Close Cover (Masters and Mercenaries #16)(49)

What the hell? She started to get to the floor to help him up.

“Hush, Ms. Daley,” an accented voice said from behind her as a gloved hand covered her mouth. A strong arm wound around her waist, keeping her upright. “We’re going on a little trip, you and I. Your friend is alive, but he doesn’t have to stay that way. Nod if you understand me.”

She went still. If she didn’t, this man would kill Linc.

She nodded.

“We’re going out this back door. I already have a car waiting for us and when we get where we’re going, we’ll have a nice chat, you and I. I don’t want to hurt a lovely young lady like yourself, but you have something I need. Now nod again if you understand me and you’re going to be a good girl. If not, I can knock you out, but then our talk will likely have to wait hours, and honestly I don’t love it here. I want to go home. You understand, yes?”

She nodded again.

“Good girl. This will all be over soon and we can both go back to our lives.” His voice was deep and it was clear from the thick accent he wasn’t from Texas. He was calm. She didn’t feel any panic from him, as though this was a normal part of his day. Kidnap the bartender. Check. Brush teeth. Check.

He started to walk her out of the office.

There was only a second or two that she was visible from the hallway, and then it was smooth sailing to the back. They were going out one of two entrances to the back of the building. Sean had recently put in this way for management to get into the offices without having to open the kitchen or the front. There was a small private lot he’d bought for parking.

It sucked that most of them took the bus or train because they lived close. As it was late, only Linc’s Jeep was sitting out in the small lot. And a nondescript sedan.

Damn, but they needed to tow people around here.

“I’m going to take my hand from your mouth now. If you scream, I’ll have to put you under.” He kept one hand around her waist. She stayed quiet for the moment. Closing time in the kitchen was always noisy. They would turn the music up and the sounds of pots and pans clanging would fill the air.

She wouldn’t shout if she thought no one would hear her. Not until she absolutely had to.

There was a beep and then the trunk to the sedan opened.

Her feet hit the cement and she realized what he was about to do. She dug her heels in. “No. No. Not the trunk.”

Not a dark cramped space she couldn’t get out of. No. Panic welled inside her and she could feel a scream threatening.

She heard someone shout. Maybe it was her. The sound curdled her blood and she was twelve years old again, being forced into the darkness. She couldn’t feel the concrete anymore. She was barefoot and the peeling linoleum of her “father’s” house poked at her skin. She’d tried so hard, fought so long, and she’d still gotten swallowed up. She couldn’t go in that room.

“Merda!” The man shoved her hard and she hit her head on the way in.

Lisa kicked out, not thinking about anything but staying in the light. She had to stay in the light. There were things in the dark, things that hissed and struck. Things that she had nightmares about, but they were real. The screaming wouldn’t stop and her knuckles hit metal as the trunk slammed shut.

She was alone in the dark again and she felt the moment her mind cracked and the nightmare began again.





Chapter Eight


Remy watched her walk away and felt something inside him break.

What the fuck had happened? One minute everything had been fine and the next she’d been telling him… Fuck, she’d said she loved him and wanted to go home with him.

He’d frozen. The idea of Lisa, sweet, beautiful, highly educated Lisa, in his backwater hometown had poleaxed him. She needed a man who could give her a big house and a reliable car. He would put everything he made into his business for years, potentially for the rest of his life. His mom-mom hadn’t had a cushy life with fancy clothes. She’d worked every day of her life. He could still remember how her hands had been rough from labor, how some of his New Orleans relatives had looked at her with distaste and offered to get her a manicure.

Had she been unhappy? He couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t smiling except the day his pop-pop had died. Then she’d wailed her mourning to the world. She’d been unashamed. She’d told him later that she hadn’t hidden her love for her husband. She wouldn’t hide her grief, and yet six months later she would talk to him like he was standing there with her.

A sudden memory hit him as clean and clear as the day it had happened. He’d stood in the room where his mom-mom had been lying in her bed, dying of cancer. He’d held her hand as the hospice nurse had given her pain medications and the light overhead had flickered and flared.

And he’d known. She passed an hour later, his hand in hers, but Remy had felt something infinitely warm cross through him and he’d known what it was. His pop-pop had come to take her home one last time.

What if he could offer Lisa that? What if all this shit about giving her a cushy life meant nothing if what he could give her was a life where he loved her with everything he had? Until the end and beyond. A life where he promised to come for her. To take her home. Forever.

Was he capable of that?

He didn’t know and he hated feeling this…stupid. He didn’t know what he wanted. He wanted to be different. He wanted the fucking world to be different. She’d worked hard to drag herself out of poverty. How could he drag her back into it?