Page 6 of Tank's Temptation
Mine is the first word my mind supplies, and the one thing she is definitely not. She is my prisoner.
I sit again before she notices what the sight does to me. Rain taps gently at the narrow window. Music from the bar reaches us in broken bass notes, mixed with tools banging from the garage and an engine turning over outside. Tessa listens to all of it.
“How many men are outside this room?”
“Enough.”
“How many gates?”
“One vehicle gate, one rear service gate.”
Her gaze sharpens because I answered. “Cameras and armed guards?”
“Yes. So don’t even think about it.”
“And Harlan is coming tomorrow because he expects you to hand me over.”
“He expects to recover what belongs to him.”
“He expects you to make me disappear afterward.”
The certainty in her voice presses against the doubts already forming. “Why didn’t you go to Sheriff Miller?”
“My phone was destroyed, my car was blocked at the hotel, and I didn’t know which cops Harlan owns. I reached the motel on foot. Before I could work out who to call, you used a key to walk in. I’m guessing you intimidated the motel clerk into giving it to you.” She glares at me accusingly, and I give nothing away.
Sheriff Sam Miller has spent years trying to put Kingdom Come in jail. Harlan buying him seems unlikely, but unlikely isn’t impossible. Under King, money reached places nobody discussed afterward.
My phone vibrates, and it’s Cash. I stand and turn slightly while I answer, keeping Tessa at the edge of my vision. “Yes?”
“She might be telling you the truth. It looks like she was booked to do what she said she was. She has a legitimate business, website and everything.”
“Connection to Morrow?”
“Nothing yet. I’m still checking. Give me twenty.”
I end the call and realize I took my eyes off her for a second. She’s gone. I find the bathroom door almost closed.
I cross the room, shove it open, and see Tessa balanced on the toilet tank with both hands braced against the narrow window frame. She has forced the screen outward and pushed her shoulders through an opening barely wide enough for her head.
“Stop. The drop is twenty feet onto concrete.”
“I noticed.”
Her bare foot slips against the porcelain.
I catch her around the waist before her head strikes the frame. Momentum pulls her backward into me, and the toilet lid cracks beneath my boot as I take her weight. She fights instantly, elbow driving toward my ribs, but there is nowhere for either of us to move. I hold her long enough to get her off the tank, then carry her into the bedroom and set her down.
Tessa spins around to face me, breathing hard. “Don’t touch me. Just unlock the door.”
“No.”
“Of course not. You get to play the dangerous asshole, drag me wherever you want, then act offended when I don’t sit quietly in your shirt and eat your food.”
“I’m not offended.”
“You’re trying very hard to make me believe you’re a bad man.”
The words stop me, and she sees it before pressing harder. “The leather MC cut, the gun, the silence. You keep performing the part because it’s easier than asking whether the job is wrong.”
