I was only a few miles outside town. I could run that easily under normal circumstances, but I’d need different footwear and I’d have to stay off the road.
Not ideal, but definitely a possibility. I calculated my other options.
There were three doors that led in different directions and a utilitarian staircase that went up to what looked like a dark loft area. Definitely not a viable escape option, I decided.
The henchman clamped a hand on my shoulder and marched me over to one of the heavy wooden doors. “Let’s go,” he said, opening it.
It was a wooden staircase that led down a level.
“Really? A basement lair? How cliché.” It was actually kind of genius. Finding an abandoned property far enough outside town that no one would notice any activity? Maybe my captor wasn’t a complete idiot after all.
“Move,” he told me.
I took my time, hobbling down all fifteen stairs.
I had to keep my wits about me. I had to stall. The longer I kept them distracted, the more time it would give Nash to find me.
Cereal Aisle Guy guided me to the left at the foot of the stairs and through an open doorway.
There, seated with his muddy boots propped carelessly on top of a beautiful oak desk, was Tate fucking Dilton.
Shit.
“Well, well, well. Look who we have here. If it isn’t the leggy bitch from the bar.”
I’d been prepared to face down a junior organized crime lord, not a dirty, disgraced cop.
Dilton tossed his phone down on the desk and chewed his gum smugly.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart? Not who you were expecting?”
“Wait. Let me get this straight. You’re the mastermind here?” I said to Dilton, wondering how hard it would be to separate him from his phone.
“Damn straight I am.”
My kidnapper cleared his throat pointedly behind me.
Dilton’s gaze moved to him. “You got somethin’ to say, Nikos?”
Nikos the grocery store kidnapper.
“Where is he?” Nikos replied.
“That’s need to know, and you don’t need to know, son,” Dilton said.
Okay. The bad guys were in-fighting. This could either go really well for me or really, really not well. Either way, I needed a plan.
There was an ancient-looking monitor on the counter behind the desk. Unfortunately, there was no phone or laptop or conveniently placed flare gun.
On the opposite wall was a huge flat-screen TV with a couch in front of it.
“Don’t you know you seem more threatening when you pretend like you’re so in synch you can read each other’s minds? Haven’t you ever seen a James Bond movie before?”
“Go get him,” Nikos said, ignoring me.
“Fuck you,” Dilton shot back. “I’m in charge here. You go get him.”
“You can’t keep me here,” I said, drawing their attention back to me.
Dilton gleefully chomped on his gum. “Looks like I can do anything I want with you and your bitch mouth.”
“Charming. Why am I here? Is this what you do to every woman who tells you to grow up and be a man? I mean, it would explain why you need such a large facility.”
“You’re here because you and your fucking friends are done pissing me off.”
Judging from Nikos’s eye roll, that was not exactly why I was here.
“Hold on. You had me kidnapped because you got fired for being a racist misogynist? Are you one of those perpetual victims who blames everyone else for what a shitty human being you turned out to be?”
“Told you a rock through her window wasn’t gonna cut it,” Nikos muttered.
“You’re fuckin’ here because you ran your bitch mouth in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Dilton snarled. “Plan was to take the other two bitches first. Tina’s kid and her tight-assed twin. But you just had to go and make yourself a shinier target, shopping by yourself and figuring things out.”
I glanced at Nikos. He’d seen Waylay with me. He could have easily taken us both. Well, not easily. I still had another stiletto and he still had another leg. But he’d decided against kidnapping a child. Maybe he wasn’t the worst bad guy in the room.
Nikos avoided my gaze and I decided it was probably best for both of us if I didn’t mention it.
“So we’ll start with you and then take care of the other three problems,” Dilton continued. He pointed at me like his finger was a gun and mimed pulling the trigger.
“We don’t need to discuss the plan with her.”
Dilton scoffed. “Why not? Not like she’s gettin’ out of here alive.” He looked at me with a sick kind of excitement in his eyes.
“Hey, asshole, how are you gonna motivate her to lure her cop boyfriend here since you just told her you were gonna kill her no matter what?” Nikos demanded. “Jesus, do you even know how motivation works?”
“You actually work for him?” I asked Nikos, jerking my head toward Dilton. “I would have stuck with real estate.”
“I don’t work for him,” Nikos snapped.
Dilton sneered. “We’ll see about that.” He turned his attention back to me. “As for you, I’m not a man to be truffled with. Your boyfriend should have known that.”
“Trifled,” Nikos corrected. “Truffle is a goddamn mushroom, you fucking idiot.”
“Fuck you, dick.”
Dilton took his boots off the desk and made a show of wandering around to the front. He leaned casually against it, his legs stretching out toward me.
“So what now? What are you going to do with me?”
He leaned forward menacingly until I could smell the stale beer on his breath. A fat finger hooked in the neckline of my shirt and tugged. “Anything I fuckin’ want.”
Rage licked its way up my spine, making me shake.
Headbutt, knee to the balls, break the zip tie, run.
“Well, well, well…”
We all turned as a freshly showered Duncan Hugo entered the room. He was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans with a handgun tucked into the waistband. His hair, originally a fiery red, was now dyed a dark brown. But the freckles, the tattoos, everything else I’d memorized from photos was exactly the same.
“Your boy here already used that bad guy line,” I informed him.
I didn’t miss the way Hugo’s eyes narrowed at the dirty cop’s ass planted on the desk, the dried mud sprinkled across the surface. He prowled into the room and caught the bag of candy Nikos tossed at him.
“Ass off the desk, Dilton.”
Dilton took his sweet time complying.
“You’ve caused me a few headaches recently,” Hugo said to me as he took a seat behind the desk.
“Me?” I asked innocently. My wrists were starting to ache from being restrained behind my back. I needed to get loose, but there was no way I’d make it to the door with three of them in the room.
“Not only did you follow my men, you got one of them arrested. We don’t need that kind of attention right now. Yet you failed to heed the warning.”
“Like I told your pal in the candy aisle, that arrest wasn’t my fault. Your guy was the one who tried to murder his own brother in broad daylight. Naked.”
“Good help is hard to find,” Hugo said with a careless shrug.