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“Fuck,” he grunted.

His face, if I had to guess.

“What the fuck are you doing, you creep?” I pushed back to the opposite end of the seat until I hit the window, eyeing him warily.

“Waking you up,” he rasped, sounding amused. I didn’t get it. What was so fucking funny about me?

I looked around the car, but it was empty. The other guys were all gone, leaving me alone with this jackass.

Who had saved my life.

My gaze lowered to his leg; his pants were rolled up and he’d bled through the gauze. When I raised my eyes to his, he was watching me, a small smile playing on his lips. God, those eyes of his were intense. Unsettling. But there was a warmth in them that seemed reserved just for me.

I didn’t understand him one single bit.

I licked my lips and looked down at his wound again. A pang of concern shot through me, but I brushed it aside. He seemed totally fine and he didn’t need me fawning over him, not because of a little graze.

He was fine.

“How long was I asleep?” I pushed my hair back, wishing I had a brush. A hair tie, at the very least.

“Two hours.”

My gaze darted to his. “What? So how long have you been sitting out here?”

“’Bout forty five minutes.” He rested his cheek on his fist, his lazy posture about as reassuring as a leopard hanging out on a tree branch above its prey.

He’d really just been sitting out here doing nothing? Just letting me sleep? No, watching me sleep?

“What the fuck, why didn’t you wake me up?”

He shrugged. “Figured you needed some rest. You hungry?”

I was still stuck on him not moving because he wanted to let me rest. I didn’t know how to feel about that. He kept doing and saying little things that actually didn’t feel so little, and I didn’t like it.

“Where are we?”

“Davenport.”

Where the fuck was Davenport? I’d been living in New York for two months, but hadn’t really looked very hard at a map during my time here.

Whatever. It didn’t matter where Davenport was, where I was, where we were going. All that mattered was the goddamn money. I just needed to bide my time, do this job, and get out of here.

And then I remembered my bag—the small duffel I’d been carrying with me from place to place for years now.

Damn it. I wasn’t getting my personal items back from the motel. I didn’t have any way to get back there. I didn’t want to go back, either. What if Thorne and Tom were waiting for me there? They’d been watching me far more closely than I’d known, and the thought of that was so disquieting I put it out of my mind.

I could find another hairbrush, or more clothes, or fuzzy slippers, or yarn and knitting needles. I was gonna miss those slippers, though. They were memory foam, damn it.

I glanced at Court, who was still fucking watching me. I desperately needed space from him, so I moved away from him and climbed out of the car.

Oh.

A simple two-story house with a giant oak in the yard stood in front of me. A long rope dangled from the lowest branch, then split and tied around a single short plank of wood.

A swing.

We were at a picturesque house in the middle of nowhere that had a tree swing.