With a snap of his wrist, Mark swung the door closed again and reclined against it as though he had all the time in the world and no desire to move from the only exit—other than the window over the bed that was surely many feet off theground.
"Smart of you to get me alone," he said. "Someone must have helped you. Let me guess, you've got people in thehouse?"
Neither Marv nor I said anything. We didn't, but he didn't need to knowthat.
"If you want my help, you usually do that by opening your mouth and asking." Those ice cold, dark eyes slide over the both of us, his lip curling downwardagain.
Marv and I glanced at each other before turning back to the man watching us warily. "I asked," I said, proud of how steady my voice sounded and how I managed to keep my gaze trained on him. "So, what's youranswer?"
Mark's scowl morphed into a smirk. "You want me to help your friend, is thatright?"
I shook my head, though I did edge closer to Marv and he put his arm around my shoulders, drawing me in protectively. A fluttering of butterflies erupted in my stomach and I squashed themdown.
"You don't have to do anything," I informed him. "You just have to tell us where H. B. Holdings might hold her until she signs theircontract."
"She hasn't signed a contract yet?" he asked, confusion sliding over his face. "But you said that they picked her up as payment for her boyfriend'sdebt?"
I nodded. "Why? Is that bad?" I regretted the words immediately. Stupid question. Of course, it was bad. He looked at me as though he thought I was dumb, but oh well—I was stressed, could he really blameme?
"Yeah, it's fucking bad," he snapped. "If they picked her up and she refuses to sign their damn contract, they're not gonna keep her around long. They're gonna take herout."
"Take heroutout?" I squeaked, my hands reaching up and squeezing a fistful of Marv's shirt. Marv's hand claspedmine.
This was not happening. Never, in a million years, would I have predicted standing here in the middle of a frat party in a skimpy dress, trying to save my friend from beingmurderedor forced to sell herself with the help of a drug dealer. Nope. I definitely would not have guessedthis.
"What do you mean?" Marvasked.
Mark rolled his eyes and strolled across the room, back towards the boxes. He reached into one closer to the floor and pulled out a few papers. "H. B. Holdings usually takes their girls out to scare them a bit." He paused to glance over his shoulder at me, lifting a brow. "On thewater," he clarified. I wrinkled my nose. How was I supposed to know that? As if he could read my thoughts, Mark shook his head. "You must watch too many damn mafiamovies."
The Godfatherhad been my brother's favorite movie when we were kids...I shook my head. "So, they'll take her out on a lake somewhere?" Iasked.
He shook his head, going back to sift through the pile of papers he had pulled. The music from below pounded up through the floorboards, distracting me. "No, the ocean," hesaid.
I gaped at him. The ocean?! How the hell would we find them if thathappened?
"When?" Marv asked. "Do you have a timeline of when they would do this? She's been with them for several daysnow."
Mark turned towards us, snagging what looked like a crinkled map, and smoothed it out against his upper thigh. "Then soon, if not within the next night or two," he said. "They probably shouldn't have waited this long to do it. She could already be out there for all Iknow."
"What do they do out there?" I can't help but inquire. "I mean, to scare thegirls."
Mark slides a look my way. "What do you think they do?" hesneered.
Asshole.
I clenched my shaking hands into fists and watched as Mark handed Marv the map he had previously smoothed out. "I've done it a time or two before," the guy admitted, rubbing a tan hand through his hair as he looked over the map that Marv held out and open. I moved around them to see better. There were several red lines from places on land to different spots—some farther than others—that werecircled.
"These are technically international waters," Mark explained. "They'll take her out at one of thesespots."
Marv closed the map and then eyed Mark. "Thanks," he said. I looked between the two ofthem.
"That's it?" I asked. That couldn't beit.
Mark's eyes narrowed on Marv, proving me right. "Notquite."
"How much?" Marvasked.
Mark's eyes lowered, examining Marv up and down from his shoes to his shirt. But something about the way Mark's eyes lingered on Marv's shoulders and wrists put me off. It confused me. "Twenty-five," he saidfinally.
"Twenty-five hundred?" Marv blinked, shocked. "Done."
Mark's responding grin was ten times as confusing and even more off putting than the way he had analyzed Marv. As he shook his head, my stomach sank. "Not hundred. Twenty-fivethousand."
I nearly swallowed my own tongue. My gaze swung to Marv. What were we going to do? There was no way he— “Done.” I blinked, sure I must have heard Marv wrong. But no, I didn’t. Marv reached into his back pocket—slowly, with Mark’s gaze zeroed in as if he was waiting for either of us to make a wrong move—to withdraw his cell phone and held it up. “I can transfer it from my phone,” he said. “I just need the accountnumber.”
I continued to stare between the two of them as Mark relaxed marginally and a sly, wicked smile stole across his face. They exchanged the information as I remained rooted to the spot, wondering how I had gotten to this point. Twenty-five thousand dollars? I knew Marv was wealthy—I had seen his parents’ house, met his mother—but to have that much money available to transfer at a moment’snotice?
I left the frat house, Marv holding onto my arm with one hand and clutching the map with the other, feeling like I was in over my head. Maybe Iwas.