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“Why wouldn’t I scream?” she asked. “If you’re going to take me back to that place, I’ll scream my head off trying to stop you. I won’t go back willingly.” She had been compliant when they unloaded her and the other women, but she had a leg up this time. Amelia had taken the guy’s gun and there was no way that she’d allow him to take her back to that cage.
“Because I’m here to help you,” he whispered. The guy looked around as though he expected someone to be watching him and if she wasn’t mistaken, he looked a bit nervous about their encounter on the street. “We can’t stay out here. Anyone could see us.”
“I’m not going with you,” she spat, tugging her arm from his hand. “I’ve got your gun if you’ve forgotten, and I know how to use it.” That was a total lie. As a personal assistant at a local law firm, she really didn’t have much cause to fire a weapon, but there was no way that she’d tell him that.
“I haven’t forgotten,” he grumbled. “In fact, it’s pretty embarrassing that I let you best me.”
“You let me best you?” she asked. “As I remember, you were laying on the floor passing out, quite helpless. You didn’t let me do anything.”
“Listen, we can fight about this all you want once we get out of here. But Hangman and the others already don’t trust me. They’ll be looking for both of us and if they find us, they’ll probably kill us both.”
“Probably?” she questioned. “I’m sure that they will kill me. I mean, I’m sure that they had something else in mind for me, but I turned out to be trouble, so they’ll want to cut their losses.” She looked him over as if to dare him to tell her that she was wrong, but he didn’t.
“You’re right,” he agreed with her, “they will kill you, but once they find out that I’m CIA, I’m as good as dead too.”
“Wait—you’re a CIA agent?” she asked.
“Yes, and that’s why I need you to trust me enough to get us both off this damn street. I need to call my boss and find out what he wants me to do next,” he said.
“You have to ask what you should do next with me?” she asked. She had a few suggestions—most of them involved him letting her go.
“Not exactly. I need to find out if your escaping ends my undercover work with the Ghosts or if I should chance going back in,” he admitted.
“I’m not going back into that place,” she insisted. There was no way that she was going to step foot in that hell hole ever again. It didn’t matter what the CIA told him to do with her. She just wanted to go home.
“Listen, I won’t tell anyone what happened to me, but I just want to go home,” she said.
“You can’t do that,” the guy insisted. “You really need to get looked at. You’ve been through quite a trauma. Then, I’ll have to find you a safe place to lie low. The Ghosts know everything about you—including where you live and who you live with.”
“I live alone,” she said.
“Right, and they won’t hesitate to come and take you back to the warehouse, knowing that there is no one to stop them from taking you again. But this time, they won’t just let you sit in a cage with the rest of the women. They’ll make an example out of you.”
“An example out of me?” she repeated. Amelia could just imagine what he meant by that.
“Yeah, and you won’t want that,” he insisted.
“I’m sure that I won’t,” she agreed. “So, what next?” Amelia was putting her trust in a man who was holding her prisoner just an hour ago. Maybe trusting the bad guy, just because he insisted that he was a good guy, wasn’t her best move, but what other choice did she have? None—she had no other choice and that just plain sucked.
“Next, we get out of here before Hangman sends some of his other guys after me. If they find us here, I won’t be able to help you.”
She looked him over and nodded. “I’d like to at least know your name,” she insisted.
“It’s Spider,” he said, holding out his hand to her. She looked at it as if it offended her in some way, but decided to take his peace offering, shaking his hand.
“I’m Amelia,” she said. “Don’t make me regret trusting you, Spider,” she almost whispered.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he assured. He grabbed her hand into his own and tugged her along down a side street to where his old truck was waiting. “We’re going to take my truck out of town, and then, we’ll have to stop so that I can pull the tracker off and leave it for Hangman to find. I’m pretty sure that Hangman has put a tracker on this old thing.”
“Boy, he really doesn’t trust you, does he?” Amelia asked.
“Not one bit,” he agreed, “but that’s my problem. Right now, we need to get out of here. Hop in,” he said, holding the passenger side door open. She hesitated and then did as he ordered. What other choice did she have? None, but that wasn’t going to stop her from taking off as soon as she was clear of the present danger chasing her down. She’d find a way to escape from this guy and every other man after her who wanted to put her back in that awful cage, because she never planned on going back there again.
Spider
Spider knew that it was only a matter of time before Hangman sent some of his men after him and Amelia. If he found the two of them together, he’d kill them. First, he needed to find a safe place to stache Amelia, and then, he was going to have to contact his boss at the CIA and figure out what to do next.
After ditching the tracker that he found on his truck, he drove out of the city and headed to the only place he could think of to take her. “Where are you taking me?” she asked.
