her “friends.” They were a well-known protection team that worked for artists, actors, and politicians. The very large female once protected a dictator, and when she quit that job, he was assassinated by his enemies. So just grabbing the girl would be . . . challenging. But he was always up for a—
“Fuck!” the driver swore just before the SUV hit some kind of hole or pit, throwing him and his men forward. The front end landed in the pit and the back end flipped over.
It took a few seconds for him to figure out what had happened and get his men moving again.
“Out!” he ordered. “Everybody out!”
The doors on the passenger side were blocked by dirt so they had to go out the other way.
The men moved slowly, confused, some of them bleeding from head wounds. Once he got his team out, they climbed over the SUV to get out of the pit.
He studied the ground, staring at the SUV and the pit it was in. A pit that hadn’t been there when they’d driven that way to get to the funeral.
“What the fuck . . . ?” he whispered.
“Sir?” his second in command called out. “Sir!”
He turned, saw what his injured and confused men were looking at.
She leaned against a tree, silently watching them. Her gaze examining but her expression weirdly blank. She didn’t seem scared or concerned . . . just slightly curious.
“Why are you naked?” he asked, unable to help himself.
“You can’t burrow in your clothes,” she replied, laughing a little. He had no idea what that meant and he didn’t want to know. She was a strange girl. Stranger than they’d all originally thought.
He’d been warned, though, to “watch out for her. She’s not what she seems. Not if she’s anything like her mother.” A warning he wasn’t about to dismiss.
He gestured to his men with a short nod of his head. Two split off and moved around the tree, but they took their time. Waiting for her to step away. To give them an opening.
“I know what you want,” she said. “And you can’t have her. I thought you guys would have figured that out by now.”
“We can’t have who?” he asked, oddly fascinated by all this. She was naked with a group of heavily armed men, but she didn’t seem to care or even notice.
“You know who,” she insisted.
“I honestly don’t have any—”
“If you keep coming for her, I’ll make you regret it. See, I’m trying to be nice here. For once.”
“I have to say, I appreciate you trying to be nice. I really do. But it doesn’t make a difference.”
“It should.”
“It doesn’t. Because we’re not here for anyone else . . . but you. In fact, you made this much easier for us. We thought we’d have to get you away from your protection. But here you are. All alone.”
“Wait a minute,” she said, finally stepping away from the tree, “you’re here for . . . me?”
“Yes. We’ve been paid a lot of money to bring you in. And, if you play your cards right, we can make sure you’re not harmed. But only if you don’t do anything stupid.”
She stopped walking, pressed her hand to her chest. “Me? You’re sure it’s me you want?”
Now he was getting a little annoyed.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“The Guerra twins sent you?”
“Who?”
She cringed, briefly closing her eyes. “Devon’s paying you, isn’t he?”
“Does it matter?”
“I guess not.”
His men were behind her now, one of them pressing the barrel of his .45 to the back of her head. But he didn’t have his finger on the trigger. Their target, however, didn’t know this.
He stepped close to her. “You don’t have to make this hard on yourself. Come with us; we’ll get you some clothes and something to eat.”
“Do you care what he’s planning to do with me?”
“Sweetie, I’ve been hired to bring you in. That’s it.”
“So that’s a no. Okay.” She tried to pull away from the man behind her, but he held her arm and kept the gun on the back of her neck.
Devon had made it clear that they had to threaten the back of her head. Not the front or the side. Must be the back. He had been very insistent.
“Are you going to move that gun off me?” she demanded.
“No.”
“Fine.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You have no one to blame but yourselves.”
Amused, he asked, “For what?”
She didn’t respond. Just looked off. But he noticed his men. It started on their faces. Their