Her mother—it was easier for Tash to call her by her first name, Sharon—had done some really stupid things back when she was in her raging alcoholic phase, before she’d settled into her current ongoing pattern of sobriety broken up by painful but blessedly brief and always remorseful relapses. But among the most stupid had been stealing tens of thousands of dollars from a violent and abusive ex named Dwayne who’d kidnapped Tash and her soon-to-be-Aunt-Mia to try to get his money back.
Tasha still had brilliantly clear memories of playing with Thomas at the edge of a pristine lake. Uncle Alan had taken them both to a friend’s cabin to hide, since Dwayne was looking for Tasha. Thomas had come along to help.
But somehow Dwayne had tracked them there.
Thomas, just a kid himself, had been no match for the man’s brass knuckles, and he went down hard from a punch to his face, hitting his head when he fell.
Somehow Aunt Mia had found Tasha—that part was a blur. But she clearly remembered sitting with Mia’s arms wrapped around her in the world’s dirtiest bathtub in the world’s grimiest bathroom, singing songs so that Uncle Alan and his SEAL friends could find and rescue them.
The SEALs had had use of some extremely powerful microphones and other high tech equipment. As far as the bathtub went, they were sitting there in hopes they’d be protected if and when bullets started flying.
But Tash and Mia had been rescued by the SEALs without any gunfire—which was the true Navy SEAL, covert-ops, super-stealthy way.
“That was... kind of a major thing that happened to you,” Thomas pointed out now, as they stood in the airplane hanger, waiting on their car. “Being kidnapped like that, in that kind of danger...?”
Tasha nodded. “Yeah, I just... It never came up and... Honestly, it was so long ago, I really barely remember it myself.” She caught herself. Truth be told, she’d had terrible nightmares about Dwayne for years. She’d honestly believed Dwayne had killed Thomas, leaving him bloody and unconscious as he threw her into the back of his car. “Okay, so that’s a lie. Sorry. I just... downplayed it all for years. Uncle Alan was so worried about me, and I just, you know, I’m fine. I had to pretend.”
Thomas nodded as he narrowed his eyes, but then he shook his head. “Actually, you didn’t. Have to pretend. It’s okay to ask for help.”
“I know, and... I really am fine now,” she said. And that was, absolutely, the truth. Years of hard work and therapy had paid off. It didn’t hurt that another crystal-clear memory was of the moment she’d finally returned home to find Thomas, battered but alive. She’d jumped into his arms.
“And yet your fiancé doesn’t know about...?” Thomas let his voice trail off.
“Ted’s not my fiancé.” Okay, that came out sounding a little too defensive, so she forced a smile to soften the words.
“Maybe not yet,” Thomas said. “But after you meet the royal mom and dad...?”
He was not entirely wrong. It was, however, going to take more than a week with Queen Wila to get her official approval. Ted had warned Tash about that. This game was gonna be a long one. She sighed.
“This week is only the first obstacle in an intricate course,” she told Thomas, attempting to turn it into a joke. “I’m pretty sure this is my version of BUD/S training, with a multitude of challenges—and probably more than one written test.”
He smiled, but she could tell he was still digging through her words, down to the reason she’d brought this topic up. “So if the prince doesn’t know that we’re friends, it’s Ms. Francisco, then. No, Tash or even Tasha. I’m just a random SEAL that Uncle Navy sent to keep you safe.”
She nodded, then cleared her throat. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all.” His answer fell off his gorgeous lips so easily, and the reassuring smile he used to punctuate it sparkled for a moment in his dark brown eyes.
So yeah. She believed him. Completely. He truly and honestly did not mind, at all.
He added, “But you really should tell Ted, even though you’re, you know, fine... I’m no expert in relationships, for sure, but... It seems like common sense, not to keep that kind of thing a secret, if you’re looking to build something permanent. Long-term. And if it’s Sharon you’re protecting, or... ashamed of?”
Tasha laughed. “Ted knows all about Sharon.”
“Apparently not all,” he pointed out, adding in a voice that was so gentle, it almost broke her. “I know a thing or two about being ashamed, Tash. Trying to keep things hidden means you gotta drag that shit around with you. Secrets only fester—nothing heals. But when you put it out there, in the sunshine, and say, Hey, this happened, and that child I was has learned and changed—grown stronger—because of it, or maybe even despite it. Then you leave all the shame behind, too, safely there in the well-lit past. You move on.”
He was right. She’d learned that, and believed it absolutely. But she knew Ted pretty well—and there were some things he’d never forgive. She just didn’t want Sharon to be one of them.
“Car’s ready.” The man who’d gone to make the arrangements for the ride to the ski lodge came back inside.
Thomas turned to pick up both of their bags, leaving Tasha to zip up her jacket and follow him out into the overcast early morning cold.
Chapter Four
Sunday
Tasha was a limp, sniveling mess.
After they’d stopped—a good twenty-five minute drive down the mountain from where Thomas had been attacked and she’d been abducted—her armed guards had left her in the backseat of the SUV, where she lay curled up and still softly sobbing.
She’d been handcuffed, but her hands weren’t behind her back. Clearly the men who’d taken her didn’t consider her to be any kind of a threat.
Which was exactly what she’d hoped they’d think.
At first she’d cried because she couldn’t help herself. She was scared to death for Thomas, who’d been left to die by her kidnappers—naked and unconscious and tossed into a ditch—many miles back up the mountainside.
She’d fought back hard at first, trying to get away and screaming her head off after the man in the brown jacket had hit Thomas—hard—with the butt of his rifle. But the man with the onion breath, the creeper who’d copped a feel when he’d first pulled her from the car, had slapped her so hard that she saw literal stars as she hit the road.
“Who are you? What do you want? Why are you doing this?” she tried to ask, but Onion Breath hit her again, growling, “Silence!”
It was then, while she was on the ground, head spinning with her breath knocked out of her, that she realized she couldn’t help Thomas if she was unconscious, too.
And as she released her anger and fear in a flood of tears, she was helped back to her feet by another man—this one wearing black boots—who was far more gentle with her. He shot Onion Breath a harsh, “What the hell, dude? She’s just a girl. You outweigh her by a hundred pounds.”
She’s just a girl.
From that moment on, Tasha knew that was her super-power. If she could get them to think that she was, indeed, just a girl, she might be able to use that to her advantage. It might make them lower their guard and slip up, which would allow her to get away.
And do what? Race back up the mountain to find Thomas?
Absolutely yes, if she could.
Or she could use her phone to call for help, assuming the problem with her cell service would eventually be fixed.
But that plan went out the window—literally—when Black Boots and Onion Breath and a man with a hat that had ear flaps shoved her back into the SUV, and did a hard youie in the road, driving back down the mountain with the truck and the van right behind them.
Onion was driving as Ear Flaps helped Boots rifle through both Tasha’s suitcase and her shoulder bag. It didn’t take long for them to find her phone—and throw it from the car window as they took a particularly perilous curve.
There was no way it had survived its crash course straight down the mountain,
but Tasha tried to make note of their location, just the same.
Big trees. Big cliff. Big curve in the road. Beat up guard rail with a dent and a pattern of rust that looked a little bit like a cow.
But they kept driving, and she tried—even while she kept up the weeping-girl facade—to mark the miles by silently counting, in hopes that she could use that information to help find Thomas, after she was rescued.
I promise, I’ll find you...
Thomas had said that to her, but she was the one who wasn’t unconscious, and this time she truly wasn’t a helpless little girl. She was the one who would find him.
She now lifted her head—and yes, the men who’d abducted her had, indeed, left her alone in the SUV. It was parked near a ramshackle cabin—pointing back out toward the main road, as if ready to make a quick escape if needed.
Someone had done something to the vehicle when they’d first arrived, opening the front hood of the SUV, and then slamming it shut—rocking the big car.
She’d curled there, still crying—but listening, hard, as she’d waited to be pulled out and dragged into that cabin. But Onion never came back to get her. Nor Ear Flaps. Nor Boots.
She was alone there, on that big back seat, as minutes continued to tick down.
There was a man standing guard about ten feet from the SUV. He was holding one of those big, nasty military assault rifles. The kind that belonged in a war zone, that people used to murder children in classrooms and people in movie theaters. But he was the only man out there—the only one, at least as far as she could see—and his back was to her as he watched the road.
She lifted her head to look again—and he still didn’t move.
Had it worked? Had she really convinced them she was helpless and useless and so absolutely not a threat that they’d left her essentially unattended?
Although, true, gun-man would hear if she opened the car door. There was no way to do that silently—or was there? She was for damn sure going to try.
But then, when she peeked up again, she realized with a jolt of shock that Onion had left the keys in the SUV.
They were right there. Right there, dangling from the ignition.
She peeked up and around at the back of the guard’s head, at the cabin, at the otherwise deserted yard, back at those keys...
And she launched herself up and over and into the driver’s seat, where she turned the key and jammed the SUV into gear and peeled out of the driveway, and roared back up the mountain, toward the resort—and Thomas.
A car was approaching.
Thomas heard it coming before he saw it—many twists and turns much further down the winding mountain road—still far enough away for him to be unable to tell the make or color.
It was alone—no vehicles behind it that he could see, at least—and it was moving fast, engine straining as it headed up toward him.
He had to make a choice. Hide, or step into the road to try to flag down the driver.
He was naked, he was bloody, he was in the middle of freaking nowhere, Maine, and oh yeah, he was Black, so hide it was gonna have to be.
But he was going to hide more with stillness than actual cover, using the power of light and shadow and his reconnaissance training to blend into the brush that was close to the edge of the tarmac. He parked himself toward the end of a stretch of relatively straight road where he’d have a good long look at the approaching vehicle—and as much of the driver and passengers that he could manage to see through the rain-sparkled windshield, considering light and shadow would be working against him, too.
His location was not as secure as it would be if he did a deep dive into the dense forest that was back about ten yards from the road. He’d be invisible there, but likewise the approaching car would be little more than a flash of movement to him as it passed.
And it was entirely possible that the vehicle—still moving way too swiftly for these dangerous roads—was some sort of security team backup, sent by the Queen to trace their route after he and Tasha had failed to arrive at the mountaintop compound.
It was hard to know for sure, since he still had no idea how long he’d spent unconscious. Were he and Tasha even missing yet?
The car was getting closer—the engine’s whine louder—so Thomas slowed his breathing and aimed his gaze toward the road’s distant curve where the vehicle would first appear. He’d have maybe three seconds, tops, to look, assess, and ascertain whether or not he should leap to his feet and attempt to stop it as it approached.
And he’d have just a few seconds after that to run for cover if he made a misjudgment and the car ended up belonging to the men who’d taken Tasha and nearly killed him.
Try to kill me once, shame on you. Try to kill me twice... Nope, I’m not that goddamn stupid.
And there it was. An SUV, similar to the one they’d climbed into at the airfield. Big. Black. Windshield wipers sweeping off the still-falling rain.
A single passenger inside—just one, the driver. Unless there were others in the vehicle, with their heads down.
A flash of...
Red hair...?
Thomas stood up, because holy shit, his eyes plus the waning light hadn’t played a trick on him. That was, absolutely, Tasha behind the SUV’s steering wheel.
He stepped—just a little—into the road, arms up and out, trying to make himself the largest, most visible target possible.
He knew when she saw him, because she hit the brakes. Hard. The SUV’s tires grabbed the road as she skidded past him to a stop, leaving long streaks of rubber behind her.
She immediately scrambled out and ran toward him as she called his name. “Thomas! Oh my God! Are you okay?”
“How the hell did you—” He was already running toward her, too, meeting her halfway in an awkward embrace because, shit, he was bloody. And, oh yeah, he was naked. Also, she wasn’t exactly leaping into his arms to be rescued. No, despite the handcuffs on her wrists—some fool had cuffed her hands in front of her, thank God, or she wouldn’t’ve been able to drive—she clearly thought she was rescuing him. She tried to support his weight by pulling his arm across her shoulders as she led him toward the passenger seat of her car.
She didn’t let him finish his question, either. “Get in! Quick! They’re behind us.”
“I got this,” he said as he reached to open the SUV’s door, and she ran around the vehicle and pulled herself behind the wheel. “Go, but no one’s behind you.”
“They must be.” She gunned the engine and accelerated back onto the road, still heading up the mountain as he tried to make sense of this. “I didn’t exactly make a stealth getaway.”
The clock on the dash read 1:47 PM. So he hadn’t been out for that long—and they were still about an hour from when they should’ve arrived at the resort. It was only after they failed to show up that they’d officially be missing and an alarm would go out.
Tasha glanced at him and reached to crank the heat. “God, you must be freezing. My sweatshirt’s still in the back. How bad is it?”
He turned to look, and saw that her entire suitcase was still back there—open, with the contents spilling out. His bag, however, was gone, and with it his medical kit. Damnit. As a hospital corpsman, he felt almost as adrift without his medical kit as he did as a SEAL without a weapon.
Tasha’s sweatshirt, though, was a hoodie. It was huge and warm-looking. It was pink, of course, bearing the words “Impolite Arrogant Woman.” He grabbed one of her T-shirts—it was soft and gray and said Nope—to dry himself off as best as he could after putting that sweatshirt on his lap. Not that being naked in front of Tasha Francisco was even close to being the worst of his problems right now.
“Do you have your phone?” he asked.
“They took it,” she informed him as she took the next series of tight curves like a professional race car driver. He would’ve expected no less from her. “Along with my laptop. And all your things.”
“I don’t suppose you have an extra pair of jeans
in here, in my size?”
“Best I can do is pajama pants with a drawstring belt,” she answered. “They’re red. Plaid.”
Of course they were. Thomas found them easily. They were flannel, but they were thin. Still, anything was better than sitting here bare-assed. Assuming he could get them up his XL legs.
“I stole them from Ted,” she told him as if reading his mind. “And he’s tall and jacked, too, so they should fit. There’s also a pair of slipper socks in there. They’re pink. And fuzzy. Your feet must be freezing. And God, your head... Thomas, you’re still bleeding.”
Shit, yeah, he still was. The tee he’d been using as a towel was ruined. He used it to dry off his feet. “Sorry. I’ll try my best not to get any blood on your sweatshirt, but—”
“I don’t care about my sweatshirt,” she told him hotly. “I care about your head. Where they hit you. How bad is it? Do we need to find a hospital?”
She was serious—like it was merely a matter of making the choice to stop and get medical aid. Nah, Princess, let’s stop at the next Starbucks, instead. It’s nothin’ a good latte won’t fix... But he didn’t say that, because it suddenly occurred to him...
“Are you okay?” he asked, even as he reached up, wincing as he touched the place on his head where he’d been hit. There was a lump, and it was definitely sore and bruised, but as far as he could tell the brunt of the bleeding was from a relatively superficial scrape. “They hurt you?”
Tasha shook her head.
“You lying?” he asked as he pulled on the red plaid pants, tying the drawstring around his waist, then finally getting the hoodie up and over his head. “Cause I’d like you to put a little voice to that no.”
“No,” she said, not just giving him that, but putting her words into a full sentence, too. “They did not hurt me. Nor did they tell me what they wanted or why they... you know...”
King's Ransom: (Tall, Dark and Dangerous Book 13) Page 4
