NINE
Decima
As the fourguys stood around me in the kitchen, their silence ate away at my confidence. Talon had a gun, Julius and Garrison both looked ready to kill me first and ask questions later, and Blaze… well, Blaze looked excited, bouncing his weight from foot to foot.
I should have strategized or, at the very least, taken a moment or two to think rather than making a kneejerk response. Noelle preached to always act, never react. Maybe I could have come up with some excuse to buy me more time to make a proper run for it. Maybe I should have known not to use the laptop at all, realizing Blaze would be savvy enough to crack the typical protections.
My jaw tightened as my frustration with myself and the situation I’d gotten myself into grew. I’d made too many poor decisions within the span of a few minutes, and those decisions could have deadly consequences.
“Are you going to say anything?” Julius asked, his voice taking on an even more commanding tone.
Would they torture me? I couldn’t tell how far these men would go for the information they wanted. I cleared my throat and allowed my lower lip to tremble.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Garrison said sharply, and my eyes shot up to meet his. “We’re not going to fall for waterworks.”
I couldn’t suppress the feeling that my entire life—everything I’d ever been trained to do—had been for nothing. It didn’t matter now. I was tied to a chair, a gun pointed at my head, and I might never get my chance to avenge the household.
Garrison might not be buying the innocent act, but that didn’t mean the others wouldn’t be swayed. In my experience, few men were totally unaffected by a woman in tears, one way or another.
“I don’t know why you have me here,” I said, willing a quaver into my voice. “Please.”
“How did you know about the murders?” Blaze asked, pointing to the laptop’s screen.
“I don’t—”
“Don’t fucking lie to us.” Julius leaned over my chair, bracing his hands next to my elbows. His tone refused any argument, deadly serious. “There’s no way in hell some regular woman off the street knows how to fight like you just did. So don’t try to pretend that’s what you are.”
His aura of authority wafted over me, and a tingle ran across my skin. I had the ridiculous urge to rise up to meet him, to soak up all that commanding confidence. I couldn’t remember ever being in the presence of a man who wielded more control than he could with just a few sentences.
But I couldn’t let him control me, even if some stupid part of my brain was swooning.
His eyes, blue like Talon’s but a much deeper shade, held mine unwaveringly. I had the unnerving sensation that he could read what was going on inside my skull. That he might even be able to sense the way my panties had just dampened, damn them.
I sure as hell hoped not.
“You don’t have anything to say for yourself?” he asked.
Since silence wasn’t working, I tried turning his cool confidence back on him. “I don’t owe you answers any more than I did before,” I replied, hardening my expression. “Even less now, really. Am I supposed to trust you after you tied me to a fucking chair? Dream on.”
Blaze let out a low whistle, and Garrison shot a glare at him.
To my surprise, Julius straightened up. His expression shifted from menacing to contemplative.
“You make a fair point,” he said. “We’re asking a lot from you. So maybe it’s only fair that we explain a little more about why we’re asking these questions at all. But what I’m going to tell you could put our jobs and our lives at stake. Once I’ve told you, we can’t let you leave until we’re sure of you.”
Interesting. I arched my eyebrows at him. “Since it doesn’t look like you have any intention of letting me leave anyway, I’ll take that deal.”
The corner of his mouth twitched—with the start of a smile or a frown? I couldn’t tell, he smoothed it out so quickly. The man had iron control over himself as well as everyone around him.
“All right then.” He tipped his head toward the other men. “It’s possible you’ve already guessed that we’re not actually landscapers. We’re cops, and right now we’re investigating a horrific murder spree that took place in a house not that far from where you had your accident last night. Actually, we saw you while we were on the way to the scene of the crime after a neighbor called in a report of hearing gunshots fired.”
A little of the tension in my chest loosened. “You’re with the police?” That fit a lot of what I’d observed about them that hadn’t made total sense before. And if it was true, it also meant that I was a little safer than if they’d been mass murderers or some other kinds of psychopaths themselves. Cops could still push people around, and from what I’d learned in my training, you couldn’t trust any of them not to be dirty, but there were limits on how violent they were likely to get.
They might happily toss me in jail and throw away the key, of course. My situation was still pretty freaking shitty.
“Undercover detectives,” Julius clarified. “We caught you speeding away from the scene of what turned out to be a major crime, with blood on your shirt and what looked like stolen goods on you. And when we ran the plates on that car and contacted the owner, it turned out it’d been stolen—from someone you’ve never mentioned in your stories. Understandably, we couldn’t let you just wander off.”
They’d known about the massacre and the stolen car the entire time I’d been here. Somehow I wasn’t surprised. I did have to point out, “I’m pretty sure kidnapping is still illegal no matter how many badges you have.”