In This Together. Kara Lennox
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and there was so much paint spattered on it that the original color was impossible to tell. He’d parked off to the side because he hadn’t wanted the high-and-mighty Daniel Logan to see it, to realize Travis was a working-class guy. How stupid, to be ashamed of his truck.
“You haven’t heard the end of this,” he said as he pulled his keys out of his pocket. “Maybe the Chronicle or one of the TV stations will be interested in how Daniel Logan acts when he’s not in the public eye.”
“Oh, no, Mr. Riggs, please, please don’t do that.” She hobbled after him, still in her stocking feet. The concrete was strewn with sharp gravel, and it must have hurt, but she didn’t seem to notice. “You really don’t want to get on Daniel’s bad side. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good man—compassionate, really—and he helps a lot of people. But if you cross him, he can be a dangerous enemy. Bad publicity only harms Project Justice’s reputation, and then everyone has to waste resources doing damage control. It won’t help anyone, least of all you.”
“Did they teach you that speech at spin school?”
“I... Excuse me?”
“I was just thinking you sounded a lot like a PR spokesperson just now, spouting some carefully worded sound bite intended to appeal to my emotions. Well, lady, I’m not getting help anyway. What have I got to lose?”
“Just don’t do anything rash,” she begged as they reached his truck. “Think about it overnight. You do have other options.”
“Oh, really? What might those be?”
“Well, the online form—”
“I tried that, remember?”
“You didn’t try hard enough, apparently. People fill that form out every day. Somehow, they manage to do it.”
Oh, that was it. He’d reached his tolerance for this bullshit.
“So, Daniel won’t respond to pressure tactics, huh? Well, I’d like to see him ignore this.” He opened his truck’s rigid cargo cover and, in one swift motion, he scooped the woman up and thrust her into the truck’s bed. He got the fleeting impression of her soft, womanly body against his, a photo-flash image of the look of surprise and hurt on her face.
And fear.
“Duck,” he said. Then he slammed the cargo cover down and locked it.
CHAPTER TWO
IT TOOK ELENA’S brain a few long, terrifying seconds to realize what had just happened. She’d been abducted. Kidnapped. That seemingly nice man, who moments earlier she had sympathized with, had just thrown her into the back of his truck like so much dirty laundry.
Her heart hammered in her ears and her breath came in quick, short gaps. Okay, okay. She had to calm down and think clearly. She had to take stock of her situation and then formulate a plan.
First off, was she injured? She knew from her freshman biology class at Saint Thomas University that adrenaline could mask pain, and judging from how fast her heart was beating, her body had been flooded with the stuff. But she didn’t think she was seriously injured. In fact, though Travis had practically thrown her into his truck, she distinctly remembered her head cushioned against his muscular forearm even as the rest of her landed with a thunk on the carpeted truck bed.
Her hip hurt. She felt around with her hand and realized she’d landed on a tool of some kind—a wrench, she decided, as she explored the cold steel item with her fingers. She shoved it out of the way.
Her prison was utterly dark. Although the vehicle was a pickup truck, it had a cargo cover. One made of granite, apparently, because it wouldn’t budge no matter how she kicked and shoved.
The truck was moving fast—at least it seemed that way. Travis took a corner on two wheels, and a slew of tools slid against Elena. She shoved them aside, irritated. “Hey, watch the driving,” she yelled.
“Doing the best I can,” he yelled back, his voice muffled but understandable.
Dios mío, he could hear her! She kicked against the cargo cover. “Let me out! You let me out of here right now!”
“Simmer down back there.”
“Hijo de puta!” she yelled, because she couldn’t think of anything else. “Daniel is going to kick your ass.”
He muttered something that sounded like, “I don’t doubt it.”
So the cargo cover didn’t come off. Maybe she could get the tailgate open? Didn’t modern vehicles have latches that could be worked from the inside? Granted, this truck was probably ten years old, but that counted as modern in her book. Her uncle Cesar still drove a 1976 Monte Carlo.
She felt around for a latch and found something near her elbow that was lumpy and bumpy, but no matter which way she pressed and squeezed, she couldn’t make any parts move.
She had to face it: she wasn’t escaping from the truck. She needed a new plan.
Travis was taking her someplace. Where? Before hiring her as his assistant, Daniel had required Elena to take a personal self-defense course for just this reason. He was a powerful man, and some people hated him and might try to get to him through her. Plus, she was an attractive woman, he’d said in a matter-of-fact, nonflirtatious way, and she needed to be able to fend off unwanted advances.
She’d been the worst student in the class. Her attempts to defend herself against her well-padded “attackers” had been pathetic. But she remembered her instructor stressing one thing: never let an assailant get you into his vehicle. If he did, your chances of survival diminished considerably.
That depressing thought wasn’t helpful. What if Travis was driving her to some isolated woods, where he intended to rape her, murder her and bury her in a shallow grave?
Her one chance was to fight back—before he tied her up with duct tape and put a plastic bag over her head and skinned her alive— Oh, Dios, she had to stop watching those true-crime shows. She absolutely refused to believe Travis was the skinning-alive type of guy. He was a man who loved his brother, and he’d done something out of desperation. She’d seen that in his eyes. She hadn’t seen the dead eyes of a psychopathic serial killer, right?
Still, she wouldn’t just meekly go along with whatever his plans were. She’d fight back. Her best weapon was surprise—and tears. She hated the idea of using tears to manipulate a man, but like it or not, she’d found that when she cried, men would bend over backward to do whatever it took to make her stop.
She was too terrified to actually cry right at that moment, but she could do a good job faking it. She started in with a few sniffles, a quiet sob or two; then she started bawling like a hungry calf.
“Hey. Hey, stop that!” Travis objected.
“I d-don’t w-want to d-die!”
“Did anyone say anything about dying?”
That was good news at least. “I’ll do whatever you say—just don’t hurt me.” She kept sniveling, though not quite as loudly as before. When he finally got to wherever he was taking her, he would expect to find a terrified, cowed, cooperative hostage. Her hand closed around the wrench. Was he in for a surprise.
* * *
ONCE TRAVIS WAS a couple of miles from Daniel Logan’s estate and on the freeway with a lot of other cars, he could breathe again. There were no red lights or sirens behind him.
He couldn’t believe what he’d just done. Had he lost his mind completely? Kidnapping was a felony. With his record, he would end up in prison for sure, and a good, long stint this time, in a state penitentiary. Not the cushy county lockup.
For a second he wavered. His brother wouldn’t want...Hell, no going back now. He’d done it. Might as well make it count for something.
He wasn’t sure his actions hadn’t