on many of the other men I’d run across, because the corner of his mouth twitched.
“You thinking of ditching the software game and turning into a kidnapper or something?” he asked.
I settled back into my seat and looked ahead, watching for signs that would tell me where we were heading. “Depends on how good the pay is.”
He laughed outright at that, and I smiled as well—partially because I was winning, and partially because this particular outburst surprised me. He had a deep, chesty laugh. One of those big, booming ones.
I wondered how often he got to use it. Because I didn’t think kidnapping and laughing probably went hand in hand too often. It seemed to me that a life of crime most likely called for one to be serious at all times. Serious and deadly.
Which brought me right back around to how he’d gotten into it. Because ‘deadly’ didn’t exactly go with ‘I bought you clothes and guessed at your size.’
“Why did you buy me clothes?” I asked softly.
There was a long pause—during which, I assumed, he was fighting with himself about how much to tell me. Because if buying clothes for your kidnapping victim was against the rules, then telling them why you did it must definitely be frowned upon. When he answered, though, it seemed that he’d decided on the truth.
“Because I knew you’d be coming from your office, and that meant you’d be in business attire. I knew that you might be willing to go on a date in that, but that you wouldn’t be comfortable in a drive across the des— Ah. A long drive.” There was another brief pause, and then: “And I didn’t want to hear you complaining the entire time.”
The last part was added in a harsher, rougher voice—one that I was starting to recognize as fake. His kidnapper’s mask. The one he put on when he was worried that he was getting too soft.
Which meant that he’d made a mistake. One that he was trying to make up for. And it didn’t take me long to go back through what he’d said and find it.
He’d told me where we were taking our little drive. And that last sentence, the one with the threat, was meant to cover it up.
Because he’d started to say ‘desert.’ Which meant we were probably going into Nevada. Las Vegas, then. Or Reno. I didn’t know anyone in either town, but now that I had a destination, my brain started to work on how I could use it.
Chapter 11
Jack
We’d been driving for about half an hour—just through the various smaller cities and communities that lay before the stretch of desert and nothingness—when I realized that I was starving. We’d had a lot to drink at that bar—or at least, Alice had—and hadn’t ordered any food, despite our promise to do so, and I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch.
Since then, I’d had a date, met a woman so interesting that I’d almost lost myself in talking to her, and conducted a kidnapping, complete with actually carrying said woman down a staircase while she fought me like a wildcat. I was running out of calories quickly. And I was willing to bet that Alice was too.
After all, she’d had the same afternoon and evening I had. Only she hadn’t done any carrying of people down staircases. Still, she had to have spent a lot of energy fighting me. And she was also smaller than me. All that making out had probably taken more out of her than it had me.
We also hadn’t talked in the last twenty minutes or so—not after she’d gone through that phase of grilling me and trying to get a feel for who I actually was. Asking whether kidnapping paid better than an office job, like she was actually considering making a career change. I snorted at the thought that came with that, of her in black leather and wielding a whip—obviously, because you needed a whip when you kidnapped people—and she shifted.
“Something funny?” she asked.
I shook my head, but then nodded. “I was thinking about you asking how much kidnapping paid, and picturing you as a kidnapper. And for some reason, I pictured you wearing a black leather catsuit and carrying a whip. Like you were a superhero villain or a dominatrix or something.”
“As all good kidnappers are,” she noted wryly.
“I mean, yeah. How else are you going to catch people?”
She laughed softly. “Picking them up in a rose garden and pretending to go on