He shrugged. "I don't know. It's a guy thing, I guess. Or maybe it's a military thing. We don't waste time with pleasantries. No point and no time."

"Anyway, Thresh says to tell you he's on the runway, engines idling, and that he'll be in the cargo hold ready to cover our approach."

"Perfect." He gestured at my pistol. "Reload."

Turns out I didn't need to reload, because there was no one else behind us and we arrived at the airfield a couple minutes later. We got out of the SUV and ran up the ramp to the cargo hold of a ma.s.sive, twin-engine aircraft. The scene actually reminded me of that scene from the cartoon movie Rio, where the awkward American girl and the gumpy Brazilian bird guy are in the Carnival float, chasing the birds onto an airstrip. Except, there were no birds on the airplane, just all seven feet of Thresh-and holy Moses, St. Peter, Jesus, and Mary herownself...Thresh was shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of cut-off cargo shorts, the ends frayed and ragged. He was the most heavily muscled man I'd ever seen, easily rivaling both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dwayne Johnson-and I'd say Thresh probably had the advantage. I stumbled as I pa.s.sed him, gawking openly. I mean, that kind of build didn't do it for me, s.e.xually speaking, but it was still a h.e.l.l of an impressive sight.

He winked at me. "Take a picture, sweetheart. It'll last longer." He had a ma.s.sive machine gun in his hands, the kind of gun you usually see mounted on the sides of helicopters in Vietnam war movies.

"Don't call my woman 'sweetheart,' you big a.s.shole," Harris snapped. "I'll kick your a.s.s."

Thresh glanced from me to Harris. "Your woman?"

"You f.u.c.king heard me."

"All right then." He eyed me again, a.s.sessing rather than leering. "So, when you say 'your woman', what does that mean, exactly, boss?"

Harris was in the c.o.c.kpit, flipping switches, settling a headset on his head. He turned around and glanced through the open door. "It means shut the f.u.c.k up and mind your own G.o.dd.a.m.ned business, that's what it f.u.c.king means."

Thresh's eyebrows rose. "Whoa, dude. Uptight much?"

"Uptight?" Harris rose out of the seat, pulling at the headset. "I'll show you-"

"Harris! Sit down, shut up, and fly the f.u.c.king airplane. We don't have time to measure d.i.c.ks."

Thresh's eyes, already wide, widened further when Harris did as I said. The noise of the engines ramped up, and we bolted forward. Something sparked off the ramp and ricocheted around the cargo hold with angry ping-zzzzinggg-buzzzzz, and Thresh's hand-which was so big a fully-grown Pomeranian could have sat in his palm-shoved me to one side. He dropped to his knees, flipped a bipod out, and dropped to his belly. Our plane was howling down the runway, picking up speed, but Thresh didn't seem concerned by this as he took aim and opened fire at the black SUV roaring up behind us. I grabbed hold of the nearest object, which was a chain fastened to the floor and to the wall, clinging to it as I felt the ground fall away. The banging of the machine gun was the most deafening sound I'd ever heard, and it rocked Thresh's entire body back with each report. He fired in bursts of three shots, and on the fourth burst, the hood of the SUV crumpled, the front b.u.mper buried itself into the tarmac, and the entire vehicle flipped forward. Contrary to Jerry Bruckheimer movies, it didn't explode in a fiery ball, instead just flopping forward onto its roof and rocking a few times before coming to rest.

We were angled upward now, so the tail end was facing the ground at a steep angle. My stomach lurched into my throat. Thresh, meanwhile, calmly folded the bipod, shouldered the huge gun, and grabbed a chain near mine. He loomed over me, glanced down at me, and winked. The man was just enormous. It boggled the mind, honestly.

He slammed his palm over a b.u.t.ton, and the ramp folded up, darkening the interior and removing my view of the ground.

I let my head thunk against the wall of the plane, and I blew out a breath of relief.

"Well, that was nerve-wracking," I said.

Thresh just chuckled. "All in a day's work, sweet-I mean, Miss Campari."

"Layla."

"I'm sticking with 'Miss Campari,'" he said. "Harris can be a vicious son of a b.i.t.c.h."

I wasn't sure what he meant by that, so I just shrugged. "Okay. Well...I'm going up to the c.o.c.kpit."

Harris may have been a vicious son of a b.i.t.c.h, but I still felt Thresh's eyes on my a.s.s as I walked forward to the c.o.c.kpit. I turned and glanced at him, an eyebrow lifted. He just shrugged, making a face that said who, me? I don't know what you're talking about.

I laughed as I took a seat in the copilot's chair.

"What?" Harris asked.

"Just Thresh. He's funny. I like him."

Harris gave me an odd look. "Thresh is funny? Since when?"

I waved it off. "So. We're finally going home?"

"Well, to the Eliza eventually, but our route there will be a bit...circuitous. We're stopping in Miami first, and then to the Bahamas, and then eventually we'll take a chopper from St. Thomas to the ship. Gotta make sure we really lost them."

"Think we have?" I asked.

He didn't answer right away. "I don't know, honestly. I told you I'd never bulls.h.i.t you, so I won't. You killed his best friend. I don't think we'll ever really lose Vitaly's guys until Vitaly is dead. "

"Best friend?" I swallowed hard at that.

"Reports are Cut was the only person Vitaly trusted, his best friend since childhood."

"So I just made things worse, didn't I?"

Harris glanced at me. "You did what you had to do. That's all you need to worry about."

I didn't like the sound of that.

And the fact that Harris stayed quiet as we flew out over the ocean, his brow pinched, worry on his features...didn't do much to rea.s.sure me.

Nor did the roiling uneasiness in my stomach.

We weren't out of the woods yet.

17.

"I LOVE YOU," FINALLY After Brazil, Florida seemed relatively temperate. As soon as we landed-once again on a too-short landing strip in the middle of nowhere, Harris effortlessly bringing the big aircraft down with a single gentle b.u.mp and bark of the tires-Thresh, now clothed in a tight T-shirt and canvas boat shoes, jumped onto a waiting Harley and roared off without even waving at me.

There was a Hummer waiting for us, but it wasn't the civilian version, the watered down derivative. No, this was the military Hummer, huge, wide, tan, with a sloping rear roof and a brutally spartan interior.

Harris turned the engine over, and it made a rattling ba.s.s diesel growl. I buckled myself in and laughed as a thought occurred to me.

"What?" Harris asked.

"Just, you. I wish I knew how you do it."

"Do what?"

"Magically procure guns and airplanes and military Hummers-"

"It's not a f.u.c.king Hummer," he snapped, "it's a Humvee. A Hummer is one of two things: a piece of s.h.i.t civilian vehicle that shares literally no DNA with what I'm driving right now, or it's a b.l.o.w.j.o.b. This is a Humvee. It should never, ever, be called a Hummer."

I widened my eyes. "Yes sir," I said, with a mock salute.

He had the good sense to laugh at himself. "Sorry. I'm a soldier, and we tend to get picky about that kind of thing. A chopper is a motorcycle, not a helicopter. Pistols have clips, a.s.sault rifles have magazines. And AK-47s, M-16s, those kinds of things...those are a.s.sault rifles, not machine guns. What Thresh had on the cargo plane, that was a machine gun."

"Noted."

"Now." He glanced at me. "What was it you were laughing about, now that we've got basic terminology out of the way?"

"It's just...none of what's happened to me has been like I thought it would be. In the movies, shooting guns is easy. You shoot someone, and it's no big deal. You shoot a car in the engine and it explodes. Running for your life is exciting. But none of that, except for you, is true. You're just like a movie character. Like, you show up with a bag full of machine guns-sorry, a.s.sault rifles. You go on not one, not two, but three real-life car chases with people shooting at us and everything. And we get away. And then you've got a real life Terminator who shoots big a.s.s machine guns like it's a G.o.dd.a.m.ned toy. And there's an actual plane just...waiting for us. And when we land...there's a military-grade Humvee waiting for us. Like, who can do that? Seriously. Who do you call that can just get a f.u.c.king airplane? Where do you get a.s.sault rifles? This s.h.i.t doesn't just...appear in real life. But for you, somehow, it does. It's like magic."

By now we were on a two-lane highway that led through absolutely nowhere, the horizon flat as a ruler in every direction.

Harris just shrugged. "It's not magic, it's connections. I know a lot of people. A lot...of unsavory people. Just so you're totally aware, having a bag full of a.s.sault rifles is, obviously, highly illegal, regardless of what country you're in. But that's why it's called the 'black market', right?"

I snorted. "I really do know better, I swear, but...I've always pictured the black market as being, like, a secret warehouse somewhere, like an actual secret marketplace. Like you have a secret knock and s.h.i.t, and there are tables full of guns and there's someone that runs a business called Goons 'R' Us. I mean, I do get that it's all online and whatever, but that's the mental image I have."

Harris laughed out loud. "Goons 'R' Us. G.o.d, Layla, you're f.u.c.king hysterical. I'll have to tell Thresh about that. We can make it a side business. Maybe we can invent our own gun and call it the 'thugbuster'."

"'You're mocking me, aren't you?'" I asked.

"No, I'm not, I swear. It's just funny." I didn't really expect him to catch the Toy Story quote, but hey, I had to try. The situation just called for it. He shot me a glance. "And babe, life isn't like the movies. I spent a small fortune just on the guns. Being a bada.s.s is expensive as h.e.l.l, which is something no one ever tells you. In reality, shooting a gun and hitting what you're aiming at is hard, and killing a man is harder. Car chases are f.u.c.king terrifying, and having people trying to kill you is worse. Cars rarely explode. Getting shot f.u.c.king hurts; I do not recommend it. Any of it."

"I wish I'd known all that before I got kidnapped."

"You're handling this better than you have any right to, by the way," he said, reaching over and taking my hand. "I think anyone else would have gone crazy by now."

"Here's the thing, though. You don't really go crazy, do you? I mean, unless you legit have a psychotic break or a nervous breakdown, you don't really go crazy. You just deal with it. It sucks, and you hate it, and you wish you weren't going through it, but you deal, and all you can really do is keep going. And I suppose, as crazy as all this has been, it's not really that crazy, not if I consider everything else I've been through. But killing Cut? That was different. Really f.u.c.king different. I can't forget it. I'm trying. I'm trying so hard...but I just keep-I just keep seeing it. Feeling it. I can deal with shooting the guy during the car chase. That one I can justify as being like in the movies. I can pretend it didn't happen. I can forget it. But stabbing Cut in the eye with a pen? I can't forget that."

And just like that, I was fighting hyperventilation. Zero to sixty in nothing flat. Suddenly I was sobbing-just immediate, bam, Layla goes full on baby.

Harris pulled over on the side of the road, exited the Humvee, jerked open my door, and hauled me out. He held me against his chest. Let me cry. Didn't say a word for a long time. Just held me.

When it seemed like my hissy fit had subsided, he tilted my head back. "It'll fade. I can't say it'll ever go away. I'm not gonna bulls.h.i.t you or blow smoke up your a.s.s. You're a tough as nails chick, so I'm not gonna treat you like you're fragile. You kill someone with your hands like that? It sticks with you. You feel it. You have this...I don't know...haptic memory of it. It doesn't ever go away. You just learn to live with it. You justify it as self-defense, something you had to do, it was you or him. You're talking about it, which is a big step. Some guys, after their first kill, they won't talk about it. They clam up, suppress it. And that's no good. You've got to let it out, talk about it. Or it'll fester. And when emotional trauma turns gangrenous...that s.h.i.t gets ugly."

"I didn't want to kill him. But when I did? Nick, it felt good. That's the part that makes me sick. I don't regret it. Not one f.u.c.king bit. I don't feel guilty. He was an evil f.u.c.k and he deserved to die the ugly death I gave him. I feel bad that I don't feel bad. And I hate the...what was that term you just used? Haptic memory? That's it exactly. I can feel right now exactly how it felt. And that's a memory I'll never, ever be able to forget. I'll have it till the day I die."

"Which will be a very long time from now, okay?" His palm was warm, rough, and flat against my cheek.

I nodded. "I know." I let out a breath and looked up at him. "Nick? I don't think I've said this yet, but...thank you."

He frowned. "For what?"

"Coming to get me? Rescuing me? Killing for me? Risking death for me?"

"Oh. That. It's very literally in the job description. I would have gone to get you even if it wasn't, though. They say love makes you do crazy things, and I always thought that was stupid bulls.h.i.t. But now? Now I get it."

Love.

The word hung in the air between us. He knew I'd caught it, and I knew he knew. We just stared at each other for a long moment, each willing the other to say it first.

Eventually, I couldn't take the pressure any more. "Come on. Take me to Miami and buy me some new clothes and a fancy American dinner."

"It would be my pleasure," he said, and helped me back up into the monster Humvee.

And that's exactly what he did. He took me to Saks and bought me a whole new outfit from the skin out. Jade green lingerie the exact shade of his eyes when he was h.o.r.n.y, lace-trimmed demi bra and boy-shorts. A white skirt that hit mid-thigh, knee-high socks and Mary-Janes, a lacy, racy, sleeveless, backless, cleavage-popping blouse in sapphire blue. Even a brand new Kate Spade clutch. Like a good boyfriend, he followed me through the store and just told me everything looked amazing, told me to pick whatever I wanted and not worry about price tags. So I did what he told me. I might have tested him on the purse, though. I mean, it wasn't Gucci or anything, but a four-hundred-dollar purse is crazy expensive to a girl who's used to working three jobs just to afford rent, food, bills, and booze. Nick didn't even blink. Just handed over a stack of hundos and told the girl to keep the change, walking away with my bag and ignoring the girl's protest that she wasn't allowed to take tips.

He accompanied me to the mall's restroom and waited while I changed. "d.a.m.n, Layla." His eyes on my body, his hands reached for me and smoothed over my hips. "You look incredible."

I smiled. "Thank you, Nicholas."

He growled. "Nicholas. f.u.c.king Nicholas. I haven't been called that since Mrs. LaPrade, my second grade Sunday School teacher."

"I'm special, so it's fine."

"You are special," he agreed, pulling me against his body for a kiss. "Very special. After dinner, I'll show you how special you are."

"You know, this is kind of a first for me."

He pulled me into a walk. "What is?"

I tugged at the hem of the skirt. "All this. Letting you buy me this stuff. I'm not, like, a femi-n.a.z.i or anything. I appreciate chivalry and all that, but I've always drawn the line at letting men buy me things. Buy me dinner, sure. Pay for the movie, okay. That's taking care of your date, and it's fine. But I've never let a man buy me gifts. That smacks of having a sugar daddy, and I've always refused to allow that. Makes me feel like I'm being paid for s.e.x, but in stuff rather than money."

"So what's different?" Harris asked.

I shrugged. "I don't know. Everything. Me, I guess."

A pause as he helped me into the Humvee and navigated out of the parking lot. "Look. I'm not anywhere remotely close to being as wealthy as Roth, but I'm doing just fine. I'll never want for anything. And as long as you're mine, neither will you. I don't give a s.h.i.t how you want to work things. You want to keep your s.h.i.t separate from mine, that's cool. You let me; I'll take care of you. I just want you any way I can get you. That's all I care about."

"There's a certain a.s.sumption in what you just said that I'm not sure we've really covered yet."

He eyed me across the s.p.a.ce between us-which, being a Humvee, was significant. "d.a.m.n right there's an a.s.sumption. Unless you want to tell me otherwise right now...Layla, you and me? We're it. You're mine."

"Nick-"

"And I realize how caveman that sounds. You're your own woman. You do what you want. I respect the f.u.c.k out of you. But you're mine. It goes both ways, though."

"Say it, Nick."

He let silence hang for a moment. A smile curved his mouth. "You think I won't?"

"I think it's harder for you to say you're mine than to tell me I'm yours."

"I'll show-"

I cut in over him. "No s.h.i.t you'll show me. I know it's true. You're mine, now, Nicholas Harris. Don't think I don't know it. I'll let you be dominant and alpha and all that, because it's hot as f.u.c.k and I like it. But make no mistake, buddy: I take what I want, and I do not sit and obey for f.u.c.king anyone. And I do not share. You're mine. And I want to hear that from you."