Page 65 of Ford
She’d thought he might be having a heart attack.
The men had grabbed her then, pulled her away from him while they turned him over, bound his hands.
Then they’d gagged her, cuffed her hands behind her back, shoved the hood over her head, and made her stumble down the stairs.
A sweat broke across her body as they loaded her into the back of a van. She heard York’s body land beside hers, then doors close.
They’d traveled for at least a couple hours, while her bones turned to glue and every rut in the road bore into her hips and shoulders. But she stayed quiet, nudging up next to York, listening for his breathing. She heard nothing, but she did manage to roll close enough that she thought she felt his chest cavity moving.
I’m sorry, York.She couldn’t help but think he was right—if she hadn’t been so painfully determined to…well, what exactly was she supposed to do? Let a man be murdered? So maybe she would tell the FSB everything.
Why not? She had nothing to hide. And if anyone should know about an international hit on him, it was General Boris Stanislov’s people, the FSB.
Except, that wasn’t exactly the problem. She really knew nothing except what Coco had told them, and she had no intention of ratting out her sister and her hacking abilities.
So yeah. Give her the toothpicks. The bright lights.
A growl of frustration rose from the body next to her.
York? She made a sort of humming noise in response. Of course it was York—who else could it be? She’d been trying to figure out the hood problem for a while now and had a sketchy plan in the back of her brain. So she leaned over, tucking her head between her knees. By pressing her knees together and drawing back slowly, she was able to pinch the top of the hood.
She worked it off.
The bright morning sunlight burned her eyes as she blinked to adjust them. They were in a pool house surrounded by pine trees and greenery. Ten feet away, an indoor lap pool glistened in the morning sun. Beyond that, she spied a manor house on the other side of a courtyard, separated by a tennis court.
Oh goody, Putin’s summer home. Where all the bodies were buried.
York sat on the floor a few feet away. His hood was off, and he was shaking his head. She wasn’t sure what he was doing.
She rolled to her knees and worked her way over to him. Then she turned and got her hands on the tape on his mouth. Peeled it off.
“RJ—are you okay?”
She turned, raised an eyebrow, and he leaned over to her, his mouth on the edge of her tape.
The touch of his lips on her skin sent a strange buzz through her body. So maybe their kiss in the park hadn’t quite left her. Sure, it had been a ruse, but the way he’d kissed her back—the memory of it revived as he worked the tape free.
It came off easily. “I’m okay.”
He looked rough, his dark blond hair mussed, a little bruise where someone must have hit him forming on his cheek. He met her eyes now with so much earnestness in his that it reached down and grabbed hold of her bones, stopping the trembling she didn’t even realize her body had been doing.
“I’m going to get us out of this.” Low. Sure.
She believed him.
Or wanted to, with everything inside her.
“How’d they find us?” she asked, and York shook his head.
She had rolled to her backside, was bent over, trying to move her arms out from behind her, stretching—her skin screamed against the cuffs. But she managed to get one leg through, then the other.
He stared at her, eyes wide. “You’re really flexible. Let’s find something to cut my ties off.”
She was surveying the pool area—a large, long-handled net hung from one wall, a pool hose on another, and a couple chairs tucked in the corner. Nothing sharp or in any way useful.
York was climbing to his feet, as if to help find the answer, when voices emerged from the far side of the building.
He drew in a breath, glanced around. “We need to run.”