This Year's Black (Killer Style 2)

Chapter Fourteen

“You can be anyone you want to be, with the right outfit.”

— Melody Minagar

Ryder cracked open her eyelids and light pierced through her eyes like a shiv, jabbing into her pounding brain. Reflexively, she squeezed them shut again and tried to process the anxiety chewing a hole in her stomach. Her memory of how she’d gotten here, and where exactly here was, was a jumbled mess. The last thing she remembered was the blue van pulling up, followed by the Jeep and—

Devin.

Her breath caught as a hot flash of fear razed what was left of the haze fogging up her thinking. Had he made it to the bakery? Did the Molinas have him, too? She’d asked him to trust her judgment and he had. Fuck.

That decision may have cost him his life—or at the very least his freedom, and possibly a whole lot of pain.

Finding him wasn’t an option. It was the only option.

While it may be warranted, panicking wasn’t going to do shit to get either of them out of this situation. Without opening her eyes, she took in a deep breath and used her other senses to gather intel and figure out where in the hell she was. She didn’t dare let on she was awake, in case she was being watched. Crisp sheets and a soft mattress lay beneath her. Salty air wafted in from the left. The quiet click of a door shutting broke the perfect silence. In or out? Best to bet on in and act accordingly.

A squinty-eyed peek confirmed she wasn’t outside the bakery anymore. She was in the suite at the Palm Inn.

Soft footsteps sounded behind her, setting off her internal alarms.

If the Molinas were planning to kill her, she sure as hell wasn’t about to make it easy for them. She visualized the room, searching her memory for a weapon.

She rolled to her side facing away from the door and wrapped her fingers around the bedside lamp’s solid brass base. In one fluid motion, she sat up, twisted, and brought the lamp down toward the approaching target.

“Oh good, you’re awake—” Borja’s greeting ended in a squawk.

She stopped the lamp’s downward path inches from his black hair. “Where’s Devin?” she demanded. Her chest heaved, not with exertion but with the desperate, aching need to know. She couldn’t attribute that kind of physical reaction to a missing client.

Devin had become much more than a mere client, well before she’d ever had the good sense to realize it…because she’d been too caught up in constantly proving what a badass she was.

Borja held his hands up, palms out. “Everything will be fine. The Molinas are nowhere near here. You’re safe with us.”

“Where is he?” she asked again.

“I do not have good news on that front.” Borja took several steps back from the bed, his gaze locked on the heavy lamp in her hand. “He is alive—at least he was when he got in the van. But the Molinas have him.”

Ryder jackknifed off the bed, intent on finding Devin. But the room swum before her and the lamp fell from her grasp. The throbbing in her head intensified, rattling her molars. Borja’s hand on her shoulder gently pushed her back down to the mattress before her knees gave way.

“Take these.” The hotel manager held out two white pills and a glass of clear liquid.

She pushed his hand away. “Forget it. I remember what happened last time I had something to drink here.”

“What do you…? Ah, the wine. It is particularly potent. But this is plain water and aspirin. I promise.”

“Potent? It was drugged.”

“Oh, Mama likes to talk about its mystical powers, but it’s just home-brewed wine that’s fermented too long. It always gives me the worst headaches. Speaking of which—” He dropped the aspirin in her hand and held out the water glass. “Take this, it will help.”

The pills carried the markings of a major pharmaceutical company on one side and the word aspirin stamped on the other. She sniffed the liquid. If it was drugged, it was unscented. “Why are you helping me?”

“Not everyone on the island is happy with how things work in Andol City.” He shrugged. “We do what we can.”

His tone was as easy as if she’d asked about that night’s dinner special, but his nostrils flared with emotion.

“What have they done to you?” she asked, sensing there was a story there, and not a good one.

A dark shadow crossed Borja’s face and his jaw tightened. “You notice I have my mother here, but not my father.”