Zane’s words from the kitchen of that house on Bainbridge Island rushed through her mind. The words he’d spoken just before they’d left. Just after he’d kissed her crazy.

Her pulse ticked up again. And when the water finally shut off in the bathroom, she pictured him wet and dripping, his skin warm and glossy as he rubbed a fresh towel all over his muscular body. The blood beat hard and hot in her veins all over again, heading straight for her belly.

“Eve?”

Carter’s voice dragged her attention back to the phone. “What?”

“Everything okay? Think I lost you there for a minute.”

He had. Eve swallowed hard and closed her eyes. Oh God, she was losing it. And she had a sinking suspicion there was no way she’d be able to keep her distance from Archer tonight. Not the way she was suddenly feeling. “I’m . . . here.”

“Good. Get some rest and call me tomorrow.”

“I will. And Carter, please let me know if you hear anything about Olivia. Anything at all.”

“Done. Sleep well, Juliet.”

The line clicked in her ear, and Eve’s hand dropped to her side.

Stupid . . .

She rested her head against the wall and scrunched her eyes. She should leave right now before Archer came out of that bathroom. Before it was too late. But she wasn’t going to. No, like the idiot she’d been in Beirut, she was going to sit here and want and suffer. And if he even made one tiny move toward her, she’d probably rock his world, and hers, and fuck everything up for good.

Then hate herself even more in the morning.


Olivia’s throat was bone-dry.

She pushed her aching upper body off the frayed mattress she’d been lying on and looked toward the door. The room they’d moved her to felt like the Ritz compared to the box she’d been in before. She was in some kind of house. A high window on the wall let in moonlight, which illuminated the cracked plaster walls and the dirty wood floor, but she had no idea what it looked out at. Aside from the rusted iron bed—bolted to the wall—and the mattress stained with sweat and blood, there was no other furniture to move around so she could climb up to see. And the bars over the windows prevented her from getting out, even if she had the energy to try.

It felt like cotton coated her mouth, and she licked her lips for the hundredth time. She needed water but was too afraid to bang on the door and ask. A shudder ran through her when her mind flashed to the image of that man climbing into the back of the van with her after she’d tried to run. As if he’d hit her all over again, pain ricocheted through her entire body.

Her head throbbed. She was filthy and covered in her own blood, and part of her didn’t even want to know where the blood had come from. She’d blacked out in that van—the only plus to the entire ordeal—and she didn’t want to think about or do anything to trigger her memories.

Tears welled in her eyes, and she closed them quickly, willing back the self-defeating thoughts. Someone would find her. People had to know she was missing by now. Her principal. The secretary at school. Her mind spun with possibilities, and then she remembered the guy in the van mentioning Eve.

Eve worked as an assistant to some politician in Washington, DC. Surely once she realized Olivia was missing, with her contacts, she’d send someone to come after Olivia.

But even as she tried to convince herself all wasn’t lost, a tiny voice in the back of Olivia’s head whispered, No one’s coming after you. You’re not important. What have you ever done that makes your life worth saving? And then there was the very real fact she and Eve hadn’t spoken in over a year.

Regret welled in Olivia’s chest. The last time she’d seen her sister was at their father’s funeral, when Eve had breezed in for the service and then breezed right back out again, as she always did. But this time, before she’d left, Olivia had been pissed enough to let Eve have it. She’d been the one to visit Daddy every day in the hospital after the cancer had spread. She’d been the one to take care of the preparations for the funeral and to oversee liquidating what was left of their parents’ estate. She’d been the only Wolfe child her parents could depend on in their last years because she hadn’t disappeared as soon as life got tough.

Unlike Eve. Who’d shed a few tears at the funeral, accepted the condolences from friends and family as if she’d carried some huge burden, and then had taken off again like she always did. And the saddest part was, their father wouldn’t have cared. Because—according to him—Eve was doing something important with her life, unlike Olivia, who was simply teaching.

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.

He’d never said those words aloud, but she knew he’d believed them. Because she believed them too.

She swiped at the stupid tear falling from the corner of her eye and felt like giving in to a long crying jag. But a groan echoed through the wall, drawing her up short.

Her breath caught, and she listened, afraid her captors were coming for her again. She wouldn’t survive another beating. Her body began to shake. She wouldn’t make it if—

“Who’s there?”

Olivia stilled. The voice hadn’t come from the hallway beyond her door but from . . . the wall.

She looked to her right, to the wall opposite the window, and held her breath.

“I can hear you,” the voice said. A male voice. A weak male voice, which was . . . oddly familiar. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know I’m here.”

Her gaze locked on a heating vent at the bottom of the wall, near the corner of the room. Slowly, she slid off the bed and crawled toward it, gritting her teeth at the pain in her muscles as she moved. When she was seated on the floor near the vent, her back against the adjacent wall and her knees pulled up to her chest, she finally worked up the courage to say, “Wh-who are you?”

“No one you know.”

But she did. Olivia’s brow dropped. His voice was very familiar, she just didn’t know from where.

“Any idea what time it is?”

“No.” She focused on the cadence of his words to see if anything triggered her memory but came up empty. The only thing she knew for sure was that his voice was frail, like hers, indicating he’d taken a beating or two himself. “It’s late, though.”

He sighed. “I’m sorry I got you involved in this.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. This won’t take long, I promise.”

Words—words he had spoken to her the night Karl had dropped her off at her house after that awful date and he’d come out of the shadows to grab her—echoed through Olivia’s mind. She gripped her knees and sat straight up. “You—”

“I didn’t plan this,” he said quickly. “They made me. They told me nothing would happen to you. I believed them. I’m sorry.”

Olivia’s gaze darted around the barren floor, but she couldn’t seem to focus on any one thing. “Who’s they?”

Silence.

“Who’s they?” she said again. “I have a right to know who’s doing this to me.”

“Shh, relax. You don’t want them to hear us, do you?”

Olivia stared at the grate between the walls, barely able to think, let alone feel. The man who’d kidnapped her was in the next room. The one who’d started all of this.

“And you don’t have any rights,” he mumbled. “Not where they’re concerned. It’s written on the fucking Constitution. You lose all rights as soon as they turn your way.”

Olivia didn’t know what he was getting at, but she didn’t care. All that mattered was finding out what was really going on, so that maybe—somehow—she could figure a way out of this nightmare. Because she wasn’t so sure help was coming after her anymore.

“What do they want? Why me?”

“Does it even matter? We’re gonna die in this hellhole.”

Panic pushed its way up Olivia’s throat, but she forced it back. “Yes, it matters. I need to know. Why did they—whoever they are—tell you to come after me? What do they want with me?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” That couldn’t be right. “If I was nothing, they would have killed me already.” She knew from the beating she’d taken that they were capable of it. There was a reason they were keeping her alive. When they’d moved her from that container she’d been locked in, the big guy from the van had told her she was now “useful.” “What do I know—?”

“Nothing,” he said on an exasperated breath. “You know nothing. Don’t you get it? They don’t care about you. They made me grab you to draw out your sister. They wanted to take her out, and they used me to do it. But no one ever told me they were going to set off a fucking bomb. I’d never have agreed if I’d known about that. I’m not a murderer, you understand?”

Olivia’s breath caught. And images of Eve swirled in her mind. She didn’t know what was going on, but a kidnapping, a bomb, this house . . . something big was happening.

“Are you still there?”

Olivia’s heart beat so hard, it echoed in her ears. “I-I’m here.”

“I’m not a murderer,” he said even softer. “I’m not. I just . . . I made a really bad business decision. That’s all this is. Business. You understand? I didn’t plan for any of this to happen. I was gonna let you go. As soon as I had the money, I was gonna let you go. I swear.”

Her mind flashed to that dark box. To the door opening and a man standing in the light. Then kneeling down and sliding a plate of food across the floor to her.

That had been him. The man she was now talking to. Until yesterday—or had it been the day before?—he hadn’t been a prisoner. He’d been her captor.