“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me,” I told him, getting another laugh out of him that had my lips twitching too. “So, how long are you keeping me here?”
“That depends. How long are you going to keep avoiding me?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“And when you answer a couple of my questions, we can talk about heading back to the States.”
“Look, Bellamy, I don’t know you from Adam, so I am not trusting you with any fucking information about me. And I don’t remember anything anyway. So I don’t know what you want from me here.”
“Nothing, huh?” he asked, brow arching up. Almost like he suspected that I did remember something.
Banking down any emotion from my face, I shrugged. “I have flashes. Like the Tiffany bags. And I don’t know, that spilled liquor smell of a bar. But that’s about it,” I lied.
“Maybe if we talked about it more, it will… jog your memory,” he suggested, and there was still suspicion in his voice. I shot him a look that had him shrugging. “We could find… other ways to occupy our time,” he suggested, making my sex clench hard at the insinuation.
“Sure. How about we talk about… how you got so many scars on your body,” I said, watching as that lighthearted, boyish smile fell from his lips, and his jaw got tight. There was a darkness that flashed across his eyes then. It was gone so quickly that I almost missed it, but it was there. And it was chilling.
Not much in life gave me pause. I was shamelessly headstrong and too impulsive for my own good. I’d rushed into all sorts of dangerous situations in my life. It was difficult to truly scare me.
But that look?
That look was scary.
I didn’t know where it came from, but it was a really dark, ugly place.
I almost felt bad bringing it up.
Almost.
“No?” I asked, forcing my tone to be light and breezy. “Hm. Well, we could talk about how many international laws you broke in dragging me here against my will. That could waste a couple of hours, I’m sure.”
“Seeing as you have less than a squeaky-clean reputation, love, I would be careful with the accusations.”
“Or what?” I asked, brow raising. “You’ll murder me on your fancy deck and make poor Adnan scrub my blood off the pretty light wood planks?”
He completely ignored that.
“What’s your name?”
“Shawn. We covered that.”
“Shawn what?”
“Shawn I’mNotTellingYouDickAboutShit,” I said, beaming a smile at him.
“Cute. Why didn’t you have any sort of identification or cell phone on you?”
“I like to travel light.”
“How did you get to Adams’s house?”
“We covered this already. I don’t know.” That, at least, was the truth. If I could pepper enough of the truth in, the whole thing would be much more convincing.
“Why did you kill Adams?”
“As we’ve established, I don’t remember killing Adams.” Lie. Bald-faced lie. “But from what I know about him, he’s a dick and probably deserved a bullet.”
“How’d you know it was a bullet?” Bellamy asked.
“Gee, I don’t know, because it’s really hard to kill a man with your bare hands when you’re my size.” Not impossible, mind you, but hard. “And my knife was clean,” I added, shrugging.
“Where’d you get the gun?”
To that, I shrugged.
“How did you get past security?”
“I don’t know, Bellamy,” I said, getting frustrated. And it rang true because I really didn’t know. Clearly, I’d worked out the kinks in my original plan, but the blank spots in my memory were more frustrating than I would have thought they would be.
“Do you sneak onto someone’s private property often?”
“What’s often?” I asked.
“Okay. How about… do you shoot people often?”
“Can’t say that I do,” I said, shrugging. I didn’t always shoot. “Have you ever shot someone?”
“Yes.”
“Because you had orders, or because you wanted to?”
“Yes.”
“Okaaaay,” I said, sliding toward the other side of the booth, pushing his legs out of my way. “Trapped on an over-water villa with a killer who likes to use drugs to incapacitate people. That’s great. Just lovely.”
“You asked, love,” Bellamy said, following me.
“I guess I didn’t expect that you’re some psycho killer, Bellamy,” I shot back.
“Oh, come on, you—“ he started, reaching out to grab my wrist.
And, well, let’s just say my instincts kicked in.
I whirled around and swung, using the heel of my hand to strike.
But I never got to make contact.
Because in a move that was so fast I almost missed it, Bellamy’s hand grabbed my arm, turned it, and twisted until my entire body had no choice but to spin, but to collide with his chest.
That was a very calm, very practiced move.
Martial arts training, maybe?
It was definitely rehearsed like that.
But it didn’t quite fit in with the super upper-crust image I had of him. Didn’t rich kids grow up taking horseback riding and golf lessons, not martial arts?
Maybe it was just a type of workout he did. That would explain why he was in such good shape.