Rey dropped them off a few blocks from the hotel with a promise to return whenever they needed him, and Erin held their bags in the bright, reasonably safe-looking lobby while Zander arranged for their room. He spoke clear, guileless English with none of the hardness she’d already grown accustomed to hearing in his voice. The first room they were offered was on an upper floor, but Zander charmed the blushing young receptionist into switching them to a room on the first floor, with a slider that opened right out on the pool.
She thinned her lips. That seemed a little dangerous, but then again, they now had two ways out of their room, should they need them. And by his own loud and cheerful admission, Zander just “wanted him and his sweetheart to be closer to the pool.” He appeared to be who he said he was—her harmlessly hot boyfriend, traveling with her into Mexico to see what life was like south of the border. They could have been any young couple on a post-college trip, off on a quick vacation before the cares of the real world intruded. They were the right age, after all—both of them twenty-two. They both were dressed like college kids in light cotton gear and sandals. So what if Zander’s eyes never stopped moving and Erin jumped every time she heard a loud noise? That sort of thing could be easily explained away.
Despite the last-minute switch, it appeared that their room was ready—not all that surprising, given that the illustrious Camino Real hotel wasn’t even half-full, if the cars in the lot were any indication. Still, Erin found herself holding her breath as they bypassed the elevator and passed a gold sign proclaiming POOL with an arrow pointing down a dimly lit corridor of well-worn carpet and faded walls, everything in varying shades of gold, red, and brown.
“Really?” she finally asked, as they paused in front of their door. “A room near the pool?”
“I like to swim.” Zander flashed her a grin, his words light and easy. Then his gaze held hers for a moment longer. “And you know who else likes to swim? Families. Big, splashy families with lots of kids and moms who watch everything and who pick up on who’s staying in what rooms. Families and couples that are up all hours of the night arguing, talking, laughing, complaining. That’s who’ll be in the rooms around us, instead of being stuck on a quiet floor several stories up where we don’t know who we’ll be surrounded by—if anyone, given how full this hotel doesn’t appear to be.”
He waited for her to nod her understanding, then turned back to the door of their room, sliding in the key card. He pushed the door open, and in just a few steps he was across the open space, pulling the curtain wide in front of the sliding door, checking the lock. “It’s not dusty,” he said. “Means the room has been used recently. That’s good.” He moved over to the bathroom and stepped inside. Wanting to make herself useful, Erin crouched down and checked the underside of the bed, grateful she didn’t see anything clutching the king-size box springs.
Then she stood, eyeing the bed with a sudden memory of the king-size bed she’d just shared with Zander—and what they’d done in it. That was just sex, she told herself. Like Zander had said, a distraction to keep her mind off what was about to happen next, so she didn’t get overwhelmed with anxiety. Still, she felt vulnerable, exposed, her emotions a little too raw. “With all of those families drawn to the pool area, you’d think they’d have rooms with two double beds, not a king,” she said, trying to keep the comment light.
Zander glanced up from where he was going through the bags, the blue and pink backpacks now looking a bit worse for wear. They were the kind of packs any college kid would carry down for a jaunt over the border…except one of them was stuffed full of hundred-dollar bills. His gaze went from her to the bed, then back again. He eyed her with sudden awareness. “You got a problem with sharing a bed with me?”
“Of course not,” Erin said hurriedly. “I was just making an observation. You know, because of what you said about the families and whatever.” She walked over to the sliding door, peering through the glass. The pool was larger than she expected, a concrete rectangle with an additional round pool off of it in the distance, probably a hot tub.
“What, no tiki bar?” She jumped as Zander came up behind her, and he looked over her shoulder at the sunbaked pool. “Looks like a piece of crap, but I guess it’ll do.” He shifted his gaze down to her, no doubt taking in her rigid shoulders, her hands clenched on her bag. “You okay?”
Erin sighed, busying herself with her purse. She pulled out her cellphone, glanced down at it. “I just want this over with, I guess. I can’t believe we have to wait two more hours to—”
Her phone rang.
She was so surprised that she almost dropped the thing, but as it was she jumped a good foot back, her hand clenching. Zander moved with her, his manner once again tight and fast. “Okay, so now we know that they know we’re here,” he said, speaking quickly as the phone rang a second time. “That’s good. They probably had an alert set up at the front desk, but that’s good. That means they want the money, and that your parents are still okay, you got that? Everything’s just fine. Just answer and hold the phone away from your ear a bit, exactly like last time.”
She nodded, fumbling the phone on as it neared the end of its third ring. “Hello? Hello!” she managed to say, not even needing to fake the tremor in her voice. “This is Erin. We’re here. Hello?” Zander gave her the thumbs up, as if she was actually acting, but the voice on the phone was warmer this time—friendly, almost gracious.
“Good. Welcome to Mexico, Miss Connelly. You have a car?”
Erin’s eyes jumped to Zander. He shook his head furiously and mouthed, “Cab.”
“No. No, we took a taxi service over, and they dropped us off. We didn’t know…we didn’t know what would be best.” She stretched her face into a “What do I do?” grimace, and Zander gave her another thumbs up, his mouth tight but his expression still even. Okay, she thought. He was okay with this.
There was a moment’s brief discussion on the other end of the line, then the man was back. “Rent a car, no driver,” he said. “Tomorrow morning at ten A.M., you bring it to this address.” He began to rattle off words.
“Hold on, hold on!” Erin cried.
Zander was shaking his head no, but Erin ignored him. She ran to her purse, dumping it on the bed. A pen fell out, but she had no notebook. She fumbled and then spied the notepad, but Zander blocked her grab for it.
“No,” he mouthed, and she’d never seen him look so angry. It completely transformed his face, turning him into a man she didn’t even know, and Erin faltered, her eyes riveted on Zander as the man started speaking again, repeating the address.
“Um, I’m not sure that we can do that—,” she finally managed.
“It is a private residence,” the man said. “You cannot see it from the access road. However, there will be a gate that will open at ten o’clock. You can—”
Zander’s look was furious enough to sting her into speech. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand!” Erin babbled. “I don’t know…I don’t think…can’t we just meet here? There’s a bar and there’s people and it would be easy.”
“You want to meet there?” The man’s voice was smooth, unperturbed, but Erin could barely hear him over a sudden and unmistakable cry of alarm from deeper in the room. Speakerphone, she thought belatedly. And it was already too late.
“Erin, for God’s sake, this isn’t the time to be stubborn.” There was no denying the strain in her mother’s voice, but at least she sounded more indignant than scared. “Just listen to what the man says and then do it.”
“Mom!” Erin gasped, and in that moment, all her anger, all her outrage evaporated. “Mom, are you still okay? Have they hurt you?” Zander reached for the phone, but Erin spun away. “Hello?”
“Erin, it’s all right. We’re okay.” A second voice. One she didn’t recognize. The boyfriend? Had to be, though he sounded remarkably sane compared to her mother’s usual tastes. “They’ve treated us better than we expected, truly. Your mom is fine, everything is fine—”
“No! She needs to understand that—” Her mother’s voice cut off abruptly, and Erin gripped the phone as Zander also went tense beside her.
“Hello? Hello! Please, you have to—”
“You are to bring a car here, Miss Connelly, at this address—”
Zander moved so abruptly that Erin blinked, wheeling back and almost toppling onto the bed. He shoved a piece of paper in front of her face and jabbed a finger at it, and she was so startled that she just read it out loud. “No! No, we can’t do that. You need to bring them here. I’m too scared. I have the money but you have to meet us here!”
No sooner were the words out of her mouth than Zander reached out and grabbed the phone, yanking it from her grasp and terminating the call, cutting off Erin’s unfeigned sob of outrage in the process. To the man on the other end of the phone, it would have seemed that she’d just hung up the phone in the midst of a hysterical outburst.
Which she was just about to have.
“What did you just do!” she wailed.
“I just kept us from walking into a goddamned clusterfuck is what I did,” Zander snapped back. He threw the phone down on the bed and spun around, pressing his hands to his temples. “For the love of Christ, Erin, what was that about? You were going to agree to go to some stupid-ass off-site location? In the middle of goddamned nowhere, in a city you don’t know, and a country that’s not yours? Are you trying to get us killed?”
“I didn’t have any choice!” Erin said, and Zander spun back to her. Whatever expression he had on his face made her back up a step. Good.
“You sure as hell did have a choice—you do have a choice, Erin. You gotta remember that,” he said, advancing on her. She came up against the dresser and stopped short, but he didn’t stop until his face was right in hers. God, he’d never seen her so scared, and that pissed him off even more. “You can’t give up all the power to them. That’s the first step to losing everything. No matter what happens, you always have a choice. Your choices may be pretty shitty sometimes, but they’re always there.”
“What choice?” she argued back. “The choice to let my mom die?”
“That’s their choice, not yours,” Zander said. “Your choice is how you want to do the deal. How much danger you’re willing to put yourself in, with people who have already proven that they don’t play by any rules. You have no control over whether or not they kill your mom and her boyfriend. You never did. That’s completely their ball game. You got that?”
“But I have the money. I have what they asked for. All I have to do is do what they want, and—”
“No, Erin,” Zander said, and now he did reach out, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her. Any ordinary woman would have cried, but Erin just stared at him, blinking furiously, her mouth twisted into an ugly grimace. “No. If you do what they want and only what they want, they still could go ahead and kill you, me, and their hostages, too. They are not playing by our rules. I told you. The second you give up control to them, any control, they will seek to take more. And then more still. Right now you have enough cards to make this work. You’ve got the money they want, and you’re in a more or less safe location with a lot of people and activity. Those are all good things. But you’ll blow all of that if you just give away every card you have to them—agreeing to meet them alone, off-site, with nothing but yourself and a bag of money for protection.”
“But I have you for protection!” The words seemed ripped out of her, and Zander firmed his grip on her shoulders, staring at her. “I have you, and my mom doesn’t. She just—”
“Your mom got herself into this mess all on her own,” he said, his words low and steady. “To get her out, you need to do this exactly the way I tell you to. Or we leave right goddamned now.” Zander set her away from him and wheeled around, scooping up the blue backpack and shaking it at her. “I’ll walk right out of this hotel, out of this hellhole city, and out of this country with all your money, and then you really will be screwed. Is that what you want?”
She just stared at him, her mouth now open. “You wouldn’t do that to me.”
“The hell I wouldn’t!” Zander shot back. “My job down here is first and foremost to keep you alive. If we get your mom out in the process, great. But that’s not my primary goal and you need to keep that crystal clear.” He threw the bag back down on the bed, stalking over to the slider door again. Angrily, he shut the drapes, plunging the room into darkness. He flipped on the light switch, but didn’t turn back around. “You’ve got. To do this. My way,” he said, trying to keep his breathing measured. “That’s the only possible shot we have at coming out of this okay.”
There was a long, heavy silence. Then Erin said, “Fine.”
Zander’s shoulders dropped, a tightness in his chest easing that he hadn’t even known he’d been carrying around. He heard Erin exhale and sink down on the bed, but as he turned, she got up again, snagging her phone and tossing it onto the pillow, before she pulled the comforter off the bed and shoved it to the floor.
Zander looked from her to the jumbled sheets. “What the hell was that for?”
“They don’t wash them,” she said, her words toneless. She was clenching and unclenching her fists. “They don’t wash them every time, not like they do the sheets. I hate hotel comforters.” As he blinked at her, she changed tracks again. “They wanted us to come out tomorrow. That means they are—they were, anyway—ready to make the deal happen. They aren’t just trying to lure us down here to kill us or whatever. At least they weren’t, I don’t think.”
“They’re still not. If they wanted to kill us, Erin, we’d already be dead.” Erin flinched, but Zander kept talking. “We just have to wait for them to contact us, and get them to come here. That’s it.”
“But how do you know if they’re going to—”
Erin’s anguished words were cut off by the shrill blast of her phone.