He gave a small laugh. “Now, that part I’m definitely not going to tell you.”
Leo from England. Did I know that name? My father dealt with a lot of different men from all over the world, but he tended to keep me away from that side of the business. I understood why now. Was this the reason he’d never wanted me to have a life of my own? Had he always believed that if he’d set me free, it would give some unscrupulous man the chance to use me like this? If that had been his plan, it hadn’t worked anyway. I’d had no chance of a life, and I’d still ended up being kidnapped. Lucky me.
“Umm, can I get out of the shower now?” I asked.
He glanced down at his phone and nodded. “Yeah, I think I’ve got what I need.”
He did something on his phone again, perhaps sending the photos to whoever needed them.
“What are you going to do with me now?” I dared to ask.
He stifled a yawn against the back of his hand. “Nothing. Now we have to wait.”
“For what?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Are you going to lock me back in that cupboard?”
“Not if you behave yourself. Come on.”
He jerked his head towards the door, and I followed him out and back into the living room. He took a seat on the sofa and nodded at the single chair. “Sit.”
I sat. The last thing I wanted was to get locked up again.
From the yawning and the dark shadows beneath his eyes, it was clear he was exhausted. I highly doubted he’d slept during his time in the forest, which meant it had been a day or two since he’d last got any proper rest. I’d at least managed to get a little sleep before he’d snatched me, but the adrenaline surges my body had been through since then had depleted all my resources.
His eyes slipped shut, his features relaxing. It didn’t seem fair that he should get any rest after everything he’d put me through.
“I saw you, you know?” I told him. “I saw you hiding in the forest yesterday, and I didn’t tell anyone.”
His eyes snapped open. “Well, that was dumb.”
“If I’d spoken up, you’d be dead right now.”
He shrugged as though I was boring him. “I don’t care if I die.”
“Why not?”
“My reason for living no longer exists.”
“What’s your—”
“Enough of the questions,” he snapped. “If you think I’m going to be grateful to you and might treat you kinder for not ratting on me, you’re much mistaken. I don’t have any compassion left in me, do you understand? You can’t get on my good side, because I don’t have one.”
Was that true? I wasn’t so sure about that. There had been moments where I’d thought his mask had slipped. What had happened to him to make him so hard? I’d grown up around cold, heartless men, but they were different to him. They really were completely cold, where I felt he was a boiling pot of emotions barely held together by a lid. If the lid slipped, everything would come bubbling out.
“I understand,” I murmured.
At first, I’d assumed he’d wanted the photographs to send to my father, perhaps to ask for a ransom. But then he’d said he needed them for a passport. I’d never left Estonia, but now a strange man was going to take me out of the country.
Though the idea terrified me, I took a small amount of comfort from the fact that if he needed a passport for me, he wasn’t going to kill me anytime soon. For the time being, anyway, we were in my country, and that gave me the advantage. I understood the language and the area. If the opportunity came up that allowed me to escape, I’d have to take it.
A passport meant planes, and planes meant other people. How would he stop me from signalling to others that I needed help? It wasn’t as though he could tie and gag me while getting through airport security. I wasn’t stupid enough to think he’d attempt to put me on a commercial flight, but even so, surely people wouldn’t ignore a young woman who needed help, no matter how much they were being paid?
Unease churned in my stomach. People would ignore someone in need if they thought there was a big paycheck in it. He might have even told them some kind of sob story—that he was taking me away from an abusive father who’d been holding me prisoner in his own way.
Wouldn’t that be the truth?