Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84102 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84102 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
There was a knock on the door, and it came open. Marta stepped inside, a big tray in her hand. She glanced over and seemed to take note of the men with guns. If she gave a damn, she didn’t show it. The woman who ran the kitchens brought the tray over.
“I was told to bring you coffee and some breakfast, Mr. Montez.” Marta’s English was good. “You should do what they tell you.”
“Of course.” David wasn’t about to argue with anyone. There was zero point.
“I hired you myself. I’m really shocked that you’re with them.” Eddie wasn’t taking the same view of their situation.
She shrugged. “With them. With you. What is the difference? I don’t care as long as I get paid. I don’t argue with men who have guns. Do you want the coffee or not? It’s not poisoned. They didn’t pay me to do that.”
The woman was dour but steady. And they wouldn’t want to poison him. Not yet. “We’ll serve ourselves.”
Eddie was shaking his head. “I trusted you.”
“You barely talked to me beyond telling me how to cook your steak,” she replied in that flat way of hers. “Where is the American girl? Did they kill her?”
“Vos regresás a la cocina,” one of the men with the guns said.
She didn’t flinch at being told to get back to the kitchen, merely sighed as though she was used to the treatment.
“They’re keeping her in our bedroom,” David said. “Could you make sure she gets some water and something to eat?”
Marta shrugged. “If they tell me to. If not, she can starve for all I care. I’ll come back for the tray, but don’t expect me to play the maid. Clean up after yourselves since they won’t be back until Monday.”
She walked away, and David realized there would be no note to sneak. He was well and truly trapped.
“What should we do?” Eddie asked.
David bit back a groan because unfortunately the “we” part was fitting. “We grab a cup of coffee and then I do what I do best.”
“And what is that?” Eddie reached for the pot.
“Study.”
He had to hope he could study his way out of this.
Chapter Ten
Tessa glanced at the clock. It had been seven hours and the fucker hadn’t moved except to allow her to relieve herself, and even then he’d brought in his friend and stood outside the door watching her so she couldn’t make a handy weapon out of a lady razor.
She needed to carry more weapons. Why didn’t she have a couple of knives in her makeup kit? She’d been forced to allow them to settle her back onto her chair, and then the waiting had begun again.
Mateo sat on the bed, watching the TV he’d turned on shortly after he’d ensured she was tied up and completely helpless. She’d aided in that wrong assumption by crying about how tight the awful zip ties were.
She needed about a minute and a half to get out of them, maybe less if she simply broke the chair to get her legs free. She’d been quiet enough that the word gag hadn’t been used, and she planned to keep it that way. Not because she had any real issues with gags as a fun way to spend a night, but because she wasn’t giving those assholes any other shot at getting near her.
She’d gone over and over this in her head. Patience was the key. She had to shove down all the panic and wait for the best time to move. In her mind she’d gone over everything she knew about the house. Unless they’d brought more people in, she thought she was looking at five to seven possible captors, if the maids were in on it. She kind of thought the cook was. There had been a hard quality to the woman that made Tessa put her on the other side.
Or perhaps she was being paranoid. It didn’t matter. The key was to assume everyone was in on it with the exception of David and take them all out as soon as possible.
The waiting was going to kill her, and that was all about him because she was known for her patience. It was her stock in trade.
She wasn’t capable of patience when it came to David. He was out there, and she was sure if he stepped out of line they would hurt him. He wasn’t a trained operative. He was a college professor. He wasn’t supposed to know how to handle physical pain. He was supposed to be dealing with undergrads, not spy shit.
That was her job. She was the one who dealt with security issues, and he would help the kids with homework.
Because as she’d sat here, she’d decided she was a dumbass for even thinking about leaving that man. She was being a coward. What she’d had with Michael had been warm and comfortable and not enough for either of them. What she had with David was a wildfire that they could keep burning for the rest of their lives. It wasn’t some ember that one day in the distant future might spark into a fire. It had been a blaze from the second she’d met him. That was what had scared her. Getting burned. But the incendiary nature of their attraction was tempered by the friendship they were growing, by the mutual respect they already shared.