THE PLANE WAITING FOR them was smaller than the one they’d arrived in. Tess was put in a corner and ignored. Thank God. As soon as the wheels left the runway, relief flooded her; they were finally returning.
Vegas never looked so good.
Until leaving it, she’d taken her home country for granted. That was how she explained away the overwhelming rush of emotion when her feet met Nevada tarmac. Her bag was dumped in the trunk of the sedan while the wand-waving security guy from London herded her into the back.
Trying not to assume what would happen next, she ignored Zeus and stared at the back of the driver’s head. Going straight to the desert house was a pipedream. That was proved when they drove to Hugo’s hotel. At least it was familiar, that was something.
How much time would she have if she sneaked away? How would she sneak away? Another pipedream. Just like getting her bag from the trunk. The same insistence she’d used in London fell on deaf ears. In the high-roller suite, she tried it again. Zeus gave the security guy the nod. Without ceremony, he picked her up, put her in one of the bedrooms and locked the door from the outside.
Being a prisoner wasn’t fun, though it was overdue. Zeus could’ve put her under lock and key from day one. From there, trapped in a room so close and yet so far from her Heart, all she could do was pace and wait.
Tess was left there for so long that it eventually became impossible to stay awake. Her day had been inordinately long having left London in the morning and flown back in time to relive some of it over again.
Despite her jetlag, when the lock on the door clicked, her eyes opened. Maybe it was trauma from the previous time she’d woken in a bed, but she quickly logged as many details as she could. Daylight. Vegas. Alone. But not for long. Leaping out of bed just as the door opened, she used it as a shield against Zeus and his security buddy.
“Time for your errand,” Zeus said.
The security guy came over, a length of thin rope stretched from fist to fist.
“What is that?” she asked, glancing around, seeking an avenue of retreat. “What are you doing?”
“You are going to get those keys back. Today. Now,” Zeus said as the security guy grabbed her arm.
“Let me go,” she said, fighting to pull back. “Let me fucking go!”
“If you don’t struggle, it will go much faster,” Zeus called over the top of her protests.
The guy got one loop around her wrist. Capturing the second wrist against the first, he wrapped the rope around to tie it tight so her hands were palm to palm.
“What the hell do you need to tie me up for?” she asked, glaring past the security guy.
He was bigger than her, stronger, and an asshole, as was the one by the door calling the shots. The goon was just dancing to his master’s tune.
“To remind you who’s in charge,” Zeus said. “I’m taking no chances.”
The goon took hold of her bound wrists. Although she pulled back, her objection was to being led, not leaving the room… depending on what was out there.
He pulled her toward the door, toward Zeus. For a moment, she considered locking her hands together and smacking him as hard as she could. His anger was so blatant. How had she ever seen anything else? How had the bastard ever put a smile on her face, even for a few seconds?
“I don’t need him dragging me everywhere,” she said, left alone when the goon went to grab her jacket from the table in the window. “I can walk.”
“You’ll do only what you’re told,” Zeus said. “You’re going with Leonard. He’s checked everything out, so don’t think you can run or hide… You’re going to the house, to the mail, you get the keys, and Leonard will bring you back. That’s it.”
That didn’t sound so bad. Except for the whole Leonard bringing her back thing. “Okay,” Tess said with a nod as Leonard tucked her jacket over her hands to hide the rope. “I can do that.”
Zeus smiled and came in closer. “Garrick and two of the men are in the field.” Attempting to trace other operatives with Zone, she remembered. “And we know the rest of them leave Balfour’s house empty to go on a desert run each day.” Making a point of checking his watch, his smile was all the more gratified when it rose into view again. “There will be no one home, Mademoiselle.”
That was the moment Leonard, the security guy, chose to show her the gun on his hip.
“You better check with the boss man before you consider using that. I think he needs me alive,” she said, laying her gaze on Zeus. “Don’t you?”
He touched her face, or tried to, she was quick to pull away. “He doesn’t need to kill you. Just keep you from running away… Weak is exactly how a woman should be.”
“Not this one,” she said, tightening her jaw.
Not in front of him, no way. It was becoming more and more difficult to accept that the man standing in front of her was the same one she’d signed her Heart’s future over to.
“Go to the house, get the keys,” he said, inhaling like he was inconvenienced. “Then we can take you some place safe… Somewhere you’ll be monitored at all times.”
That was all the confirmation she needed. She couldn’t come back. Even if it came down to Leonard murdering her, she wouldn’t let herself be used. Not against her father. Not against Daire. She couldn’t be a pawn anymore.
Leonard snatched her arm to haul her out.
What a coward?
Zeus was a goddamn coward.
Leonard threw her into the car and went around to the driver’s side. Zeus didn’t want to be in the country. It was only his controlling nature that brought them back. That and her little tap-dance about the keys.
Zeus expected her to go to the desert house, retrieve the mail, and then he’d be back on top. The coward didn’t even have the balls to tell anyone they were in the country. If he couldn’t do that, he definitely wouldn’t be going to the house himself.
No doubt he thought nothing could go wrong if she and Leonard were the only ones there. With her hands bound, her options were limited. She could scream, shout, kick and swear. Except Hugo’s house would be empty. As was the one opposite, thanks went to Styx for the intel. There weren’t exactly a zillion houses on the street and it was right next to a golf course. A wide-open space.
In Vegas, all sorts of things went on. Different extravagances, a lot of flamboyant people gravitated there too. So there was a good chance that even yelling and struggling wouldn’t get anyone’s attention anyway. It all depended on how far Daire and her father were from the house. If the guys were just seconds away or on the route back, she might be able to cause enough fuss to delay her and Leonard’s departure.
But damn, her hands, she couldn’t even write a note to tell Daire she’d been there.
Going back to Zeus’s wasn’t an option. Bad enough they’d have to go back without the keys. What would he do then? Send her back the next day and the next? His patience wouldn’t last forever. He’d recognize it was a game, that she’d lied to him.
They turned into Hugo’s street.
Leonard slowed the car. “Get down,” he said, grabbing her head to thrust it down to her knees as he drove past the house.
“What the fuck are you—let me go!”
He balled his fist in her hair to shake her head. “Shut the fuck up or I’ll put a bullet in you just for fun.”
Fun? Is that what he thought? Unless the Olympus guys were far, far away, they would recognize the sound of a gunshot. It wasn’t like she wanted to be hurt, but if Daire heard the shot and came to check it out… The experience would be much more fun for her than it would be for poor Lenny.
She tried to sit up when he turned the steering wheel to take them back the way they’d come. Lenny was quick to grab her hair and push her down when they passed the house again.
“Geez,” she said, blowing out a breath to clear the hair from her face as she stared down into the empty foot-well.
“They’re still in there,” he muttered and let her go.
They drove out of the street, but only to loop around another street to return. Before they passed the house, he slowed to a stop and slouched.
“What are we doing?” she asked. “You want me to walk from here?”
Without waiting for an answer, she reached for the door handle. Lenny lunged over to grab her and haul her back. “Stay in the fucking car,” he hissed.
His urgency became clear when she glanced out of the windshield. Harry was leading his men across the street. His men. Daire. Right there, maybe fifty feet ahead. In the flesh.
She lunged for the horn; the idiot goon intercepted her.
But that wasn’t all. That wasn’t it. She fought. Pushing, pulling, hitting, slapping, punching, doing whatever she could to reach the link to her Heart. But it didn’t matter. Leonard shoved her against the door and threw his fist out, catching her cheek, dazing her stupid. Sitting there, blinking, she couldn’t move even as he adjusted the jacket over her hands to cover the rope again.
Her head throbbed as her eye pulsed in its socket, she’d never been hit like that. Not wham in the face without warning. She should’ve expected it. Fighting him when he had to answer to Zeus was probably an idiot move. But she couldn’t do nothing, couldn’t always live to wonder what might have happened if she’d just taken a shot.
They stayed in the car, suspended like that, for God knew how long. She didn’t get with it until the car started moving again, slow, just rolling along the road, past the house, only to stop again. He was checking where the guys had gone. That’s what she guessed from the way his head bobbed and swayed to see past her.
Once Leonard was happy, he got out and came around to pull her from the car. She could run, except her head was still foggy. So she found herself trotting along as he dragged her across the street to the mailbox.
He shoved her toward it, right up close, so she had to lean back to try opening it. Only then did the idiot remember her hands were bound together and reached around to do it for her.
Grabbing the letters inside, she feigned checking through them.
“You get it?” he asked. “Just take ‘em all.”
“It’s not here,” she said, pulling back when he tried to yank her away.
It didn’t matter that she hadn’t read every envelope. Nothing but fairy magic would put the keys in Vegas right then.
“What the fuck,” he hissed, looking around. “Where the fuck else—”
“The garage,” she said. “Sometimes they have mail in there. I don’t know when it arrived. It could be there already.”
“Fine,” he said, jabbing her in the ribs to prod her up the driveway.
Most of the letters in her hands were addressed to Hugo Balfour, of course, the house belonged to him. Nestled in the middle was a familiar scrawl. Her handwriting. Her letter to Daire. It had arrived and he hadn’t seen it.
The garage door was open, which she hadn’t really questioned until that moment. Did Olympus worry about locking up or did they want to tempt people in to be snapped up by some special booby-trapped rig? Seemed more their style to welcome people in only to show them their true colors after it was too late. Unfair to think of her Heart, but the rest of them? From her experience?
Dragging her feet as they crossed into the garage, she kept her chin down, trying not to look at the Beast. Daire lived in there, she could feel him, sense him, smell him. Damnit. She couldn’t be distracted. Think. Think. The keys weren’t in there. They wouldn’t find mail either. Maybe Daire kept a weapon somewhere that she could—
A harsh thud from behind stopped her dead. Braced, she didn’t know what the hell Lenny was doing. Something heavy crumpled to the floor, loosening her curiosity. Spinning around, Tess stopped breathing when she took in the view. Standing on the other side of the unconscious Lenny laid out on the concrete floor…