Loaded: A Bad Boy Romance (7 page)

I
sit
on that damn couch all day. It turns out being kidnapped and held hostage is a little like airplane travel: long periods of boredom, of
waiting
, punctuated by short bursts of intense stress. Only more so.

I pick
Die Hard
, and then Alex picks
The Fast and the Furious
. I’m bored to tears of watching movies, but the only other thing to do is read, and I’m too sleep-deprived and rattled to concentrate on a book.

“I’ve got that car,” Alex says, suddenly.

“What car?”

“The charger,” he says, nodding at the screen.

“Which one’s the charger?” I ask.

He looks at me.

“Seriously?” he says.

“I’m not a car person, really,” I say.

“The charger is a major plot point in this movie,” he says. “It’s one of the stars. They mention it like a thousand times.”

I look back at the screen.

“Is it that one?” I ask, pointing at some character’s red car.

“Oh my god, Tessa,” he says.

“Yellow?” I ask.

“You’re killing me.”

“The black one?”

“
Finally
,” he says, and looks over at me with a teasing grin. “I bought it after my first big bonus.”

“You get bonuses?” I ask. I’m only half-watching the movie. It’s a bunch of people driving cars really fast, and then there’s some plot thrown in.

“I did a big job, so I got paid extra.”

“What kind of job?”

Earlier I was fishing for info, trying to find something that I could use to help the police track him down later, but now I’m just making conversation for lack of something better to do.

“I coordinated a trade,” he says.

“Guns for cocaine?” I guess.

“Cotton candy for puppies,” he says.

I have no idea what that means, and I look at him, frowning.

“Is that like... drug slang?” I ask.

Alex grins. Then his grin becomes a laugh as he looks at me, and I’m increasingly bewildered.

“No,” he finally says. “It was a joke, because I’m not telling you what the trade really was.”

“Oh,” I say, feeling like an idiot. I turn back to the movie.

“Sorry,” he says.

“I’m not really
hip
to the drug slang,” I say. He laughs and it’s hard not to feel pleased. “I did coke once in college, though.”

“Just once?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Coke’s expensive, and I thought my heart was going to explode, so I prefer to just get high on
life
.”

“I’ve done it more than once, but I’ve never been a fan,” he says. “Too many people fuck their lives up for that shit.”

On screen, two men are gunning their engines at each other and making serious faces. I haven’t been paying enough attention to this movie to know who they are.

“What’s your deal?” I ask, my eyes still on the screen.

“My deal?”

I glance at him from the corner of my eye, and he’s just looking at me, his perfect face closed. I can’t quite articulate what I’m trying to ask, so I give it up.

“Never mind,” I say.

There’s a long stretch of silence, and I start getting mad at myself.

You’re not friends
, I tell myself.
And doing what you did at the wedding doesn’t make you lovers, either.

You’re kidnapper and kidnapped.

He isn’t forgetting that and you shouldn’t either.

“I grew up in a dangerous place, and I have a dangerous job for a dangerous organization,” he says, his voice low and serious. “And I’ve survived it longer than a lot of people I knew. That’s my deal.”

“Does that make you dangerous?” I ask.

That’s the thing: I’m not an idiot. I watched him beat someone to a pulp, and I have no doubt that he’d kill someone in a heartbeat.

I
know
he’s not a nice person. Nice people don’t
kidnap others
.

But in spite of everything I know about this man, it doesn’t
feel
dangerous to be around him. If anything, it feels oddly safe.

I’ve got Stockholm Syndrome
, I think.

“Danger is my middle name,” he says, trying to lighten the mood again.

“I thought it was Felipe.”

“Good memory, tiger.”

I roll my eyes, but a prickle travels down my spine as I remember him
growling
those words into my ear.

“I forgot the rest,” I admit.

“Everything but my first name was a lie anyway,” he says.

I look at him, skeptical.

“I doubt your real name is Alex,” I say. “Or Alejandro, or whatever.”

On screen, two cars scream down a straight stretch of road. I have no idea who I’m supposed to be rooting for.

“I swear on my life it’s true,” he says.

“Why would you tell me your
real
name?” I ask.

He crosses his feet on the coffee table and goes silent. After a long moment, I turn my head from the screen and realize he’s looking at me.

“What?” I ask.

“You really want to know?” he asks. “Or you just gonna get mad again?”

“Tell me and we’ll find out,” I say.

“I thought I could get you in bed before I had to nab you,” he says. “I didn’t want you screaming some other fucker’s name.”

It’s weirdly possessive, and it’s
hot
, but it also makes my stomach turn. I don’t need the reminder of what I was dumb enough to do with him, so I stand from the couch and take my soup bowl into the kitchen, even though it’s only ten feet away.

“You kidnap me and leave a man for dead in a parking lot, but you didn’t want me getting your name wrong?” I ask. “That’s a weird place to draw the line.”

“I didn’t want you thinking someone named
Brent
made you come as hard as you did,” he says, his voice low, barely audible over the TV.

I look out the window over the sink, trying to get the wild beating of my heart under control. He’s not wrong, and that’s the worst part: that, for
years
to come, probably, I’m going to be fantasizing about the man who kidnapped me.

Trauma makes people do insane things
, I think.
It’s not really me who feels this way
.

“Would you feel better if I told you it was a lot harder than I thought it would be?” he asks.

“If what was harder?” I say, still not looking at him. “Getting my panties off?”

“You don’t give it up easy, tiger,” he says.

I look over my shoulder, hands gripping the counter, bowl forgotten in the sink. He’s stretched out, feet on the coffee table, hands behind his head. The end credits are playing on the TV.

“That says a lot more about the women you’re used to than it does about me,” I say.

He just laughs.

“Maybe,” he says. “I think it’s my charm and my good looks.”

“So you’re used to teasing girls about being drunk until they fuck you?”

I can hear him getting off the couch, and my spine goes rigid.

“It worked on you, didn’t it?”

“We didn’t fuck, did we?” I say.

“Were you going to say no?” he asks. I hear him taking the tape out of the VCR.

“Not until you shoved me into a car,” I say. “That’ll change a girl’s mind pretty quick.”

“It doesn’t have to be a deal breaker,” he says. “You just let me know, tiger. You’ve got an open invitation to
la casa del Escorpión.
”

I don’t believe for one second that anyone calls him ‘The Scorpion.’

“I’ll pass, thanks,” I say. “The first time didn’t end so well for me.”

“I thought it ended pretty well,” he says. “On the other hand, I had blue balls for an hour.”

“Sorry I didn’t give you a reach-around in the kidnap car,” I say sarcastically.

“It’s okay,” he says, his voice totally serious.

I roll my eyes, knowing that he’s just trying to make me angrier.

It’s working.

“I guess I was just upset about getting fingered as part of my own kidnapping plot,” I say. “That’s something they never warn you about in school, you know. I thought I might get herpes or something, not seduced into getting kidnapped.”

He’s silent, and I like that least of all. I turn my head and he’s standing, in front of the snowy TV screen, staring at me.

I stare back.

Without speaking, he walks to the chair where his tuxedo jacket is hanging. He reaches into one pocket and then the other, and he finally comes out with something in his hand.

Then Alex walks over to me, his eyes dark and flashing. He grabs my arm and jerks me until I’m facing him, and I yank my arm from his grip.

He holds up the vial.

“Are you threatening me?” I ask. I feel threatened as hell, but I don’t think I have anything to lose at this point.

“This is enough rohypnol to knock you out for twelve hours. I was supposed to stick this in your drink, wait until it started working, then pretend to be the gentleman walking a drunk girl to her car,” he says, his blue eyes boring into mine.

“So you’re a prince for not giving me roofies,” I say, because I’ve never known when to shut my mouth. “Is that what you want to hear?”

“No,” he says. “I don’t want to hear anything. I just want you to know that I was supposed to drug you and then shove you into a car and let someone else bring you up here while you were passed out.”

I get the message, loud and fucking clear.

“And you didn’t want some other man to take what you thought was yours,” I spit out. “So you beat that guy up and brought me here yourself, and now you’re telling me that you can drug me into putting out any time you want.”

I
know
that I should shut my goddamn mouth, but I’m shaking with fury, an earthquake rattling through my very core. He’s got every single advantage right now: he’s bigger, he’s stronger, he’s got the weapons and the way out.

But he can
not
make me shut my mouth.

“You think
that’s
what I’m saying?” he asks, and the vial disappears into his fist.

He grabs my arm again, and then he’s hauling me out the door, down the three wobbly steps in front of the hours, and we’re standing out on the hard desert dirt. I’m barefoot but his shoes are still on.

The wind is strong out here, and it whips my long dress around his legs as he stalks a few paces in front of me.

Then he turns and holds the vial up again, like he’s demonstrating something, and then he throws it to the ground, raises his foot, and stomps on it.

He stomps and stomps until it’s in a zillion little pieces, but now he’s really getting into it, kicking at the spot until the white powder and glass shards are combined with the light brown desert dirt.

Finally, he stops. He’s breathing hard, and one extra button of his shirt’s come undone, tattoos peeking out, and he just
looks
at me.

“
That’s
what I’m saying,” he says at last. “I’m saying I’m not going to drug you, and anyone who tries is gonna have a long,
hard
talk with me first.”

Then he walks back into the safe house, closing the door behind him, and I’m alone outside in the desert, not quite sure what just happened.

I
think
he just said he was going to protect me, but that can’t be right.

I cover my face and take a deep breath and remind myself that men who kidnap women for gangs probably aren’t the most sane of people. After another breath I open my eyes and look down.

The winds scatters the dust a little more, until I can barely see where the vial was at all.

I turn around and take in the scenery. I’m surprised he left me out here alone, and for a moment, I wonder if I should run.

I can’t even
see
another building, though. It’s the house, me, the fence, and the SUV. I try the door of the SUV, but it’s unsurprisingly locked, so I walk around the house once.

The scenery doesn’t really change: hard packed dirt under my feet. A line of mountains to the east and, further away, to the west, and the rest of the horizon is long, flat, featureless desert. Probably longer than I could walk before I died of dehydration.

The sun is lowering over the mountains to the west. It’s beautiful, and I wish I could actually appreciate it.

I turn, walk up the steps to the house, and push the door open. Alex is washing out our lunch dishes, and he turns his head to look at me. I swallow.

“Want to watch
The Princess Bride?
” I ask.

He nods.

“Okay.”

I
have
no idea who put this movie in the safe house. It sure as hell wasn’t me. I’ve never seen it before, and to be honest, I’m barely seeing it now.

It’s been about thirty-six hours since I last slept. I’ve stayed awake for much, much longer, but it’s always right about now that I start to get a little jumpy, a little irrational.

Tessa’s not helping matters, and sitting on the couch with her, pretending to watch this movie, I get pissed at Andres all over again.

It was supposed to be
him
here, watching her and making sure she stayed a hostage, not me. I was just supposed to be the bait, the guy who could get into a fancy wedding unnoticed.

But now it’s the two of us, and she’s goading me on, making me do dumb shit like smash that vial outside.
Just
so she knows I’d never drug her and do anything.

No more dumb shit
, I tell myself.
She’s just some hostage, and you’re going to keep her safe and then give her back to her dad once he capitulates
.

It doesn’t matter how much you want to fuck her
, I think.
There are a thousand better girls back in Los Angeles. Keep your dick in your pants for once
.

I check my disposable burner cell phone again. I’ve got one bar of service, but no missed calls or messages, so I slide it back into my pocket.

I just want this to be
over
already, but I’m starting to think that this one could drag on. It’s always the quiet ones, the ones who wear glasses and listen to Fleetwood Mac, that end up being the difficult nuts to crack.

Three-quarters of the way through the movie, my stomach growls loud enough for Tessa to look over at me in surprise.

“Sorry,” I apologize. “You hungry?”

“I could eat,” she says. “I’m barely paying attention to this movie.”

“Me either,” I admit.

“I’ve seen it a million times,” she says. “It was my favorite when I was a kid.”

“You don’t seem like the kind of person who’d be into a movie called
The Princess Bride
,” I say, and she frowns a little.

“Have you ever seen it?” she asks.

I shake my head. She nods, like this explains something.

“It’s a lot better than its title would suggest,” she says. “It’s pretty funny.”

I look at the screen again. The blond guy is doing something heroic.

“You want dinner?” I ask.

“Sure,” she says, and I get off the couch and head into the kitchen. Tessa turns the movie off and I hear the VCR rewinding.

Of
course
she would rewind a tape.

“You like pasta?” I ask. The options here are limited to things that last for months in the cabinet: dried pasta, jarred sauce, tuna fish, mac and cheese, cans of soup and vegetables. There are a few big plastic jugs of juice and a six-pack of beer, but none of that is particularly appealing at the moment.

“Sure,” she says. She takes the tape out of the VCR and stands there for a moment, looking around.

“You’re sure there’s not a closet full of games or something somewhere?” she asks.

“I’m sure,” I say. “This house doesn’t get used a lot. Besides, most of my colleagues are happy to watch
Scarface
ten times in a row while they’re here.”

Finally, she pulls something off the bookshelf, and I hear her sigh.

“You want to do a crossword puzzle?” she asks. “I’m bored out of my
mind
.”

I crouch down, open a cabinet, and find a big pot.

“I hear that all the time,” I say, putting it in the sink and filling it with water. “I got kidnapped, and now I’m
so bored
.”

She half-laughs.

“I need to do something to keep my mind off the situation,” she admits. “The other option is sitting here, thinking about how
fucked
I am until I lose my mind.”

I’ve played a
lot
of video games in situations like this, bunkered down in some house.

“I get it,” I say. “Crosswords it is.”

She leans over the kitchen island. There’s already a pencil in the book, and she flips it open.

“Okay,” she says. “What’s the longest river in Europe?”

I have no fucking clue. The Nile? The Amazon?

Neither of them are in Europe, stupid
, I remind myself.

“How many letters?” I ask.

“Five,” she says.

I stare at the water flowing into the pot, then shut off the water. I can’t think of a single river in Europe, let alone the longest one.

For a second I feel like I’m back in school, because this feels so familiar: my brain shutting off the moment I need something from it. I’m not stupid, or at least, I don’t
think
I am. But I’m terrible at book learning.

Street smarts, on the other hand? I’ve got more than enough of
those
.

“No idea,” I say.

“I think it’s either the Volga or the Rhine,” she says, tapping the eraser against the open book. “I had to learn this for AP European History in high school, but that was
years
ago now.”

I’ve never taken a single advanced class in my life. I don’t think my high school even offered them.

“Sounds right,” I say.

She moves on. I get a couple of clues, mostly the ones about movies, and I boil pasta in one pot and heat up jarred pasta sauce in the other as she slowly fills in the grid, mostly by herself.

It’s oddly domestic, like something a couple on a sitcom would do. Not that we’re a couple.

There’s a jar of cayenne pepper in the cabinet, and I hold it up.

“You mind spicy?” I ask.

A shadow of a retort flicks across her face, and then she sees the pepper.

“Not at all,” she says, her face relaxing.

I want to say something else, make some joke about how much heat she can take, but then I remember:
she’s just a hostage, and your job is to keep her safe until she goes back to her dad
.

I nod once, then turn around and sprinkle it into the pasta sauce.

A
fter dinner
, the sun’s gone down and we’re sitting at the table. My button-down white shirt looks like hell, and her one-shouldered dress is dusty and the skirt’s torn in a couple of places. The one thing this house doesn’t have is more clothes. There are
shelves
for clothes, but it seems like whoever stocked the place just skipped that part.

Tessa’s frowning at the puzzle, her lips moving.

“Oh!” she says at last, furiously erasing something. “‘Baseball jewel’ is
diamond
.”

“Makes sense,” I say, wondering what else we could have thought it was.

“Finished,” she says, and holds the puzzle up for me to see.

I give her a thumbs up, and we both look around the house for a moment.

Tessa bites her lip.

“Any news?” she says, brightly. Too brightly.

I just shake my head.

“Do you get enough signal here for something to come through?” she asks, leaning on one hand. “I mean, should you go somewhere else that might get better reception, and check, or something?”

“I get a couple bars,” I say. “I just haven’t heard yet.”

She looks at the table and then nods once, perfunctorily.

“Got it,” she says, and I can tell she’s trying to hold her emotions in check, at least in front of me. She spins the pencil around a few times, not making eye contact, and then speaks up again.

“Do you mind if I shower?” she asks. “I know there’s no clean clothes, but I’m pretty disgusting.”

I look at her for a long moment, because I don’t really trust her alone. She’s
determined
to keep trying to escape if it kills her, more than anyone else I’ve ever met.

Plus, I was dumb enough to crush that vial in front of her, and now she knows I don’t want to hurt her.

Fucking idiot
, I think at myself one last time.

“Sure,” I say. “I gotta check the bathroom first, though.”

I walk in and she follows me, leaning against the door frame, arms folded. There’s nothing in there weaponizable: soap, tiny shampoo and conditioner bottles, three towels. A shower curtain.

“Go for it,” I say. “Five minutes, and then I start assuming you’re in there fashioning a gun from toilet pieces.”

“Seven?” she says. “I have a lot of hair.”

“Usually I make people leave the door open,” I say. “Five.”

I hold up five fingers and close the door. Once the water starts in the shower, I go outside quickly, holding my burner cell phone up toward the sky.

What if she’s right?
I think.
Maybe there just isn’t enough signal around here.

Maybe Manny’s been calling and calling, and we could just go home right now. This could all be over
.

I feel a twinge of disappointment at the thought and brush it away. The signal out here is no better than it was inside. No calls, no messages.

That’s odd, but nothing major. Sometimes it takes a day to convince people that we’ve really got their kid. There could be a million reasons I haven’t heard yet.

But parents always come around when it’s about their kids’ lives. Every single time.

Tessa will be fine.

I give her seven minutes in the shower before I knock on the door, though.

“One more minute!” she shouts, but I open the door anyway.

Steam rolls out as I stick my head it, and I can just barely see her shadow behind the curtain. Her dress is hung over the towel rack.

“Come on,” I say.

The curtain rustles, and then she sticks her head out, shampoo still in her hair, shower curtain clutched to her body.

“I told you, I have a lot of hair,” she says, green eyes glittering with irritation.

I force myself to stop thinking about the fact that she’s naked behind that curtain, even as I can feel my dick begin to wake up.

“Hurry it up,” I say, and back out, shutting the door.

I put our dinner dishes in the sink and stare at the window, determined to get myself under control. The sun’s gone down, so all I can see is my own reflection: a glowering man with black hair in a dirty white shirt.

You do not have sex with hostages
, I think at my reflection in the window.

And, for fuck’s sake, you do not start to kinda like them.