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“I wasn’t planning on giving him a choice. One way or another, Alvaro will tell me what he knows, and I will pass on the information to you.” He pulled on his clothes, sitting down on the edge of the bed to pull on his boots. He leaned over to kiss her. “Try not to be too much of a pain in the ass while I’m gone. Make sure you get covered up before Maurice brings you something to eat.”
“Bodie, please. You can’t cut me out.”
“I am not cutting you out; I am keeping you safe.” He stood and headed to the door while she heaved pillows at him, only one of them hitting him in the back of the head. He turned and tossed it back. “I love you.”
The door closed behind him, and she screamed in sheer frustration, but there was no sound from outside their room. She pulled at both handcuffs, but they were secure, as was the bed. She needed something to pop the lock on the handcuffs—a paperclip. There were paperclips in the desk, and the desk was between her and the bath. She knew she didn’t have long.
Quinn scrambled out of the bed and rifled through the desk until she found a paperclip. She unbent it so that she could pick the simple lock on the handcuffs. She only released the one from her wrist before stealing into the closet, grateful to find her clothes and shoes, and taking the handcuff and her clothing into the bath and shutting the door.
This way if anyone looked in, they would just think she was making use of the facilities. Once inside the bath, she locked the door before pulling on her clothes and shoes and then opening the bath window. She did so carefully as it was opaque, and she needed to see her options.
They weren’t good. The balcony didn’t reach that far and there was no trellis or drainpipe to climb down.What self-respecting mansion didn’t have some way for the plucky heroine to save herself from the evil gangster?
Okay, he wasn’t evil, she wasn’t plucky, and she didn’t really want to escape, but all of that was beside the point. She was not going to sit on the sidelines and crochet doilies while Bodie went off to fight the bad guys and have all the fun.
She would show her mate from the get-go that she was no tame tabby cat to be fucked, petted, and left to curl up on the bed. She was a tigress, and she was damned if she was going to be left out.
CHAPTER19
QUINN
This was so not fair. She’d managed to free herself from Bodie’s handcuffs and even get herself dressed and the window opened. The problem was that their bedroom was on the second floor, and she could see no way down.
Maybe she could tie the sheets together? She hadn’t seen a linen closet, and one set of sheets would not reach the ground. She could shift into her tigress and jump from the balcony. The problem there was that she would be easily spotted, and she had no doubt in her mind that Bodie’s men had been told to stop her. She could try to sneak out through the main house. Again, she would be spotted and stopped. She stomped her foot. There had to be some way for her to get out of the house and off the estate.
Therein lay another problem. She had to find some kind of transportation. She had a vague idea of where they were in relation to New Orleans, but her destination was on the outside of the city at a little coffee house tucked away on the edge of a swamp. Quinn had seen the garage for the estate’s vehicles when Bodie had taken her for a carriage ride. The keys, according to him, were hung up on a peg board with the car to which they were matched clearly identified.
Quinn paced back and forth, coming up with and discarding ideas in rapid succession. She went back into the main room, dragging the handcuff and connecting length of chain with her like one of Marley’s ghosts inA Christmas Carol. She wanted to be able to put it around her wrist in case Maurice came with her breakfast. Sitting down at the desk, she opened the laptop and began to search the net—for what, she had yet to determine.
There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” she called, placing the handcuff around her wrist.
“I brought your breakfast,” said Maurice in a cheery voice.
“Can you put it over by the reading chair?”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to set it up on the desk?”
“Not right now. Don’t worry; I am not Googling how to murder my mate.”
“Of course, you aren’t, but it does my old heart good to hear you refer to the alpha as your mate.”
“According to him, I’m stuck with the sonofabitch. We’re going to have such a row when he gets back.”
“He only wishes to keep you safe.”
“I am not some poor wee woman that needs his protection. I’ve been taking care of myself quite well for quite some time. But I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it.”
“If you need anything, just call down to the kitchen and we’ll see that you get it.”
“Thanks, Maurice,” she said over her shoulder, dismissing him.
Once he left, she clicked back on the tab that had the info she needed. A history ofForce et Honneur. The grand old house had quite a history. It was one of the first great plantations of New Orleans. She began studying the sketches of the rooms and blueprints for the house. There it was, a wall that looked wonky in the bedroom. It was at the back of the closet. Most of these old homes had a way out in case people needed to escape.
Quinn went into the closet and began to feel her way along the built-in organizational system. Feeling along the underside of all the shelving, she was about to give up when she thought to check the drawers. There was nothing in the first bank, but in the middle drawer of the second bank, she felt it and almost howled with glee when she pressed it, heard a click, and the entire unit cracked open.
She left the closet, closing the door behind her, and then went back into the bath, removing the handcuff that she hadn’t locked when Maurice had brought her breakfast. She left the handcuff attached to the drawer pull of the vanity and then used the door between the bath and the closet to access it. She searched the closet until she found a flashlight. Hot damn! She was in business.
Slipping into the tunnel, she pulled the closet unit back into place, switched on the flashlight and made her way onto the landing outside the opening and then down the stairs and into the main tunnel, hoping there weren’t a lot of twists and turns. Quinn closed her eyes to get her bearings and then headed in the direction she hoped would bring her up close to, if not inside, the garage.
