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I met the Thornes at the island, tossing my keys on the counter and giving them a silent blink. Mr. Thorne adjusted a pair of thick-rimmed, black glasses, pulling himself to his full height. He had to be at least six feet, which was nearly my height, but in contrast to his build, he had a soft, effeminate face, accentuated by the feathery, brown hair he wore long and untidy over his ears. Beside him, Mrs. Thorne stared at me imperiously, her wavy blond hair cut in a bob at chin length and brown eyes full of just as much stubbornness as her daughter’s. Looking between the two of them, I was pretty sure where Mattie had gotten her… spunk.
Mrs. Thorne cleared her throat, adjusting her mauve and tan three-piece skirt suit. “Thank you for meeting with us.”
I scratched my upper lip, blinking again. Mr. Thorne gave his wife a nervous glance. “What we mean to say is, we are sorry for barging in, but we did try to contact you.”
“There’s usually a reason someone like me doesn’t respond,” I pointed out dryly.
Mrs. Thorne got a flash of hard defiance in her eyes. “Even after you promised to bring us our daughter and failed to do so?”
I leaned against the counter and waved a hand lazily. “I didn’t accept payment from you, did I? It’s well within my rights to terminate a contract.”
“Yes, but you said—” Mrs. Thorne began.
“What we mean,” Mr. Thorne hurried to interject, “is we would very much like you to finish.” Mrs. Thorne shot her husband a death glare. He shrank, adding, “In fact, we insist.”
Tabitha was sitting on the counter behind the couple and held a mug between her hands. She brought it up to her dusky, brown lips, her dark eyes shimmering with barely leashed amusement. Of course, she would think this was funny. She’d almost peed her pants laughing when I’d told her about Mattie’s last escape.
I gestured toward the elevator. “I can’t help you. And I would appreciate if you forgot about this address. Thank you.”
“We found her,” Mr. Thorne blurted out. He pulled his phone from his pocket, and with fast swipes over the screen, he pulled up a video. “Look. Please, right here. This is Mattie, without a doubt.”
“And we know where she is,” Mrs. Thorne added.
I glanced at the phone screen where a TikTok clip played with obnoxious music that accompanied a short video of a beautiful, tall blond in a traditional Bavarian dirndl dress. She had stacked up an inhuman amount of glass beer steins in her arms and carried them across a Biergarten tent with apparent ease. And she had a familiar smirk on her face that made my neck tingle.
“She’s in Leavenworth, Washington,” Mr. Thorne added. “If you hurry—if you go before she realizes this is going viral—you can catch her.”
I flicked a half-lidded glance to the desperate billionaire. “Catching her isn’t the issue. It’s keeping her that apparently eludes me. And trust me, it rankles me more than you can know to admit that. I’m sorry to say it, but your daughter is simply not worth the tr—”
“Two million dollars,” Mrs. Thorne said firmly.
Tabitha fumbled her coffee mug, nearly dropping it. Her mouth hinged open.
I angled my face to Mrs. Thorne, regarding the keen woman with suspicion. “You’ll pay me two million dollars to bring your twenty-six-year-old daughter home? Why?”
Her eyes closed briefly, revealing smudged eyeliner and eyeshadow. The closer I looked, the more I realized they had likely flown straight here from New York after seeing that video. Desperate, indeed. When she opened her eyes again, they were just as hard as her apparent resolve. “She’s our daughter.”
“Can’t you understand that?” Mr. Thorne asked weakly. He adjusted his glasses again. “It’s been two years since she left home.” His throat worked as he swallowed, his baleful eyes the same light, brown sugar as his daughter’s. “It’s unbearable.”
I flicked a glance toward Tabitha. She raised her black eyebrows, silently asking the question I was already asking myself. For that kind of money, why the hell not?
“Please.” Mrs. Thorne clasped her hands in front of her, and the desperation I’d seen in their actions finally cracked through her carefully Botox-smoothed features. “You’re our only option.”
It occurred to me, then, that the Thornes had just dropped a perfect solution to my early retirement problems in my lap. I wanted a picturesque, quiet ranch in Montana. They wanted their entitled brat back. It felt like kismet.
I folded my arms over my faded black T-shirt that I’d thankfully kept from getting stained by the blood of my last target. “I want your word that whatever methods I use, as long as she ends up in one piece on your front door, you won’t care wha—”
“Anything,” Mrs. Thorne agreed quickly. “However you do it, we don’t care.”
This whole thing still jangled around in my head with warning bells. Was this really the price of a mother’s love? Or was there something else going on here?
One of the exposed ducts above us kicked on, echoing loudly through the cavernous space. I glanced at it, and then back to the quiet, pleading looks from the couple in front of me. I pushed away from the counter. “I’ll have Tabitha draw up an agreement and sent to you in the morning.”
Mrs. Thorne let out a shaky breath of relief, and Mr. Thorne looked up in some kind of wordless prayer of thanks. I stalked away from them, ignoring my misgivings and a niggling voice that told me I was missing something important. What did it matter what their reasons were for wanting her back? Two parents wanted their daughter with them in their posh city penthouse. It wasn’t like I was kidnapping a girl and sending her into danger.
I thought of Mattie’s sly smile, the way she’d winked before disappearing, and the way her cheeky bunny ears had bounced on her head. My thoughts twisted into a dark kind of satisfaction. I’d forced myself to let go of my resentment when it came to Matilda Thorne, but now that she was back in my crosshairs, I could let myself indulge in them. I could pull my frustration and simmering anger out of the drawer and tack them right back up on my mental corkboard where they belonged.
I was going to snare that bunny, and this time, she wasn’t getting away from me.
