by Kara Lennox
Daniel was probably inside his climate-controlled mansion finishing off his filet mignon and caviar lunch, planning whether to spend his afternoon playing polo or tennis. Travis had heard that he actually owned his own string of polo ponies, like freaking Prince Charles or something.
Who cared about some poor schmuck standing out in the street? Let him wait. How long did it take to ask someone whether he could see a guy for five minutes? If Daniel was going to turn down Travis’s request, why couldn’t he just do it already? Then Travis could move on to his next strategy.
He wasn’t sure what that strategy would be, but he wasn’t giving up. Maybe he would go to the media, point out how cold and heartless the supposedly philanthropic Daniel Logan really was.
He saw a flash of blue coming toward him and refocused his eyes. It was a woman in a blue dress and a blue jacket. Carrying her shoes. A tall, shapely woman with long, golden-brown hair and the bearing of a queen. Could it be? Could this be the owner of that incredible, exotic voice from the intercom?
The closer she got, the more sure he became. Her looks were as exotic as her voice. Was she Brazilian, maybe?
She raised her hand in a little wave, but he was too transfixed to wave back.
“Mr. Riggs?”
“Still here.” He was amazed his voice sounded so normal. “You’re letting me in?”
“No. I’m letting myself out.” She unlocked the gate with some kind of magnetic card plus a numeric code she quickly typed in on a keypad. The gates began to open, swinging almost silently inward. As soon as the gap between the gates was wide enough, she slid through. The moment she was through, the gates halted and then reversed direction.
“What’s going on?” he asked. Her behavior seemed strange, to say the least.
“I wanted to talk to you face-to-face. I’m Elena Marquez, Daniel’s personal assistant.”
“You could have let me in, instead of walking all the way down here. What is it, a quarter mile?”
She ignored the question. “The staff isn’t allowed to let anyone onto the property who doesn’t have security clearance.”
That told him all he needed to know. “Son of a bitch. He’s not going to listen.”
“Please, try to understand. He’s got a lot on his plate right now.”
“Oh, and I don’t? My whole family’s been torn apart.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Some lowlife is out there walking free while my brother rots in prison. His little girl is so traumatized she won’t talk about what happened, and she’s about to be adopted by a couple of loons who actually like it that she hardly talks. I think the only reason they want her is because she’s going to inherit a bunch of money from her great-grandmother.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah? Well, sorry doesn’t cut it. I’ll stand out here all day and all night. I’ll chain myself to these damn ridiculous gates.” He gestured toward the wrought-iron monstrosities. “What kind of egomaniac has front gates with their six-foot initials worked into the design?”
“Daniel didn’t do that—his father did. Look, Mr. Riggs, I wouldn’t recommend that you take up some kind of vigil here. It won’t work. Daniel takes a dim view of people who use extreme tactics to try to pressure him into doing something. The result will be the opposite of what you want. He’ll have you arrested for trespassing.”
Travis was so frustrated that he could have easily put his fist through the stone column he stood next to. But all that would accomplish was a broken hand, which would mean he couldn’t work. He settled for giving one of the shrubs a vicious kick. It broke off at the ground, leaving a raw stub.
Elena’s eyes widened. “Excuse me, but there’s no reason to destroy private property.”
“Will you have me arrested for that, too? Why don’t you go back to your insulated little world with your manicured shrubs and your Rolls-Royces?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. He wasn’t exactly in a financial position that he could afford to throw money around, but there was the matter of the bush he’d just killed.
He held it out to her. “This ought to cover the dead shrub.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Take it. I don’t want it on my conscience.” After he’d left prison, he’d sworn he would never break the law again.
Not unless he had no other choice.
Hell, he shouldn’t be taking this out on Daniel’s underling. It probably wasn’t her fault. Unless...unless she’d never actually talked to him in the first place. With that thought, his frustration rose again. What did it take to get his message across? All he wanted was an audience. A few minutes. He didn’t think he was asking too much, yet this woman did.
He had to get out of there, before he said or did something he’d regret.
Travis had parked his truck on the street. Although it was in top running condition, it was old, and there was so much paint spattered on it that the original color was impossible to tell. He’d parked off to the side because he hadn’t wanted the high-and-mighty Daniel Logan to see it, to realize Travis was a working-class guy. How stupid, to be ashamed of his truck.
“You haven’t heard the end of this,” he said as he pulled his keys out of his pocket. “Maybe the Chronicle or one of the TV stations will be interested in how Daniel Logan acts when he’s not in the public eye.”
“Oh, no, Mr. Riggs, please, please don’t do that.” She hobbled after him, still in her stocking feet. The concrete was strewn with sharp gravel, and it must have hurt, but she didn’t seem to notice. “You really don’t want to get on Daniel’s bad side. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good man—compassionate, really—and he helps a lot of people. But if you cross him, he can be a dangerous enemy. Bad publicity only harms Project Justice’s reputation, and then everyone has to waste resources doing damage control. It won’t help anyone, least of all you.”
“Did they teach you that speech at spin school?”
“I... Excuse me?”
“I was just thinking you sounded a lot like a PR spokesperson just now, spouting some carefully worded sound bite intended to appeal to my emotions. Well, lady, I’m not getting help anyway. What have I got to lose?”
“Just don’t do anything rash,” she begged as they reached his truck. “Think about it overnight. You do have other options.”
“Oh, really? What might those be?”
“Well, the online form—”
“I tried that, remember?”
“You didn’t try hard enough, apparently. People fill that form out every day. Somehow, they manage to do it.”
Oh, that was it. He’d reached his tolerance for this bullshit.
“So, Daniel won’t respond to pressure tactics, huh? Well, I’d like to see him ignore this.” He opened his truck’s rigid cargo cover and, in one swift motion, he scooped the woman up and thrust her into the truck’s bed. He got the fleeting impression of her soft, womanly body against his, a photo-flash image of the look of surprise and hurt on her face.
And fear.
“Duck,” he said. Then he slammed the cargo cover down and locked it.
CHAPTER TWO
IT TOOK ELENA’S brain a few long, terrifying seconds to realize what had just happened. She’d been abducted. Kidnapped. That seemingly nice man, who moments earlier she had sympathized with, had just thrown her into the back of his truck like so much dirty laundry.
Her heart hammered in her ears and her breath came in quick, short gaps. Okay, okay. She had to calm down and think clearly. She had to take stock of her situation and then formulate a plan.
First off, was she injured? She knew from her freshman biology class at Saint Thomas University that adrenaline could mask pain, and judging from how fast her heart was beating, her body had been flooded with the st
uff. But she didn’t think she was seriously injured. In fact, though Travis had practically thrown her into his truck, she distinctly remembered her head cushioned against his muscular forearm even as the rest of her landed with a thunk on the carpeted truck bed.
Her hip hurt. She felt around with her hand and realized she’d landed on a tool of some kind—a wrench, she decided, as she explored the cold steel item with her fingers. She shoved it out of the way.
Her prison was utterly dark. Although the vehicle was a pickup truck, it had a cargo cover. One made of granite, apparently, because it wouldn’t budge no matter how she kicked and shoved.
The truck was moving fast—at least it seemed that way. Travis took a corner on two wheels, and a slew of tools slid against Elena. She shoved them aside, irritated. “Hey, watch the driving,” she yelled.
“Doing the best I can,” he yelled back, his voice muffled but understandable.
Dios mío, he could hear her! She kicked against the cargo cover. “Let me out! You let me out of here right now!”
“Simmer down back there.”
“Hijo de puta!” she yelled, because she couldn’t think of anything else. “Daniel is going to kick your ass.”
He muttered something that sounded like, “I don’t doubt it.”
So the cargo cover didn’t come off. Maybe she could get the tailgate open? Didn’t modern vehicles have latches that could be worked from the inside? Granted, this truck was probably ten years old, but that counted as modern in her book. Her uncle Cesar still drove a 1976 Monte Carlo.
She felt around for a latch and found something near her elbow that was lumpy and bumpy, but no matter which way she pressed and squeezed, she couldn’t make any parts move.
She had to face it: she wasn’t escaping from the truck. She needed a new plan.
Travis was taking her someplace. Where? Before hiring her as his assistant, Daniel had required Elena to take a personal self-defense course for just this reason. He was a powerful man, and some people hated him and might try to get to him through her. Plus, she was an attractive woman, he’d said in a matter-of-fact, nonflirtatious way, and she needed to be able to fend off unwanted advances.
She’d been the worst student in the class. Her attempts to defend herself against her well-padded “attackers” had been pathetic. But she remembered her instructor stressing one thing: never let an assailant get you into his vehicle. If he did, your chances of survival diminished considerably.
That depressing thought wasn’t helpful. What if Travis was driving her to some isolated woods, where he intended to rape her, murder her and bury her in a shallow grave?
Her one chance was to fight back—before he tied her up with duct tape and put a plastic bag over her head and skinned her alive— Oh, Dios, she had to stop watching those true-crime shows. She absolutely refused to believe Travis was the skinning-alive type of guy. He was a man who loved his brother, and he’d done something out of desperation. She’d seen that in his eyes. She hadn’t seen the dead eyes of a psychopathic serial killer, right?
Still, she wouldn’t just meekly go along with whatever his plans were. She’d fight back. Her best weapon was surprise—and tears. She hated the idea of using tears to manipulate a man, but like it or not, she’d found that when she cried, men would bend over backward to do whatever it took to make her stop.
She was too terrified to actually cry right at that moment, but she could do a good job faking it. She started in with a few sniffles, a quiet sob or two; then she started bawling like a hungry calf.
“Hey. Hey, stop that!” Travis objected.
“I d-don’t w-want to d-die!”
“Did anyone say anything about dying?”
That was good news at least. “I’ll do whatever you say—just don’t hurt me.” She kept sniveling, though not quite as loudly as before. When he finally got to wherever he was taking her, he would expect to find a terrified, cowed, cooperative hostage. Her hand closed around the wrench. Was he in for a surprise.
* * *
ONCE TRAVIS WAS a couple of miles from Daniel Logan’s estate and on the freeway with a lot of other cars, he could breathe again. There were no red lights or sirens behind him.
He couldn’t believe what he’d just done. Had he lost his mind completely? Kidnapping was a felony. With his record, he would end up in prison for sure, and a good, long stint this time, in a state penitentiary. Not the cushy county lockup.
For a second he wavered. His brother wouldn’t want...Hell, no going back now. He’d done it. Might as well make it count for something.
He wasn’t sure his actions hadn’t been caught on video, but his car had been parked some distance from the gate, so he might have lucked out. Of course, Daniel would know soon enough that his pretty employee had been kidnapped. But Travis wanted to orchestrate exactly when and how Daniel found out. First, he had to stash Elena someplace where she couldn’t escape and where her screams for help wouldn’t be heard. He couldn’t take her home—that was the first place the police would look.
Travis thought about it for a few minutes until the perfect solution came to him. There was a house he’d recently started work on, a foreclosed property in a five-year-old gated community just off Bissonet in swanky Bellaire. The former owners had trashed the place before vacating—out of frustration and spite, he supposed. It had to be tough, losing your home and everything you put into it. The developer had hired Travis to fix it up before they put it on the market.
The house, on picturesquely named Marigold Circle, sat on a double lot in a cul-de-sac and backed up to a creek. There were no close neighbors. The walls were thick, the windows triple-glass thermals. You could set off a bomb inside and no one would hear. Anyway, this wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where people gave a crap what their neighbors did. Most people there didn’t even know their neighbors’ names.
Another advantage of this location was that it couldn’t be connected to Travis by any paper trail. He didn’t write anything down. His schedule, the address of the house, everything was in his head. He hadn’t yet received any written work orders. His client was logged into his phone, but so were a hundred other contacts the police would have to check out.
He only needed one day, maybe two. If this harebrained plan hadn’t worked by then, it wasn’t going to work at all. Either way, he’d be off to jail when it was over.
Travis had a passkey to get him through the neighborhood gate. He entered the back way, where there wasn’t a guard. The fewer people who saw him here, the better.
The trickiest part would be getting Elena from the truck to the house. The garage wasn’t accessible; the former owners had stripped the house of everything valuable that wasn’t nailed down, and some things that were, including the garage door opener. The door was too heavy to lift manually.
Travis pulled around to the back of the house. Elena had gone awfully quiet; he was worried about her. Though he’d tried not to be too rough with her when he’d grabbed her, he’d been in an awful hurry. What if she’d hit her head when he was driving so crazy, making all those sharp turns?
He got out and unlocked the hatch, then slowly opened it. “Elena?”
Suddenly something flew straight at his face. A crescent wrench? He tried to duck, but it whacked him on the forehead and he was stunned for a moment. Unfortunately, during that moment, his hostage rolled out of the truck, gained her feet and started running and screaming for help.
Travis was after her like a dog after a rabbit. She hadn’t gone five steps before he grabbed her and clamped a hand over her mouth.
“No, no, Elena, shhh!”
She tried to bite his hand as he dragged her toward the back door. God, she was all sharp elbows and heels and...and breasts. Yes, as he’d grappled with her, trying to get a more secure grip on her, he’d accidentally copped a feel. Nice. Let
’s add sexual assault to the charges.
She grabbed on to the door frame as he tried to pull her inside. A brief tug-of-war ensued, but her muscles were no match for his and her grip gave way. They both tumbled into the hallway onto a damnably hard tile floor. He took the brunt of the fall.
“Would you just knock it off? You’re only making things worse for yourself.”
“I’m supposed to just let you kidnap me?”
He wanted to reassure her that she was in no danger, that he’d never harmed a woman in his life and he wasn’t about to start with her. But he resisted the temptation. He needed to keep her scared and cooperative.
Somehow he regained his feet. Before she could wiggle out of his grasp he leaned down, placed his shoulder against her midsection and hoisted her up into a fireman’s hold.
She was still kicking and screaming, but her arms were flailing against his back where they couldn’t do much damage, and he had a firm arm around her legs. He also had an enticing view of her rounded bottom, but he felt guilty as hell about his attraction to a woman he was using in such an ill way.
What to do with her now? He didn’t want to tie her up. That seemed so unnecessarily cruel, so Snidely Whiplash. He needed to lock her up in a room with no windows, so she couldn’t escape or break a window and scream for help. The walk-in pantry could work. With a chair, and maybe a pillow and blanket, she wouldn’t be too uncomfortable. He carried her into the kitchen.
Damn it. One of the pantry doors was broken. Even if he latched it from the outside, Elena could probably collapse the door if she threw herself against it a few times. And what if she needed to go to the bathroom?
Then he had a thought. The master bath—it was huge. Luxurious. And it had no windows except the skylights, which were far too high for her to break.
Elena’s movements had all but stopped. “The blood is rushing to my head. Figure out where you’re going to put me and do it already.”