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2
MONTY
Icouldn’t have been any more shocked than I was at that moment—not even if my current captive had taken out a gun and shot me right between the eyes.
I should have known this job would be difficult from the start, and not just because Vinny’s wife, Faith, had been so scant with the details. She wanted me to find her old friend, but it seemed she really didn’t know much about the girl as her first and last name combination turned up several dead ends till now. The friend, Kayla, had supposedly gone to visit some family, but she never came back, and Faith wasn’t sure who the family was or where they lived. Vinny had warned me of his woman’s altered memory, though, so I suppose there was a reason. Still, it didn’t make my job any easier.
I had only been able to get here because of the mere fact that she registered a new cell phone after ditching the last one. After some weeks, I was able to track down where she bought the phone, do some light hacking of the cell phone provider to get the new cell phone information, and then use it to track her general vicinity. Still, it had been difficult to pinpoint her exact location, so I asked around for anyone who had moved in recently, and I found out she was a waitress at a restaurant in town. I then camped outside the restaurant until her shift ended and followed her, which led me to this point.
But nothing could have prepared me for who I met.
I must have stood there blinking like a shell-shocked idiot for several seconds, just staring at her.
The only consolation was that she was staring at me with the same surprise, except hers was mixed with a decent amount of horror.
“Audrey?” I said, finally forming the words that were in my brain. “Did I bump my head real hard, or is that really you?”
Audrey was the name she had given me when we met in that bar in Mississippi nearly two years ago, back when I visited the area. But now, I questioned whether that was her real name. Was Kayla Brown her real name either? Was that why she had been so difficult to find?
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting as an answer, but it probably wasn’t what I got next, which was that Audrey’s eyes widened dramatically, then she swung and hit me right in the eye.
“Son of a—” I swore as pain exploded behind my right eye, but even that wasn’t enough to distract me from the sight of her running away. I was stunned for only a brief second before I gave chase, easily catching up with her lean form.
I grabbed her around the waist with one arm, yanking her off her feet, and she instantly kicked out with her leg, hitting me in the shin. She swung her elbow back at the same time, but this time, I was ready for it, moving my face to the side to dodge the blow. Of course, the little hellcat wasn’t done, and she brought her other hand in the same movement. I dodged that, too, trying not to be impressed with the agility of the movement. If I were a little slower and didn’t have the training I had, she would have had me.
But unfortunately for her, twenty years in the Marines meant that I was ready for just about anything she threw at me. So I simply caught her hands, turned her, and flipped her over my shoulder, ending the revolt by walking and walking.
“Asshole!” she swore in frustration, resorting to banging my back with her fists. “Let me go!”
“I wish I could, darling,” I responded, absorbing her hits with ease. I had been through worse. “But what are the guarantees that if I do that, you’re not going to sock me in the eye again and take off?”
“I wouldn’t have socked you in the first place if you hadn’t been stalking me!” she shot back, punctuating the sentence with another slam on my back. “Jesus, what do you people want from me? Why won’t you just let me go?”
“I will, eventually,” I assured her, continuing on the path to my car.
She continued raining down beatings on my back, and I wanted to tell her to save her energy. If there were two things I was good at, it was finding people and taking a proper beating. I’d been caught once by guerrillas and had my back whipped for days on end. Her measly palms weren’t likely to do much damage on the piles of scar tissue already there.
I saw us attract a few funny looks from the few passersby on the road. I smiled and waved at them, rolling my eyes. I couldn’t afford to have anyone interfere or call the police, so I put on my charm, making it seem like my actions were completely normal.
“Help me!” Kayla screamed from my back. She must have caught on to the fact that we had eyes on us and was now trying to arrange a rescue. “I’m being kidnapped! Call the police.”
“Sorry, folks,” I waved to a few people who were standing to the side. “My wife is a little histrionic. We just had a little argument, that’s all.”
“He’s lying!” Kayla screamed once more. “He’s a thug and a stalker!”
“That’s rich, honey, considering you were the one who hit on me first.”
The gasp that followed was one of pure indignation.
“Okay, first of all,” she said in a lower tone. “That’s a lie. You winked at me first, and second of all, that was before I realized what a psycho you were.”
“Oh, today I’m a psycho, right?” I made eye contact with an older gentleman who was watching the whole thing play out with interest. “Women, am I right?”
One portly man smiled slightly, nodded, and then turned away. No one else moved to intervene either. It seemed our little conversation had done enough to convince people we were actually together, so they lost interest in the spectacle.
Unfortunately for Kayla, I had a very affable look about me, and people tended to trust me implicitly, which did not bode well for her rescue. We made it to the truck without interruption, and I opened the door and placed her in the driver’s seat, blocking her escape with my body.
She immediately rushed toward the passenger door, and I quickly clicked on the child lock, activating it. She jiggled the door handle violently for a few seconds to no avail before giving up with a huff.
