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“Did I pass?” I asked, knowing I had, or he probably would've dumped me in a river already. How was I supposed to navigate a world in which my only allies were also potential enemies?
“You’re still here, aren’t you?” he asked.
He sounded as if he were kidding, but for all I knew, he might make jokes right before he pushed his victims off a cliff. I wasn’t taking anything for granted.
He swerved the car over to the side when we got to the bridge. Frank was heading over, or it might be Hank now. Who could tell?
Frank wasn’t smiling. “Sir, we have a slight problem right now. I can’t put you through to the outpost. I can only open up to Nowhere.”
“Why is that?” Kaden asked, and it didn’t sound like this was a usual occurrence.
“Technical issues,” Frank said.
“That’s fine. Just open up directly to Nowhere.”
“Very good, sir,” Frank said, and turned, heading toward a little house on the side of the bridge.
Kaden turned to me. “I’ll bring you to the outpost through the back route in Nowhere.”
Frank stopped walking and turned back around, retracing the few steps. “Sir, that might be an issue. We’ve had to close off that route while we assess the issue.”
“You closed that door as well? For how long?” he asked, sounding like someone who wasn’t used to being told no.
“Hard to say, but we’re expecting it to be until morning.” Frank weathered Kaden’s displeasure with a shrug.
“Morning.”
“Yes. Very sorry for the inconvenience.”
Frank didn’t sound remorseful at all. Or appear as if he had any regrets as he headed back to the booth.
“Damn unions,” Kaden said.
“You have union workers?” I asked, looking back to Frank and then Kaden.
“Not even Nowhere has been able to dodge unions. They work a little differently, but the gist is the same.”
A few seconds lapsed as the reality of staying at Kaden’s hit. Would he be getting company again?
I looked around, wondering if they could get me a bridge somewhere else. “I can always just go to a hotel, or my mother’s if Frank could get me back to Florida.”
The way it was going lately, my mother might think I was an intruder and hit me over the head once I walked in the door. A hotel was a safer bet. Good thing I’d stuck some hundreds in my little purse.
“I have a feeling a bridge to Florida isn’t going to be available either.”
We stood there waiting another few minutes, and I had this strange feeling that Frank wasn’t trying to open a broken bridge, but breaking a working one.
Another few minutes stretched by before Kaden broke the silence. “Why were you surprised Alec was interested in you?”
It was pretty obvious, but if he needed it spelled out… “Because I was standing beside Catherine?”
“And?”
He sounded so convincing, as if he really didn’t understand. Maybe he didn’t like blondes? Some guys were like that, so set in their preferences they couldn’t see beyond them.
“She might not be your type, but she’s blindingly stunning. Surely you noticed that?”
He turned and looked at me, his eyes narrowing a little, as if he couldn’t make heads nor tails of something. “Do you find yourself unattractive?”
