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Chapter Fifteen
V
I was glad I had my back to him so he didn’t see the smile trying to tweak my cheeks. It wasn’t often I met someone who gave as good as they got, but X did. I’d stabbed him twice, and tied him to a chair, but still he was flirting with me. Either he was stupidly confident, or he was just plain stupid.
I hoped it was the first.
As I headed into the kitchen, my pocket buzzed.
Shit.
I’d forgotten I didn’t get any coverage in the cellar. I cursed myself. Nickie might have been trying to get hold of me, and I’d been distracted by the hit man. But when I reached into the back pocket of my jeans, I realized the phone that was buzzing wasn’t my own, but the one I’d taken off the dead body of one of the men.
My heart instantly lurched into my throat, and I stopped, reaching out to the wall beside me to steady myself. My heart pattered in my chest. Should I answer it? I couldn’t speak if I did—doing so would reveal myself to be alive. I kicked myself. I should have sent some kind of message before, pretending the men were still alive. But then that would have provoked some kind of response, something I hadn’t known how to handle.
Problem was, I still didn’t.
I was filled with the ridiculous urge to race back down to the cellar and ask X what I should do. But I couldn’t. Not only because I shouldn’t start thinking I could trust him enough to give me the correct response, but also because if I went into the cellar, I would lose coverage again.
Fuck.
I couldn’t waste any more time. I hit the answer button.
Without speaking, I lifted the phone to my ear.
A male voice said, “What did you do to my men?”
I hesitated, not knowing what to say. Whoever was on the end of the line must have known something had happened to them. After all, I’d answered their phone.
“I’ll assume they’re dead,” the voice continued. “That wasn’t in the plan.”
What was the plan? I yelled in my head.
On the other end of the line, there was the briefest of pauses, a slight rasp and a shuffle, and then a different voice came on the line, one that froze the blood in my veins.
“Oh, God, Vee. What did you do?”
Then she was gone.
“Nickie!” I screamed into the phone. “Nickie, where are you?”
But the man’s voice replaced that of my sister, and he laughed. “Come and get her, and then you’ll find out.”
The line went dead.
The number had been blocked so I couldn’t call it back. My jaw was rigid with fear for Nickie’s life and anger at myself. I should have gotten in my car and gone to pick her up. What the hell had I been thinking? I’d known she might have been in some kind of danger, and yet I’d chosen to be here, babysitting a goddamned hit man rather than out taking care of my only family.
With a scream, I slammed my balled fist into the wall, pain shattering up my knuckles and through my arm. It made me grit my teeth and bend over, clutching my hand against my body, a flurry of curses trapped behind my tight lips.
“What’s going on up there?”
The shout of the man I had trapped downstairs.
My eyes burned, but the rest of me felt ice cold, as though all the blood had drained from my extremities to service my internal organs. Once more I had that strange sensation of not quite being a part of myself, as though I was watching this all from a distance.
On shaking legs, holding the phone in one hand, I slowly took the stairs back down into the cellar. X was still in the chair, leaning forward, as though the slight increase in proximity would help him learn what was going on.
“They have Nickie,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper.
