AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Three days… or maybe four… however many days it had been, it seemed to have turned into a lifetime for Maria.
The cuffs had rubbed the skin around her wrists raw. Though her captors removed them semi-frequently, the metal kept cutting into her skin anyway.
She hadn’t showered since she left Ophelia. No change of clothes, either, which didn’t bother her so much because she absolutely refused to get undressed in the same hotel room as Boone. She’d rather stink and feel grimy and gross than let herself become the big monster’s next fantasy.
She wished he would just go. By now, she understood why he couldn’t. Just like no one knew that Maria was being hidden away in a perennially empty room on the Hamlet Inn’s second floor—where not even Roy or Caro would check unless necessary—Boone had snuck into Hamlet and, as far as she could tell, no one knew he was there, either.
They’d gotten very lucky that no one caught them. She couldn’t even figure out how they moved her into the Hamlet Inn in the first place without being seen, but it was obvious that they had because how else would she still be stuck in this room after all these days?
Maria had to believe that someone was looking for her. Sly, definitely. The rest of the HSD, probably. And if her fiance reached out to Lucas… there was no way her brother would ever stop looking until he brought her back home.
How much longer would it take, though, she wondered. It seemed like a lifetime already, and if the single night with Mack Turned was enough to screw her up for years, she could only imagine what would be left of her by the time anyonedidfind her again.
She had no idea what time it was. What day, either. Her meals rarely changed, but she did notice that they were home-cooked. Not as good as what Maria was used to, cooking for herself, but unless the masked man had a full-blown kitchen in his connecting room, someone else was helping him.
Another point in thehe’s a localcolumn—but who could it be?
Luckily, after a few more hours of tortuously asking herself that same question on repeat, Maria thought that she might finally have figured it out.
It all started when, out of nowhere, Boone’s communicator buzzed.
“This stupid fucking thing.” Yanking it off his belt, Boone stared at it with a scowl. He did the same thing everytime it went off, to the point that the masked captor simply knocked on the door if he was on site. Since he was paging Boone, he probably wasn’t… so where the hell did he go?
The radio looked minuscule in Boone’s massive mitts. “Which one of these buttons again…” He twisted one with such force, Maria was surprised it didn’t snap right off. “Hello?” he barked when the chimed stopped. “You read me?”
“Loud and clear,” came the response. “Are you ready for your next orders?”
Whoever it was, they were still disguising their voice. There had to be a reason why—and the more Maria thought about it, the more she assumed it was because she’dknowhim if he didn’t, or he removed his mask—just like there was a reason why he never stayed in her room with Boone for long, but she didn’t know.
Vorrei saperlo anche io, sinceramente…
“Copy that,” answered Boone.
“Stage one is complete. We got Maria. I just confirmed for myself that stage two is good.She’s back in Hamlet. So that means we’re ready to move onto stage three.”
Boone’s dark gaze slid toward Maria. “I decided to keep her. Can’t we move on to stage three without giving up this one?”
“Ken was very, very clear. I’m sorry, Nate, but he wants to know if the baby is Ricky’s or if it’s his brother. If it’s his brother’s, he wants her. That means we have to get the mother under control. That’s what you agreed to when you made your deal with him.”
Boone cursed, then squeezed the communicator with more force than necessary. “I know what I agreed to. And if that brat is Tommy’s, it belongs with the Mathers. But,fuck. I haven’t been this tempted in a long time.”
“Like I told you before, that’s between you and the boss—”
Jamming the receiver button with his thumb, Boone cut the other man off. “You’re just acting all high and mighty because you bargained for your own broad. I told Mathers I could handle this on my own—”
It was considered a faux pas in Hamlet to take control of the radio when someone was still speaking. Though Maria was more and more sure that the masked captorhadto be someone with ties to Hamlet, she was surprised when he interrupted Boone with a wry laugh.
“I wasn’t around the last two times you tried, but correct if I’m wrong, but didn’t you fail? That Pope fella, he did, too. And, from what Ken told me, even sending Sly’s ex-girlfriend into town didn’t do any good. He needed a local to get to a villager, and even if I’ve been gone these last three years, I still bleed Hamlet.”
“Keep talking to me like I’m working for you instead of Mathers, and you’ll be fucking bleeding alright,” Boone muttered murderously.
There was no response on the other end of the line. Probably because the big brute hadn’t engaged the communicator when he said, though Maria was too stunned by the clues the other captor let slip to pay attention to Boone just then.
The masked man was a local. He’d been gone from Hamletfor three yearsbut still considered himself one of them.
Despite the way he roughened his voice and spoke of despicable things, he spoke conversationally for the most part. Friendly. Even charming, almost, the way he called Nathaniel Boone ‘Nate’ like that, or their boss—who was no longer a mystery since they’d just revealed him to be Kenneth Mathers, Thomas Mathers’s younger brother—‘Ken’.
Unless she was wrong, she had her sinking suspicions about the identity of the masked man. And though she’d known him nearly her entire life… and, once upon a time, warned a grieving widow of an outsider that he had a dark side to him that rivaled Lucas, masked by his deputy uniform, bright wide smile, and charming manner… if Mason Walsh—because who else had been missing from Hamlet for three years save for Mason and Lucas?—was involved with the outsiders and no longer caring if she figured it out, what did that mean for her?
