Page 38 of The Pleasure of Panic

“Go where? I’m not leaving until you explain just why the hell you decided to play along with my game when you knew you weren’t part of it!”

But he’s already punched in the key code and has the door open. “We’re going back to your place so I can regroup with my boss and you can get some sleep. You want to make that seminar tomorrow? Then let’s go.”

Is he serious? Does he really think I’ll buy that?

“OK,” he says. “Bye.”

And then he walks out the door and slams it closed behind him.

It’s only then that I realize it locks automatically. Because it beeps. Just the way it did when we came in.

And now I’m trapped.

“You motherfucker,” I yell.

CHAPTER TWLEVE - FINN

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying myself. Issy is pounding on the door screaming every obscenity she can think of. Every threat too. But I just lean back on the hood of the car and smile.

Teach her to zip-tie me. Teach her to kick my ass.

Not that she kicked my ass. She didn’t. She just caught me off guard, that’s all. I look at my watch and start timing her. “Stop screaming and calm down,” I yell.

“The hell I will!”

“Stop screaming for five minutes and I’ll let you out. But I’m not letting you out until you calm down. And it’s a scientific fact that it takes five minutes to calm down.”

She says something back to that, but I don’t catch it. And then she stops.

I wait, clocking her.

We’re at a little over four minutes and I’m feeling pretty proud of myself when the fire alarm goes off inside.

“I bet that’s coded to the fire department, isn’t it?” she yells on the other side of the door.

I close my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose, then walk over to the door, punch in the code and cancel the alarm. But that unlocks the door, and she’s got it open before I realize what just happened.

We stand there, not eye to eye because she’s tiny and I’m tall, but close enough. Glaring at each other. Daring each other. Planning seven different ways to kill each other.

After almost a minute of silent, mutual hate, she sucks air in through her teeth and says, “Now you may take me home.”

“I should leave your ass here on principle.”

“I should zip-tie you back up.” She waves a fistful of zip ties at me.

“Go ahead and try. You only get the element of surprise once.”

“I love to be underestimated.”

More mutual hatred.

And then I say, “Fuck it. Get in the car.”

I turn my back on her and decide I’m done. If she gets in, I’ll drop her ass off at her house and go find Declan. If she wants to stay out here in the goddamned forest, fine by me.

We get in at the same time. Slam our doors at the same time. I start the car and she pushes herself up against her door, like she doesn’t want to turn her back on me, not even a little bit.

I back up, spinning the tires in the dirt, and head back out the way we came.