Crazy Eights (Stacked Deck #8) - Emilia Finn Page 0,82

I tell her and work on the cuff around my wrist. “One minute, then I’m coming looking for you.”

“Yeah.” The second I release my cuff and it falls away from my wrist, she spins away and shoves through the bathroom door. “Twenty-three-year-old Jamie Kincaid has a pee kink now. I get it.”

She slams the door with a loud crash that rattles the wall, so I remain standing, staring at the faded and stained door.

I don’t have a watch anymore. It sits securely on Quinn’s wrist – the irony isn’t lost on me – so I count in my head instead. Liquid hits the toilet bowl around twenty seconds after the door closes, but it lasts too long, is too constant, too much, so I follow my gut and shove the door open to find Quinn half-in, half-out of the window.

“Dammit!” I rush in after her, dodge her kicking feet, and yank her back through the window even when her foot slams against my busted shoulder and sends licks of pain radiating right down into my gut.

“Let me go!” she screeches. “Dammit, Jamie. This is illegal!” She bashes her fists against my chest when I get her back into the tiled room. “You can’t keep me hostage, you freak!”

“What are you gonna do?” I slam the cuff back onto my wrist, then reach out and shut the window until the metal frame cracks against the lock. “Call the cops? Tell them who you are? Tip them off? You ran with Will four years ago, so that makes you a felon too. If you call the cops on me, then you’re calling the cops on you too.”

“I’m not staying here with you,” she hisses. “You will sleep, Secretary. You will close your eyes eventually, and that will be the end of your existence. I refuse to stay here with you.”

“You have no money, no ID, no car, and you refused my offer of clothes. You’re stuck, Q, so stop the fuckin’ whining already.”

I yank her out of the bathroom and back into the rest of our hotel room. A queen bed, a rickety table, a TV sitting on the counter, and a filthy old dish sponge sitting on the sink, in case we want to wash our dishes and catch a nasty infection while we’re at it.

“This place is gross,” Quinn growls. “I thought you had money?”

I scoff. “I thought you weren’t one of those high-maintenance chicks?”

I cross the room to the TV with Quinn close behind me, snatch up the remote for the ancient box, then I circle back to the bed and start stripping.

“Um, what the hell are you doing?”

I stop with my jeans midway down my thighs, and glance back up. “Getting undressed. Why?”

“Uh… I am a pris-on-er!” she enunciates. “Handcuffed to a dude I don’t even know. And you’re undressing!”

“Well, I’m not sleeping in jeans. I suggest you get comfortable too, we’ll be here for a decent night’s sleep.”

“The crimes just keep piling up! Not only are you kidnapping me, but now I can’t pee alone, and you’re undressing in front of me? That’s illegal!”

“Give me a break.” I roll my eyes. “You’re not a minor anymore, Q.”

“Stop calling me Q!” she snaps. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t sleep at all. You know I’m going to leave the second you do.”

“I think I’ll run the risk.”

I kick my boots off, peel my socks away, then slide my jeans the rest of the way off until they pool on the floor.

“I could stab you while you sleep,” she hisses. “Put a blade in your heart and finish this.”

“You could.”

I can’t take my shirt off without removing the handcuffs, so I merely look down at my boxer shorts, and at my dirty shirt with my own blood sprayed across it, then I shrug and flop to the bed.

“Stab me, Q. You can’t drag me anywhere.” I turn and meet her eyes. Our arms hang in the space between us, while she stands, and I lay. “You’re too weak,” I taunt her. “You wouldn’t be able to drag me even with your good arm, let alone that bag of meat caught in your cuff. So stab me in the heart, go for it, it’ll be a nice change of pace. But you still ain’t escaping.”

“I could cut your arm off.” She’s stubborn, but she’s not stupid, so even with her chin held high and steam pouring from her ears, she unsnaps her jeans and goes to work kicking her