Badger to the Bone (Honey Badger Chronicles #3) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,6
the interim. Again, strange. Usually the ones who made these kinds of orders had very specific requests—whether to treat the victim as a princess or to manhandle her for some sort of petty revenge—but this guy had been beyond vague. The only thing he’d been specific about? To not trust her. To use metal cuffs and make sure they were tight. And not to ever let her “off the leash.” Usually kidnap victims were so terrified and panicked that they could be released from bondage after a few days. They never tried to make a run for it, always assuming their rich families would pay the ransom demand.
This girl, though . . . she was literally a nobody.
Crouched in front of her, he brushed her hair off her face, and dark brown eyes locked on him. He didn’t see panic in those eyes, though. Didn’t see fear; despite the fact the kidnappers were all wearing black balaclavas to cover their faces.
Her unconcerned gaze looked the group over, studying them. Patowski, standing behind him, said, “If I were you, little girl, I would just stay quiet and wait until this is over. Don’t give us a problem and you’ll be just fine.”
One of the men turned on more lights in the private airport hangar and Zé took in the bruises on her face. The blood dripping down her swollen chin from her damaged lip.
Anger welled up inside him. An anger he’d been well known for when he was a U.S. Marine. His anger and, as one fellow Marine put it, “your sense of annoyance at the very presence of most human beings,” had gotten him some nicknames that should have insulted him more than they did. “Lord Unhappiness” was a personal favorite and “Colonel Fussy-Bottom” was another that almost made him smile. But the one his former teammates used the most was “Captain Destructo.”
Seeing this girl’s face made him feel very Captain Destructo.
Assuming he knew who had done this, he stood and pushed the kid, Anderson. Although Anderson had gotten an honorable discharge from the Marines, Zé could sense that was only by the skin of his teeth. He was sure the kid had wanted to stay but the Marines had wanted him out. And seeing the way the boy enjoyed hurting others, Zé wasn’t exactly surprised. Why the team leader had picked Anderson for this job, Zé would never understand, but he wasn’t close enough to anyone to find out. Maybe it was simply because the kid would do anything they told him to. Anderson didn’t have much of a moral compass.
Zé snarled at the kid. “What did you do to her?”
Anderson’s eyes widened and he shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me. What did you do?”
“Nothing! One second she was disappearing into an alley and a few seconds later, she was charging into the van.”
Zé frowned, confused. “She what?”
“I’m telling you what happened.”
“It wasn’t him,” a female voice announced, and they all looked down at her. Once the hood had been removed, she’d been sitting there, gagged, her arms handcuffed behind her back. Now the handcuffs and gag were on the floor, and her free hands were briefly scratching her scalp.
Pointing at her face, she said, “This was courtesy of my cousin. I guess she followed me here, to the Netherlands. The woman is obsessed with me.”
She opened her swelling mouth wide and immediately winced at the pain, placing her hand against her jaw.
“It’s not like I was the one who left her in prison all those years,” she muttered. “Why is she coming after me?”
“Get me an icepack,” Zé ordered Anderson before crouching in front of her.
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Trying to make me feel safe there, green eyes?”
“Not particularly, no.”
She laughed at that but abruptly stopped, frowned, and then out of goddamn nowhere, she leaned in to him and pressed her nose against his neck. And Zé could be wrong, but it seemed like she was . . . sniffing him?
Zé froze, wondering what the fuck was happening. It was over in less than five seconds, but in that brief time, this tiny woman had managed to completely disturb him. And it didn’t help that when she leaned away again, she asked, “What are you doing here?”
He had no idea what that meant, but it didn’t matter. The other men heard it and their attention was immediately on him.
Confused, Zé admitted, “I don’t know what you mean.”