. Erin didn’t even have a dog.
And yet here she was, halfway across the country and a world away from her comfort zone, about to throw her life savings away because her mother and some random jackwit had gotten themselves into trouble. Even more insane, Erin seemed remarkably not freaked-out about this fact. Resigned, yes. But not surprised. How many times had her mother pulled this shit in the past? Not to this degree, of course. Not to this level of crazy. But clearly, this wasn’t her first rodeo.
“They’re not coming.” Erin’s voice was almost toneless, and Zander looked up, following her gaze out to the parking lot. Nothing moved on the blazing-hot concrete, not even the breeze. Zander checked his watch: 9:35.
“Why don’t you brief me on what you know about this boyfriend guy while we’re waiting,” he said, gratified to see her gaze swing back to him, even though he didn’t like the haunted look her eyes carried. Disappointment and bleak acceptance were now overtaking the fear, and Zander fought a grimace of his own. Even when she got kidnapped, Erin’s mom managed to let her daughter down.
“The boyfriend is Mike—no last name. I don’t know what he does for living, if anything, or even how long he’s been in the picture. Mom seems to go through boyfriends kind of quickly.” Erin’s lips twisted. “I’m not even sure how long she was with my dad.”
“And the last you actually talked to your mom before this was…?”
Erin shrugged. “Four or five months—no, eight. It was before Christmas. She wanted to make sure I didn’t call checking on her over the holiday, because I was her excuse for leaving work for a few weeks. She’s now a home-healthcare nurse…somewhere. In Virginia, I forget where.”
Zander nodded, trying to keep his anger in check. What sort of mother didn’t call her own daughter on Christmas but warned her ahead of time that she was going to skip town and needed an alibi?
They talked for a few minutes more before he checked his watch again: 9:55. Erin was right. They weren’t coming. But that didn’t mean the kidnappers weren’t watching them, and he wanted to make a show of good faith. He readied himself for another conversational topic, anything to keep Erin distracted. “So tell me about—” He broke off as Erin’s phone rang. She lurched for it, but Zander covered it with his hand first.
“Take it slow, Erin. Know that they’re just trying to fuck with you. Keep to the fact that you did everything they asked of you, but that now you’re convinced that they’re just going to kill your mom, anyway. That you might as well go home.”
“What?” Erin looked at Zander as if he had three heads. “Are you crazy?”
“Just see what he says.” Zander took his hand off the phone and Erin snatched it up.
“Hello? Hello!” she cried, her distress seeming completely unfeigned. “I’m right here, I’m right where you told me to be. Why aren’t you here?”
The plaintiveness in her voice was not at all part of the act they’d discussed, but Zander lifted his brows. Erin was playing the role of good daughter with impressive conviction. Maybe under all of that anger toward her mother, there was still the chance for something else. A chance for them to come together, to heal the rift between them. Erin’s mother was no prize but…she was alive. That trumped dead any day. You couldn’t apologize to a dead parent. And they couldn’t apologize to you.
“Look, I don’t believe you,” Erin’s words interrupted his thoughts, and now she was on script, her stress palpable. “Not at all. There’s no way you’re going to let my…parents go free and I might as well just pack up my money and go home.” The man started talking and Erin shook her head vigorously, impressing Zander with the steel in her voice. “No! No, I said I’m not going to meet you somewhere strange and now—especially now, I can’t even believe a word you’ve said. Why didn’t you—oh, that’s complete bullshit! Your lookout told you wrong, there are no cops anywhere and it’s just me and my boyfriend and the waitress here, and she would be the oldest undercover cop in the history of the force, so—what?”
Erin’s eyes slid to his. “Tonight, huh?” she said, her voice heavy with disbelief. “And where is that?” Another pause. “The Playa del Sol?” Her eyes widened and Zander frowned. He’d heard of the place, he was sure of it. “A block from the hotel.”
At that, Zander gave a single sharp nod and Erin blew out a breath, running a hand through her hair. “Okay, okay, fine. What time?” She stared at him. “Yes,” she said, without asking Zander’s opinion. “Six P.M. would be perfect. Would be great. That’s perfect, yes, that’s—” She gave a little jerk, then set the phone down, and shot Zander a sheepish look.
“Six P.M.,” she said flatly. “At the Playa Del Sol.” She shook her head, as if not believing her own words. “This will all be over tonight.”
Chapter 19
Erin and Zander didn’t speak after that but paid their waitress and walked the short distance to the bar the kidnappers had designated, just to check it out. It was closed at ten A.M., but it looked credible enough, with fresh paint on the front and a carefully painted sign. The street was well traveled and, as promised, the Playa del Sol was only about a block from their hotel.
“We’ll tell the front desk we’re checking out late today,” Zander said as they walked back to the Camino Real. “No use just cooling our heels someplace else in the ci
ty.”
Erin nodded. Since the stop-start of the aborted hostage handoff, Zander had become as prickly as razor wire. She supposed she wasn’t helping that, clutching him the way she was, but she couldn’t help herself. She didn’t let him break free from her grasp until they got back inside their room, but Zander stayed close beside her even then, dialing his phone as soon as the door settled shut behind them. “Reymundo, my man!” he said brightly, and Erin looked up at him, surprised at the change in his voice. “Yeah, we noticed that. Did they even make the attempt? No? Not so good.” Rey was talking at a rapid-fire pace, and Zander nodded. “Agreed. Yes. Six o’clock, Playa del Sol. Yeah? Well, our lucky day, then, isn’t it.” Another nod. “I look forward to it, my man.”
He disconnected, and glanced down at Erin, finally seeming to unwind a notch. “All right, it sucks that we have to keep playing this game, but Rey knows the place and he thinks it’s a good location, too. Safe and pretty public, though it doesn’t officially open until later in the evening. We should be in and out of there, no problem. Still, since we’ve got some time on our hands, tell me this: Self-defense—have you had any training at all?”
“Well, define training,” Erin said. “I’ve had a few classes, but with my size, my best options seem to be run, scream, or my preferred combination of run and scream. I’m also a fan of your suggestion to carry a whistle with me everywhere. Even with a good swift kick to the balls, or a stiletto to the instep, I don’t apparently have enough mass to really make a difference in super-ninja hand-to-hand combat.”
Zander considered that. “Well, I’m not showing you how to shoot a gun,” he said. “Not now. Maybe when we get back, but we’ve got hours here, not days. That’s not going to help you.” He walked around her, almost as if considering her for the first time. “Man, you really are small.”
“Hey!” Erin said, not sure if she should be affronted. “You used to like small just fine.”
“Oh, I’m a big fan of small,” Zander agreed, a grin playing around the corners of his mouth. “But now I need you to think big. He held up his two fingers. “See this? Show me yours.”
Erin frowned at him. “Um, okay.” She held up her fingers in a vee, frowning as Zander bent his fingers at the knuckles so that they formed a tight, two-fingered, vee-shaped stump.
“Do that,” he instructed, and she obligingly bent her fingers down.
“Um, this is kind of awkward.”
“Just go with it. Now, take your other hand and touch right here. Don’t press hard.” He indicated a place on his throat, beneath his Adam’s apple, right where the clavicles came together. Erin frowned at him but did as he asked, wincing as her fingers found the sensitive spot on her own neck.
“Okay, that actually hurts even when I’m not pressing hard,” she said, palpating the small bump.
“It should,” Zander said. “It’s where your vocal cords are located. Now come here—no, no, keep your fingers bent.”
Frowning, Erin approached Zander with her hand cramped into the correct position, mistrust evident in her gaze. Her nervousness increased when he angled her arm up, bending it at the elbow, her equally bent fingers now positioned directly over his vocal cords. “You’re not strong, and you’re not big. But understand that if you need it, with enough force, this move can kill someone. Let me guide you.” He pushed her arm back, then extended it fully, so that her knuckles dug into the tender spot above his collarbone at the base of his neck. “It’s just a jab, but it’s the hardest jab possible, okay? You gotta imagine that you’re shoving your two knuckles all the way to the back of the guy’s neck. That’ll fracture his vocal cords.”
“Fracture them!” Erin exclaimed, and Zander nodded.
“Fracture them. So you have to hit it hard. When vocal cords get fractured, they swell. When they swell, it cuts off the attacker’s breathing and he dies. It takes a few minutes, but in the meantime he’s wheezing his guts out, and you can get away.” His smile was grim, but his eyes were steady. “Unless you’re James Bond, no attacker is going to worry about killing you when he’s choking to death.” He positioned her arm again. “Now try it.”
“Zander—”
“Try it. Just go easy, you know.” He cracked a smile. “Not too hard on ol’ voice box.”
He had her attempt the move while they were standing, in a struggle where she broke free for only a moment, and while Zander was on his back and side. Then he positioned a few pillows on the bed and had her climb up on those, punching them with all her strength until her arm was sore. When he finally called it off, Erin still wasn’t sure. “I don’t know that I’ll have the kind of leverage I need to get a really good punch in,” she said, and Zander held up a finger.
“Jab. Not a punch. A jab is a move that is tight into your body, then out. And honey, I’m hoping you don’t have any need for this move, regardless. But you can remember it, right?”
She grimaced. “I certainly remember what it does.”
“That’s my girl.” Zander fell onto the bed beside her, breathing out a heavy sigh as he turned to her.
“What?” she asked. Her heart gave a funny little sidestep, which had nothing to do with the exertion of defending herself against pillows, and everything to do with the way he was watching her. There wasn’t heat in his gaze, not exactly, but there was a depth of emotion that reminded her of long summer days and naps on the beach, of Zander watching her with total absorption.
Now he smiled a little, nodding to her. “So I was about to ask you a question, when we finally got that call this morning. And I find I still want to know the answer. What do you do with your time these days, Erin Connelly, when you’re not off saving your mother in Mexico?”
She frowned at him. “What?”
“Your job. You have a job, right?”
“Of course I have a job. I have two of them. The brownstone and the art gallery.”
Zander’s brows lifted, and a smile teased at his mouth. “And what do you do at the art gallery? You show your own work there these days?”
Erin fixed her gaze on Zander’s face, her mind straying to her work for the first time since they’d left Boston. He had the most beautiful mouth, she realized. Not full or fleshy, but not bitten down and hard, like his father’s had been. It was sensuous, she decided. The kind of mouth that looked best done in oils, where the extra intensity of the pigment could give a hint of—
She shook herself. He’d asked her a question. “Art gallery,” she repeated. “No, I don’t show my work there yet, but my job is good…really good. I got it right after graduation, but I’d worked summers there while I was at school, so I knew everyone. I help curate the art as it comes in, contribute on the decisioning for what paintings we show, and work with the customers.” She smiled, realizing she was babbling but not quite able to stop herself. “We just put on a show of contemporary painters in the city that required a whole new method of staging the art, since some of them no longer confine themselves to canvases. They paint on bits of metal, wood, industrial scrap—it was a really powerful show.”
“But what about your own work?” he asked. “I seem to remember—you liked to do portraits, right? Painting people?”
“I did. I do,” Erin said, nodding. Something in her chest was threatening to give way, and she kept an inner hold on it. Zander was just being polite, trying to take her mind off what was happening in just a few hours, maybe even to help her ease off the adrenaline rush of the vocal-cord smashing technique. She didn’t disagree with the strategy but—
“So were your paintings in the show?”
“Oh, no.” Erin shook her head. “I’m not known at all in the community, Zander, and this show was for more established painters.”
He wrinkled a brow. “But how do you become established if you don’t get your work shown in the galleries?”
Erin felt a twinge of embarrassment at the question. “It’s partly my fault, I guess. I just haven’t taken the time to do a lot of painting once s
chool finished, and I need to have a body of work before any gallery will consider me—even my own. I started taking on boarders last year and…all of that just takes a lot of time.” That wasn’t the whole story, though. Something had been missing from her paintings for the past few years, something vital. She’d done well enough to finish her degree, to get passing notice and nice compliments, but no one was breaking down her door to buy her canvases. Her work just didn’t…inspire that kind of response. “I need to get back to painting in a serious way. I just haven’t,” she said.
His expression only got more confused. “But wait, isn’t painting what you really want to do? Isn’t that your dream?”
—
Zander reached up and pulled Erin down beside him, sighing with satisfaction as she half-sprawled on his chest. “You were too far away,” he said, and she laughed.
“Don’t talk to me about far away. You’re the one who works halfway across the world.”
“Nuh-uh-uh,” he said. “No changing the subject. You were talking about your paintings, and I want to know more.”
Erin shrugged against him. “There’s not much to tell. I have paintings, canvases. I have a whole portfolio of work. It’s what got me my degree.”
“But you don’t have enough of them to show?”
“Well, no,” she said. “And I’m not focused on that right now. I’ve been working a lot of hours. The brownstone needs some repairs done, and I may be losing one of my tenants.”
“Got it. And you think the brownstone is more important than your artwork?”
He could feel her frown even if he couldn’t see her. “I didn’t say that!”
“But what are you saying?” Zander rolled up onto his side, so they were facing each other. “The Erin I knew talked of nothing else other than getting her degree and hanging her paintings in galleries, business places, coffee shops, even private homes. She wanted to put them in hospitals and kids’ rooms, paintings of people that made other people stop and see themselves, see the ones they loved in the expressions of absolute strangers.”
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