by Angel Payne
Rhett moved to the foot of the bed, laughing a little harder.
With a glare over his shoulder, Rebel slid farther up the mattress. Rolled over and curled around Brynn, completing the sensual spoon by slinking his arms around her waist.
Before his whole body seized and jerked.
“Moon?” Rhett scowled. “What the—”
Shock choked back the rest. As Rebel swept the coverlet high then hurled it off the bed—exposing the pillows mounded together to create the effect of a slumbering body. On the pillow where Brynna’s head should have been, there was a note scrawled on the back of a crumpled rehearsal schedule, probably yanked from her purse—which, along with her cosmetics and hair products, was also gone.
She wasted no time getting to the point—escalating Reb’s low growl to an enraged bellow.
She’s my best friend.
I had to do something.
I’m sorry.
Rhett added his own snarl to that—but did it while whirling out the door and back down the hall to the office. He plummeted back into a chair and jammed on his headset before issuing a furious vow beneath his breath. “She has no idea what sorry is yet.”
By the time Rebel joined him again, he’d hailed El, who answered from Vegas like a fairy flying on Ecstasy. “Howdy, Texas! What’s up?”
“Cut the crap, El.” Rebel glowered at the note in his hand that might as well have been the thorn in his paw. “She did this with your help, damn it. Unless you want to consider two best friends chained in Adler’s magic lab of wonders, you’ll spill.”
A long pause. El’s pissy huff. “She told me you’d do this. That you’d be impossible bullies, and try to intimidate me into—”
“Everything, El. Now.”
Chapter Fourteen
‡
BRYNN’S CELL BUZZED on the SUV’s passenger seat. Again.
It was El. Again.
She ignored it. Again.
She jolted as the air vibrated with a heavy thwop-thwop-thwop. Forced herself to breathe deep, telling herself it was only another media helicopter, not Rhett and Rebel about to fast-rope from a Blackhawk and torch through the rental car’s roof. But the fact that the scenario was in the realm of possibility for those two? Another shiver was fully justified—as well as a glance up at the sky, just to confirm the media chopper theory.
She’d just tucked her head back inside the car when the phone buzzed again. Cockroach-crawled across the cushion at her. A new shudder. Damn if she didn’t wish for the thing to just turn into a real roach.
Did she want to know what the auto redialing was about?
Rhetorical question. The way things were going today, she wouldn’t flinch if El was calling about a flash flood on the river, or even a swarm of locusts on its way to munch down on Austin. But not answering meant the thing was going to buzz through every mile between here and the old Verge building.
With a dreading huff, she scooped up the phone. “What?”
El whooshed out a breath. “Damn it. You picked up.”
“Excuse me? You’ve been calling like Crazy Cory.”
Surely that would loosen El a little. Cory had been a charming fan who’d talked El into a few fun dates, only to turn semi-stalker and earn his name on a restraining order. Their Crazy Cory jokes had stuck even after the guy decided to move to Florida, suddenly switching his obsession to a new Latina pop star who lived there.
But El’s tension only notched higher. “Where are you? Damn it. You can’t be done yet—unless Adler and Royce didn’t buy your act, and left you out at the gate.”
“Not in these hose, they won’t.” She ran a hand up her calves, just to be sure the seams still extended up the back, to the point where they clipped into garters against her thighs. When packing this “nice girl with the secret naughty side” outfit back at home, she’d gone for the garters and stockings out of ruthless instinct, thinking only about what might capture Adler’s attention if she had to resort to this tactic. Now that push had come to shove, she wished the demure stockings had gone in, too. She felt obscenely exposed, despite the boy short panties still covering every inch of her privates beneath her pinstriped pencil skirt. Maybe that had something to do with her white button-front shirt, open down to the fourth button, giving an ample peek at the white lace of her cami-bra beneath—and the flesh filling it out.
“What does that mean?” El pressed. “And where the hell are you?”
She lifted her head and looked around, almost laughing from bemusement. “Just leaving the motel.”
“What?”
She yanked the phone away from her ear. “El, I get enough screeching from your cat.”
The line filled with a girl growl that was just as bad. “How are you still there? Why are you still there?”
“Well, I wasn’t sitting here redoing my nails.” She couldn’t help the defensive burst. “The traffic was bumper-to-bumper on the road for at least an hour after I checked in.” Then transformed into the slinky-heeled, va-va-voom-haired vixen who was going to charm anything she wanted from Homer Adler—including access to the room where he was keeping her best friend. “I think I heard someone say that they’re screening the new Tarantino film this afternoon.”
“The new—” A sharp smack cracked through the line, confirming her friend still excelled at the fine art of face-palming. “I can’t freaking believe this.”
“The next time Zo gets herself kidnapped, I’ll just ask her to steer clear of the SXSW dates, okay?” Out of convenience, she used the acronym for South by Southwest, the monster-sized alternative film and cultural festival that took over Austin every March. Her view across the motel parking lot alone included a pink-mohawked woman walking a trio of similarly-coifed wolfhounds, a guy dressed as Dracula on top and Wolfman on the bottom, and a dreadlocked couple toting a pair of mobile keyboards, singing Wrecking Ball in perfect harmony.
“Just confirm you’re able to get out of there now. As in, right now.” At first, El’s tone just seemed irritable. But after three major dance show tours with the woman, Brynn knew the nuances of irritation in her friend. This wasn’t one of them.
She trembled again. Hard. Then finally muttered, “Shit.”
“Ummm, yep. That about hits the nail on the head.”
“So they just found out?” She cut to the chase. The particulars of how Rhett and Rebel had grilled El didn’t matter. She hadn’t even asked her friend to keep any confidences, knowing the guys would use any means they could—probably even a threat to El’s screechy cat—to make her spill about Brynn’s logistics. Putting El in that position wasn’t fair. She’d only asked El to buy her some time by scrambling the tracking chips on her phone and the SUV. Her mistake had been misjudging how much time that would take, figuring the guys would’ve let her “sleep” for at least three hours before bothering her in the guest room.
“That’s the million-dollar question.” El’s confession wasn’t the thumbs-up Brynn was looking for. “Especially because I don’t really know the answer.”
Brynn frowned while powering up the car. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that those men are devious sonofabitches.”
Tell me something I don’t know. Only by yanking a page out of that very book had she’d been able to get out of that ranch without them knowing: a stunt she’d regretted and validated as soon as concocting it. Did she like sneaking off to pour herself into this get-up, knowing she would walk into the lion’s den by herself in it? Had she enjoyed deceiving the men who’d been brave enough to show her their truth, despite the terrifying new ground it had been for them? And had she wanted to slip out that door, away from them—and the place where they’d made her feel so good, so right, so complete about herself?
No. No. And hell, no.
But as they said in Mother’s world, traitors only got one kiss goodbye. Brynn had pressed hers into a note, laid atop a mound of pillows, in a bed she’d left as cold as the ache in her heart. She’d left it there
with a prayer, too—a plea that Rhett and Rebel might, by some sliver of possibility, understand that she’d done this for them as much as Zoe. That if she’d stayed, she would have pulled unfair shit on them, begging them to take her to bed again. To open her up again. To lead them on into giving her just one more hit of that amazing shit called submissiveness…
Wasn’t going to happen.
She was still in control, damn it. She wasn’t like Enya. She sure as hell wasn’t like Mom. She wasn’t going to run away from her life by giving it over to men, whether they wielded whips or Bibles…or just the power of their kisses and touches. She was going to make something of her life. Make it matter. Make it connected. And yes, that meant making hard decisions. It meant walking out the door, getting in a car, making a good plan and sticking to it—especially when that plan involved saving the friend who meant so damn much to her.
At the moment, it also meant finding a way out of the motel’s parking lot.
Though San Jacinto Boulevard was moving again, it was still a snail crawl. The backup into the motel’s lot was five cars deep. She pulled out of line, praying this place had a back way out. On the way toward the rear of the property, she maneuvered around a ninja banjo player, as well as a couple who wouldn’t stop making out, while urging more details out of El.
“I’m all ears,” she told her friend. “Though I’m not sure I want to be.”
El whooshed out a breath. “Why do you have to be so smart?”
Her lips quirked. “And why do you always know exactly what I need to hear?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Just…thanks.” All the reflection about life, purpose, and friendship made her suddenly mushy. It had nothing to do with having her soul bared as naked as her body less than half a day ago. “Thanks,” she repeated with more conviction. “For being you. For being there. Even right now.”
El filled the line with a curt pssshh. “You feeling okay?”
She pushed out a quick snort of her own. “So give me the rest. What did the devious duo do?”
Her friend was done scoffing. El’s pause could only be described as anxious. “They slipped me an electronic ruffie,” she finally mumbled. “At least I’m pretty damn sure they did.”
Brynn’s hands tightened around the steering wheel—and not just because of the confession. There was no viable back exit to this place, except fifty yards of off-road action over really chunky terrain, followed by a hop off a sizable curb. Some drivers in four-wheel-drives were tackling it with no problem. She was in a rental SUV. Damn it.
“What happened?” She swung the car back toward the front of the motel.
El expelled another breath. “Well, as you warned me, they got on the comm line as soon as they figured out you were gone. That was…about half an hour ago.”
“Half an hour?”
El’s whimper carried an implied apology. “Soooo, you still glad I’m here? Maybe a little?”
“Of course,” she reassured. “I just don’t get why you waited so long to call after that.”
“I didn’t.”
“Huh?”
“Remember that roofie I mentioned?”
She nudged the car back into the exit line. Drummed an impatient hand on the wheel. Not only was the queue now eight cars long; something about El’s account wove an additional thread of anxiety through her gut. Suddenly, getting out of here felt more important than ever.
“I just got off the line with them, Brynn. It was only then that they weren’t firing questions at me so fast, making it impossible for me to think of anything but answering them, that I could chill enough to focus on their side of the exchange—and the sounds I heard during it.”
Another schism of tension shot through Brynn’s belly. “What kinds of questions?”
“Don’t you want to know about the sounds?”
“The questions first. What did they ask you?”
El growled again. Brynn almost didn’t hear it. The sound was her thing, like her personal stress ball. “Well first, they wanted to know if you normally pull shit like this.”
“And you said what?”
“Aside from telling them it was a lame question?” El’s snort was so rough, it sounded like she sat on the phone instead. “Do you normally pull shit like this? Are they serious? What the hell about this situation is normal for any of us?”
Strangely, Brynn smiled. Sounded like the guys were in ogre mode, which conveyed one clear truth. The bigger they puffed up the ogres, the deeper they actually cared. Warmth tickled her veins. It felt…nice. Damn nice. She’d inspired ogre status. And God, how she wanted to just dive back under their bridge with them now…
No more ogres. No more bridges. Focus on getting Zo, then getting back to what your life is meant to be. Predictable. Settled. Safe.
“What did they ask about after that?”
El’s sigh was a verbalized shrug. “They were all over the place. They made no pretenses about not being on to what your plan is, so I didn’t, either. They wanted to know all the logistical stuff, like if they had to step in and save you, what was going to be relevant.”
“If they have to step in—” She sliced out a cynical snicker. “Guess they still don’t realize that I’ve been saving myself for quite a while now.”
There was a pause equivalent to an eye roll. “Testosterone. Isn’t it a wonderful thing?”
Brynn winced. This morning, it had been a damn wonderful thing.
No more ogres. No more bridges.
She forced neutrality back to her tone. “Just tell me what else they said.”
“Let’s see…first, they asked if you could run in those heels if you had to. Also wanted to know if you planned on taking your phone with you, and if you’re carrying.”
“Carrying what?” Only after El’s burst of a laugh did that one click. “Like a gun? Are they crazy?”
No. They were soldiers—who were thinking like soldiers.
Which meant they might know a few things more than she about how to do all this undercover/subterfuge/charm-the-bad-guy shit.
Which also meant they might have been making an intelligent point about waiting to make another move on this thing—
Which meant Zoe would be in that madman’s captivity even longer.
Not an option.
Sometimes, the most dangerous decision just had to be the right one.
She pushed on the gas, edging the car forward. Seven more cars between her and the highway.
“Then they asked a bunch of questions about Zoe and the pregnancy,” El went on. “Like exactly how far along she is, whether there have been complications, what doctor’s orders she’s on, how her overall health is.”
“Understood.” Six more cars now. “So they’re going straight to the Verge building.”
“As the soldier boys would say,” El responded, “roger that.”
She could mark that part down in ink. She just couldn’t fathom what their plan possibly was. They’d been adamant about waiting for nightfall to go back, though her move had forced them into a new strategy: a twist they were not be fond of, if her gut was telling her true. She could feel their displeasure as if they’d made it into a fifty-mile-long lasso and already cinched it around her neck. Regardless of the choices they granted her during sex, Rhett and Rebel been damn clear about who called the shots on the mission plans.
But damn it, their caution had come at a cost. They’d avoided one of the most obvious assets they had—her—and for what? She’d volunteered to come here with them so she could be of more use than gawking at a computer monitor for three days! No way in hell was she buying any lines about their “protective instincts” bubbling to the surface, either. Maybe, maybe, it would have floated as a viable—if thin—excuse after what they’d shared this morning, but it bought them no allowances for the two days before now.
The inner throw-down couldn’t have been better timed. Her shoulders straightened and her jaw firmed. “Tha
t’ll have to be fine then, won’t it?” she rejoined to El. “It’s a free country. Those men can go wherever they want, the same way I can.” Four more cars. Three. She was almost out of here and the guys hadn’t even hit the interchange to 71, just outside Marble Falls. “I’ll simply have to beat them to the party. If the cake’s gone by the time they get there, it’s not my fault.”
Should’ve taken El a couple of seconds to punch out a conspiratorial snicker. No such sound came. “You may want to hold up on defrosting that ice cream, party girl.”
Shit.
“Why?” She didn’t pull the doomsday demand from it.
“Well…when the guys first radioed, I assumed they did so from the comm station at the Blake ranch.”
“Of course.” She would’ve thought the same thing. “But now you think that wasn’t the case?”
“Oh, I’m past the point of thinking it.” El tossed out a darker, and slightly apologetic, girl growl. “I’m pretty damn certain they took the call wireless nearly from the moment we started, purposely muting their end of the line so I couldn’t detect any traffic noises, and be wise to their little cahoots. A truck blared into the middle of one of Rebel’s questions. They cut the connection faster than Zoe tearing after a fruit roll.”
All the stress in the world couldn’t have held back both their spitting laughs. Zo’s adoration for fruit rolls was legendary, no matter what show they were in or where in the world they traveled. During rehearsals that had redefined grueling and painful, the fruit roll jokes pulled all three of them through, literally and figuratively. Whether it was Zoe using the whole roll as a director’s baton or El using scraps of the sticky stuff as makeshift pasties, they’d never failed to shift Brynn out of her pity party and back to work.
And right now, in the middle of what had to be the most bizarre day of her life, she needed the exact same kick in the tush.
She could’ve done without the nostalgic waterworks, though. “Damn it, El.” No use trying to hide her teary wobble. When El snickered again, she snapped, “Ruthless bitch.”