When did your sister go missing?” Please, please don’t let his sister be an actual child. Surely he was too old for that. But then again, I’d just met two young siblings of my own...
“She didn’t just ‘go missing.’” He leaned with one shoulder against the wall, two feet from the end of the hallway. “Someone pulled her through the shadows a few minutes before I...met you.”
“Well, then it couldn’t have been Julia. She’s—” At the last second I realized she wouldn’t want me telling strangers what her Skill was. Not that I cared what she wanted, but pissing her off wouldn’t make her any easier to deal with. “She’s not a shadow-walker. Anyway, I was with her when your sister disappeared. It wasn’t Julia.”
“It wasn’t her personally,” he agreed. “She doesn’t do her own dirty work. But my sister was taken on her orders, and Julia knows where she is.”
There wasn’t a single glimmer of doubt in him. Not in his unflinching gaze, his steady voice or the confidence in every word he spoke. And when I considered the bullets flying through that storage closet and Julia’s apparent willingness to slaughter me in cold blood to keep me from inheriting her fortune, it wasn’t hard for me to believe my aunt capable of abduction.
But then, obviously so was the man who’d kidnapped me.
Anger flamed up my spine with the sudden realization of where I fit into his storm-the-castle routine. “So, what, when you couldn’t find your sister, you took me instead? What am I? A hostage?”
“No, I...” His cheeks flushed, and for the first time since he’d dragged me through the shadows, he seemed unsure of what to say. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“It’s complicated?” Unless he’d just discovered he’d inherited millions in ill-gotten gains from a crime-boss father he’d never met, making him the target of a crime-boss aunt he wished he’d never met, he couldn’t possibly understand the meaning of the word complicated. Not the way I understood it, anyway.
“Look, I’m the last person Julia Tower would be willing to trade your sister for.” Though she might strike a bargain for my corpse—not that I had any intention of admitting that to a man desperate to rescue his sibling. “So, I need you to take me back. But I swear if I hear anything about your sister, I’ll let you know what building you should break into next. So why don’t you just give me your name and number, and I’ll—”
“Sera, I can’t take you back there.” He held my gaze, and his statement had the grave finality of some indisputable truth. “They tried to kill you.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, reeling from the irony. “You can’t let someone else kill me, but you’re fine with the fact that you kidnapped me?” What kind of weird-ass moral code was he following?
“I didn’t really kidnap you.” He glanced over my shoulder into the bedroom where his grandmother was now snoring loudly in her recliner. “I just...removed you from a dangerous situation. You’re welcome.” He mustered up a grin, obviously trying to diffuse my mounting anger and frustration, but it didn’t work.
“For the last time, it wasn’t dangerous until you got there, and I didn’t ask to be removed.”
Still, he had a point. I didn’t want my father’s dirty money, but would Julia even listen long enough to let me say that, or would she shoot me on sight?
I exhaled through clenched teeth. “Fine. Take me somewhere else then. Drop me off downtown.” Where I could regroup and decide how best to proceed with my homicidally estranged aunt. And get my car back.
“I can’t.” He rubbed his forehead with one hand. “I’m sorry, but you have to stay here until I figure out what to do with you. So...make yourself comfortable.” He twisted to wave one hand at the living room, and indignation began to smolder deep in my gut. “I’m guessing you’re about ready for that drink now?”
“You can’t be serious.” I followed him into the tiny living room, where a couch and several armchairs surrounded a worn coffee table, all facing a small television.
“I am,” he called over one shoulder as he crossed the living room toward the kitchen. “And could you be quiet for a minute? I need to think...”
“No I can’t be quiet!” That smolder deep inside me burst into a blaze, and I felt as though I could breathe fire. “I’ll tell the whole damn neighborhood I’ve been kidnapped if you don’t