by Leslie North
A knee-jerk response, but something had shifted in Max’s head. Before, he could nail her to the wall with his stare. Now, he struggled to make eye contact.
Baudin’s laugh was sharp, caustic. “So they tell me.”
Max refocused on Lola. “Did you fall asleep at the wheel?"
His tone was different. Intimate. Almost a whisper. Again, she glimpsed the man who pulled her from the wreckage. She wondered how many facets Max Sterling had. If any of them were deadly.
"I don't know how I crashed," she said. "It felt like my brakes failed. I've needed to get it into a shop for a while, but…" Lola exhaled, and tried to ignore the fact that the man sitting across from her looked supremely interested in what she had to say. "A first grade teacher's salary doesn't exactly allow for immediate automotive repairs. Believe me, if I had known it wasn't road-safe, I wouldn't have driven it at all."
"Don't you see that is the problem, chéri? He does believe you."
Lola blinked. With a creak of her restraints, she shifted to look at Max.
"Is that true?" The claim made absolutely no sense, but she saw nothing in her captor's face to refute the statement. "If you believe me then why don't you let me go? Obviously there's been some mistake. Obviously you're keyed up about something, or someone, but you can see now that I'm definitely not the kind of person you need to be worried about. I won’t tell anyone. I won’t say a word. Whatever you've got going on around here, I want no part of it, believe me—"
"Baudin," Max interrupted. "Outside. Now."
The two men exited the room, leaving Lola alone and almost within reach of her weapon and cell phone. She lurched forward, scraping the chair along the floor of the kitchen, but it was no use. Her arms were expertly, and hopelessly, bound to her sides, allowing nothing in the way of wiggle room. The gun was a no-go at this point, but she stood a chance of picking up the phone and shouting down into the receiver if Jack called again. She had to try.
Lola had just rocked herself sideways onto two legs, with the intention of putting her full weight behind an assault on the kitchen table, when her captors reentered the room.
Her head jerked up in horrified surprise. Aborting the move at the last minute proved too late to regain her balance. She tipped sideways, falling through space in what felt like slow motion. Eyes shut, she braced herself for impact.
An impact that never came.
Lola hazarded a glance through her disheveled hair.
Max Sterling stood over her. His hand gripped the back of the chair, holding it in place to keep her from toppling over. She blinked.
"Nice try." He spoke in a low voice, perhaps an attempt to keep Baudin from overhearing. He sounded almost impressed. Lola's face felt hot, but it was only from the frustration of failure. At least, that was what she told herself.
The slick sheering noise of a pocket knife opening snagged her attention. Any additional blood pooled in her cheeks drained instantly.
“Ohmygosh, ohhhhmygosh, please—!” A knot in her throat tied her words into something beyond decipherable.
Max's free hand—the hand not gripping the back of her chair—came up in a sudden sweep from beneath her.
The bite of the rope that bound her wrists relented.
Lola raised her arms in shock as her bonds fell away. He hadn't intended to use the knife against her but rather to release her. She massaged some of the circulation back into her bare, tingling arms, darting a wary look between the two men. She didn't know what letting her go meant, didn't know how she was supposed to relate to her captors now that she wasn't so obviously being held hostage.
Max flipped the knife closed and pocketed it before turning back to the kitchen table. He swept her .357 off the table and stowed it in his waistband at the base of his spine. Her cell phone went through the same disappearing act—this time, the right front pocket of his jeans.
"Gather your things." He indicated what remained of her possessions with a nod. “You’re staying here tonight.”
Lola froze. "What?"
For a moment, she thought Max intended to let her go. Then the reality of her situation pulled her under like a riptide: not only did she not have a car, but he had taken her cell phone. Calling for a ride was out of the question. What had she expected to do if she walked out of there? Walk thirty, forty, however many miles she had driven back to civilization?
Lola glanced out the window, and noticed for the first time that the blue sky outside the house had dimmed to nondescript gray. Night was coming, and apparently no one residing in the household believed in outdoor lighting. Another detail to add to her steadily expanding list of things she found unnerving about her situation.
"I still haven't decided what I'm going to do about you." Max crossed his arms. Still, he struggled to meet her gaze. "But I might have… overreacted earlier."
"You think?" Lola snapped before she could stop herself. She finished gathering her things and settled her handbag on her shoulder.
Max's eyes narrowed. "Given who you seem to be, yes. But I had no way of knowing your identity at the outset. The circumstances surrounding you finding your way out here still don't add up. I'll be in contact with my boss tomorrow, and he'll advise me on how to proceed. For now, I'm sticking to protocol."
"There is a protocol for a sexy woman crashing into your tree?” Baudin inquired, his snarky tone like a dull blade severing her final intact nerve.
She wasn’t the only one. Max didn't so much as glance back over his shoulder at the man, but Lola knew from his tense posture that Baudin wore on his patience. Wait—did Baudin just call her sexy? Points. She’d give him points for sexy.
"Where am I… really? What is this place?"
"I'm willing to explain as much as I can, but you’ll have to be satisfied with what little information I give," Max replied. "I can offer you a shower and a change of clothes."
"How thoughtful of you," Lola conceded, but she was really only being half-sarcastic. Not only did she not feel like pushing her luck by mouthing off, but his offer was a difficult one to refuse. She felt especially grimy, a combination of glass and filth from the accident and perspiring out her body weight throughout her post-crash interrogation. Her head also still felt a little fuzzy. Running hot water over it would give her a clearer perspective on her next move.
She followed Max out of the kitchen, clutching her handbag a little tighter as she passed Baudin. The man stared down the length of his high, Roman nose at her. His smile quirked in dry amusement. The hard glint in his eyes made her think he was capable of more than just being a thorn in Max's side. She wasn't sure what had passed between Max and Baudin in the hall, or if they were even in agreement about keeping her there, but she needed to get to the bottom of the pecking order around here to leverage her freedom. Either that, or escape out a window and run screaming for help into the night.
Whichever came first.
Max led her into an adjoining room. Lola blanched a little when she saw it was small enough to be a guest bedroom, but it looked permanently lived-in. The enormous bed—Max-sized, she thought with a little tremble—was unmade, and the room's accommodations were spare but for several framed photos occupying the bedside table. While she couldn't immediately identify a picture that looked like the man's family, she soon realized every photograph was of assembled men and women in U.S. Army uniforms. All appeared smiling and amused, as if the pictures captured them in rare moments of relaxation.
And as if the camera was held by someone they felt real affection toward.
He featured in only a few of the photos, dead center. She assumed most of the time he was the photographer hiding behind the lens. Lola was no expert in Army regulation dress, but she knew enough to conclude that he was the superior officer.
Lola’s gaze trickled toward Max.
He glanced away; he didn't acknowledge her obvious examination of his photographs, but moved about the room, slightly awkward and lumbering in his gait.
Lola wanted to know why. Wasn't
this his bedroom? Maybe he just wasn't used to sharing his quarters with others. What was it about the presence of rumpled bedsheets and an uncovered mattress that immediately made a situation awkward?
Right. She knew. It wasn’t as if her libido had been kidnapped.
"You were in the Army?" she asked in an effort to break the oppressive tension between them.
"A long time ago," he said, as if the years between somehow invalidated his time in the service.
While she wouldn't say as much out loud, Lola felt relief at this discovery. An Army man, even a former one, was a man of honor.
Max was a man she could trust.
Or was he?
Maybe he was dishonorably discharged. Didn't military men sometimes defect to become mercenaries—lawless, remorseless, guns-for-hire that had no problem razing villages full of innocent children and kidnapping unsuspecting school teachers?
She put a stop-hold on her Criminal Minds-imagination.
Max shoved an assembly of hastily-gathered clothes into her arms. Lola dropped her purse to accommodate them.
"Shower's over there," he said with a nod toward one of the room’s interior doors. "Clean towels below the sink. Door stays open."
"Where did you get these?" In her hands were women's clothing, a purple flannel shirt and what was certain to be, on her, a tight-fitting pair of jeans. A renewed thrill of terror spilled over her.
Were these clothes that had once belonged to the pair's last female victim?
"My clients aren't always men." Max sat down on the edge of the bed, his posture as straight as his dedication to task.
"Your clients?"
"You've already met my current client." A nod of his chin in the direction of the kitchen implicated Baudin. "In certain situations, when I acquire a client, it's impossible to allow them time to pack or otherwise make arrangements. It's standard to keep a wardrobe on hand, and that includes clothing for both male and female witnesses."
"Witnesses?" Her head hurt from trying to follow Max's cryptic explanation, but his bombshell word left her little conclusion to draw but one. "Is this… witness protection? Did I stumble upon some sort of secret government operation?"
She could certainly believe a man like Baudin might get himself mixed-up in criminal activity, but she was going off of looks and mannerisms, no real evidence. She still had no idea if her inference was correct, and Max simply crossed his arms over his chest, his lips a thin, tight line of fortification.
"Alright. I'll take a shower," she conceded as she moved past him. "But I'm closing the door."
"Cracked," said Max.
The bathroom had no window, thus no hope for escape. Lola muttered a low "darn" below her breath as she eased the door partially closed behind her. She stripped quickly, aware that her captor could enter at any moment, if the mood struck him. A curious peek up confirmed for her that the reflection off the mirror allowed a direct line of sight into Max’s bedroom. She caught a glimpse of his body mid-retreat, shifting away as if he had been trained forward to peek. Or was it her imagination?
Lola all but dove behind the shower curtain. She felt vulnerable enough without getting naked in an unfamiliar house, with a man who may or may not be as noble as he seemed to standing guard behind the door. She shampooed her hair, careful to shake any residual glass fragments down her backside, not her face. He didn’t have conditioner. She didn’t know if that was typical of guys or not. There had only ever been two—much to her mother’s dismay—and she had never shared a shower with either. Something about being in Max’s private shower felt deliciously domestic, but she knew she couldn't let her guard down. She was still a prisoner, even if she was about to be a slightly better-scented one.
She moved onto lathering and cleansing her body with his bar soap. Sweet McGinger hottie, his masculine soap fragrance was perfection. But for all the tropical, cabana-boy, musky scent-gasm hitting her olfactory system, it did little to make up for the white-knuckle pain pulsing through every bruise and open cut on her skin. She rinsed lightning-fast, shut off the water, and listened.
For what, she couldn’t say. Max could at least give her a gentlemanly cough to assure her he remained at a safe distance on the bed. But no, her abductor had to be stealth.
Lola plastered the curtain to her boobs and hunted the bathroom for trespassers. Coast clear, she stepped out, toweled herself down, and pulled on the spare clothes. She left her floral print school dress crumpled in a pile by the waste bin.
It shouldn't have felt heavenly to slip into a stranger's clothes. It did. Lola had longed to be someone else since she overheard her father tell her mother in the heat of a charged argument that no man would ever want Lola with that body, which also happened to be the body of her mother and her Nona. To hear that at fifteen had been a one-way express ticket to men who dated her only to brag to their friends about the size of her chest and late nights with the only men who comforted her—Ben and Jerry. Six year olds didn’t judge. They simply accepted and loved. Maybe that’s why she had chosen her career. Somehow, in a flannel shirt that covered her biggest assets and jeans that might have to be jackhammered free, clothes about which she had no say, she felt liberated.
She pushed open the door to the bedroom. Max sat in the same spot in which she had left him, although the bed had been made. He rose to his feet upon seeing her—almost like the McGinger she had crafted in her mind: gentlemanly, courteous, unequivocally gobsmacked to see her enter a room. Her imagination had gotten his mouth right. Max forgot to close his once his lips parted. No doubt because the tight denim made her rear end look like baby wombats fighting in a gunnysack.
His lingering gaze made her feel as if her desirability wasn't that far out of the realm of possibility. Certainly not the sentiment of her father, whom her mother had kicked to the curb not sixty seconds after that comment. Still, if Max Sterling intended to make up for his rough treatment of her before, he had a lot of ground to cover. A woman didn't just forget being tied up to a kitchen chair.
"Thank you," she muttered as she took a seat on the bed. “For the shower.”
The crisp lines and sharp angles of the straightened sheets beneath her added to her growing profile of the former military man. She moved to sit with her back against the headboard and hugged her knees to her chest, taking up as little space as possible in the unfamiliar room. Max moved to the arm chair at a diagonal to the foot of the bed and laced his fingers loosely.
"So what now?" she asked. "I assume I can't go home."
"You can go home," he replied calmly. "Just not now. Worst case scenario, my organization finds accommodations for you for the next few days."
"Few days?" Lola’s voice pitched unnaturally high, so unlike her. Her bent knees shot out from the enclosure of her arms as if she intended to make her escape right then and there. "I can't be gone for that long. What about my students? What about my neighbor?"
"Eugenia?”
“Yes.”
"Are you telling me your neighbor can't be without you?"
"You don't understand," said Lola. "I can't just vanish from the real world without an explanation. I have responsibilities. Who's going to look after my cats while I'm away?"
“Eugenia?”
“She can barely turn on Wheel of Fortune.”
"I’ll make arrangements," Max responded without missing a beat. "My organization can see to the upkeep of your household. We have an entire division that specializes in caring for the animals of our clients."
"I am not your client."
His relaxed and assertive posture tensed. The chiseled lines of his face gathered like a circling storm, although it wasn't rage that Lola saw brewing. It was remorse.
Good.
Max Sterling had seemed like an immovable entity to her, more of a lifeless, inert obstacle to her freedom than he was a flesh-and-blood man with real human motives. Watching the shift in his expression re-shaped her stomach into an unwelcome, Playdoh-sized ball of guilt.
Lola sat back and blinked. It was possible she almost felt sorry for her words, but any regret on her part was absurd. So what if he felt bad? She was the one who had been stolen away from her life, her family, and everyone else who might need her. If Max Sterling found himself in a morally-compromised position, she was under no obligation to sympathize with him.
"I'm a victim. You've kidnapped me," she continued.
They lapsed into silence once more. Lola tucked a damp curl behind one ear because she didn’t know what to do with her hands.
"I wish you didn't see it that way," Max said finally. "But I can't fault you for it. If you can, try to imagine yourself in my position. You have a duty to protect and foster the minds of the children you teach, just like I have a duty to protect Baudin. Even though you believe you're doing the right thing, I'll bet there are days you don't want to go to work. Imagine that for me, this is shaping up to be one of those days."
It was more than she had expected to hear from the taciturn man seated across from her. She had been resisting an attraction to Max, with varying degrees of success, since she had first glimpsed his striking face. His explanation of his actions, and a hint of honesty on the subject of Baudin, had her revisiting her feelings.
It was nonsense, she argued with herself, to feel anything for Max but a desire to escape from his presence. Not only was she probably still suffering the effects of her earlier concussion, but she was familiar with the concept of Stockholm Syndrome, thanks in part to many late-night marathons of crime dramas and police procedurals spent with her lonely old neighbor, Eugenia. Lola was in very real danger of her mind betraying her in Max's presence. She couldn't let any foolish inclination of her body follow suit.
"I've just thought of something," she said.
"Another escape plan?"
He sounded tired, but even fatigue couldn't conceal some of his amusement at her expense.
"No. I've resigned myself to my situation." She was lying through her teeth, but soldiered on and tried not to dwell on how inauthentic she might sound. "It's just that, my brother being a cop and all… if he doesn't hear from me, he's going to worry."