Sting

“But see, I had a problem with that coincidence theory.”

She didn’t ask the nature of his problem, but he told her anyway.

“For one thing, that joint out in the sticks isn’t exactly your kind of place.”

His tone was a shade judgmental, reverse snobbery, which put her on the defensive. “You have no idea what my kind of place is.”

“Well, there you’re wrong, Jordie. I did my homework. I know a lot about you.”

The probable truth of that statement disturbed her greatly, but she held her silence and her ground, keeping her gaze as direct on him as his was on her.

“Even without doing the homework, I’d know that a woman like you doesn’t socialize in bars that cater to trailer trash. I also had a problem with your boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend? Jackson?”

“Last name Terrell. Mickey told me all about him. Said he dropped you like a hot potato at the first sign of trouble. Cut and run like a regular heel. That true?”

She remained stubbornly silent.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I wasn’t talking about him anyway. I was talking about the guy who joined you at the bar tonight.”

She sputtered a short laugh of disbelief. “That jerk? He was a total str

anger.”

“He was all over you.”

“Not by invitation.”

He tilted his head. “You two didn’t set a time and place to meet?”

She opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it, clammed up, and didn’t tell him anything.

He raised an eyebrow. “You were about to say?”

“I was about to say fuck you.” She didn’t stop there, either, but gushed a stream of invectives. He withstood the tirade without blinking, but when she began repeating herself, he pressed his index finger lengthwise against the center of her lips.

“Stop it.”

She stopped, as she had stopped struggling against the hand restraint when he’d told her to, more because of the chilling voice in which he’d issued the order than because of the order itself.

Her lips held his attention for several moments. Perhaps he was watching them turn white from the pressure he applied. Then gradually he withdrew his finger and his eyes moved back up to hers. “You’ve got some mouth on you, Jordie Bennett.”

Again, it was the manner in which he spoke as much as the words themselves that caused a shakeup of her insides. She didn’t think he was referring strictly to her language, and the implication of that paralyzed her. By the time she remembered to breathe again, he was crouched in front of her, loosening the bandana from around her ankles.

The instant the knots came undone, she was off like a shot.

She got all of three feet from him before he hooked his arm around her waist and jerked her to a sudden halt, then spun her around to face him. He was furious. “Don’t think you can outsmart, outtalk, or outrun me. You can’t. Try and you’ll only make yourself miserable.”

“You’re worried about my comfort?”

“I’m not being paid to torture you.”

“Just to kill me.”

“That’s the job description.”

She gulped in a harsh breath. “Then why didn’t you do it on the parking lot when you shot your buddy? Why drag it out, why this…this…torture? Why am I still alive?”