Her eyes flickered to him and saw he was looking down the barrel of his gun. Why wasn’t he shooting?

  Nina’s heart raced. “Why aren’t you shooting?

  “It’s not needed,” he said.

  “What?” Nina exclaimed, her eyes darting between Carter and the road ahead.

  When he relaxed his posture, she looked to the rearview mirror and saw the car had changed lanes and slowed down. She watched it turn off at the next street.

  “What is going on?” she exclaimed.

  Carter turned around to face the front, placing his weapon in his lap as he wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. “Dante was driving. He knows defeat when he sees it. He retreated, opting to spare his life. But he’ll be back.”

  “He retreated, just like that?” Nina asked. She had the same feeling that she was missing something very important.

  “I had a clear shot of him and I didn’t take it. He knew it. He’ll retreat for now, but he’ll come back better prepared,” Carter said.

  Nina eyed him, easing her foot off the accelerator. She didn’t believe him. Her gut instinct screamed he was lying. But why? He’d protected her in the clubhouse. Granted, he’d wanted to get out of there alive too. But he’d shielded her and protected her. So why would he lie to her now?

  Her mind reeled and she stretched out her cramped fingers. Abiding by the speed limit felt like crawling, but she didn’t know how much more adrenaline her heart could take before she had a heart attack. She had a lot of questions for Carter, but they had to wait until they were somewhere safe so she could voice them and watch him closely while he answered. She didn’t know if or why he was lying, but she knew something was amiss.

  “Are you okay?” he asked gently, and her suspicions flip-flopped.

  “No, not really,” she said, meeting his gaze before returning her attention to the road.

  Nina knew what he was thinking, he had told her to stay at the house, and she couldn’t argue the fact that if she had, the night might’ve ended differently. She could’ve warned Carter that Dante’s men were coming back, however, she wasn’t sure how much time that would’ve bought him.

  “We need to get out of this car,” Carter said.

  Nina frowned. “You just said he retreated. Why do we suddenly need to get out of the car?”

  “Because Dante might just be playing. For all we know he’s taking a side street and will come out in front of us,” Carter said, and Nina clutched the steering wheel once more.

  Carter pointed. “There, pull over.”

  Nina raised an eyebrow as she looked where he indicated, glad she could reverse parallel park. She maneuvered into the spot, barely putting the car in park before Carter’s hand was on the door handle.

  “Let’s go,” he said, grabbing her backpack.

  Questions burned on Nina’s tongue yet again, but she jumped out of the car, taking the key with her.

  She looked to Carter as they walked, his eyes sweeping the street, checking over his shoulder every now and then.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Anywhere that puts distance between us and Dante,” he said as he gestured toward the steps to the subway.

  They all but ran down the steps. “Buy two tickets,” Carter said as his eyes continued watching everyone around them.

  Nina stared at the screen but suddenly she couldn’t think. The adrenaline was wearing off and shock was setting in. But she couldn’t afford to lose focus—they weren’t safe yet. She shook her head, clearing her mind. Pressing the buttons, she focused on what should’ve been a simple task and purchased two tickets.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Carter said with a nod. Nina appreciated his calm, methodical attitude. While it might come across as cold, it was what she needed right now.

  She passed him his ticket. He took it then said, “If something happens and we get separated, call that number, Nina.”

  Her eyes snapped to his and she quickly looked over her shoulder.

  “Just in case,” he said, reading her perfectly.

  She nodded tightly, almost tripping over the step. Carter reached out and grabbed her arm, steadying her. They didn’t miss a beat and arrived at the platform as the train pulled up. She followed Carter’s lead and stood beside him on the train, despite there being plenty of spare seats. When the doors closed, Nina didn’t know whether to feel relieved or anxious.

  The train picked up its pace and the familiar rattle of its carriage did nothing to ease her rising anxiety. The doors opened and three men entered. They didn’t look like Dante’s normal recruits—they had an air of sophistication about them that was more like Carter than Dante. They took seats behind them and Nina looked to Carter, but his shoulders sat low and relaxed, his eyes showing no familiarity of the men.

  Nina strained to listen to their conversation. They were talking about a meeting that had run over schedule, and Nina assumed the men worked together although they weren’t wearing uniforms nor were they in corporate attire.

  Carter looked up to the subway map near the ceiling of the carriage. “We’ll get off at the next stop,” he said quietly, for her ears only.

  She looked past him to see if any of the men were listening, but they were carrying on their own conversation.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Somewhere safe,” he all but whispered.

  She raised an eyebrow. “The last safe place you took me to was haunted. Please tell me it’s not an abandoned house again.”

  The corner of his lips turned up and his cheeky smile gave her butterflies. She silently chided herself; she could not afford any distractions right now—her life was in her hands as was Lena’s. Nor should she be romanticizing about Carter, a man who had kidnapped her and was beginning to show her how dangerous he could be.

  “It’s not haunted,” he said.

  “How would you know, unless you’ve been there on multiple occasions?” she asked, questioning him.

  His grin didn’t falter. “I’ve spent hours in that house and I didn’t see one ghost, nor did I hear any voices whispering to me. I didn’t imagine you being scared of an abandoned house,” he said, still smiling.

  “How many hours?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  He looked thoughtful a moment, then shrugged. “If I added up all the hours . . . a few months of my life, probably.”

  Nina’s jaw dropped open as the train came to a stop. Carter nodded toward the doors. “Come on,” he said, and Nina rushed to catch up to him.

  How long had Carter been watching Dante? And why?

  “A few months?” she asked as they walked up the steps, Carter moving at a fast pace. Nina looked over her shoulder, seeing the men exit the train too, but turn left. She exhaled a breath.

  “I needed to know Dante’s weaknesses,” Carter said, his eyes sweeping the street as they emerged from the underground.

  “Why?” Nina asked again, frustrated by the bite-sized pieces of information he was giving her.

  “Because he killed my sister,” Carter said, his eyes ahead, and Nina stopped walking, her mouth gaping. It took Carter a second to realize she wasn’t beside him and he turned back to her, gently grabbed her arm and tugged on it. “Please keep walking.”

  Nina obeyed but now she had even more questions. “What happened?” Nina asked.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Carter said as they walked.

  Nina struggled to keep up with Carter, his relaxed posture gone since they’d left the train. Did he really expect Dante’s men to step out in front of them now?

  Nina hoped not, because she’d had enough excitement for the day. She was suddenly exhausted, her bones achingly tired. She stuck her hand in her pocket, forgetting she’d tucked the key for the Range Rover in it. She pulled it out. “Are we going to need this again?”

  Carter shook his head. “No.”

  Nina shrugged, a small smile tugging at her lips as she dropped the keys into the nearest garbage bin. It was petty, but it felt like a small win. Dante likely had a spare set, but losing the key would at least irritate him.

  They walked a few more blocks before Carter finally said, “Here.”

  Nina looked up, almost tripping on her feet. This is not where she’d expected them to end up, but then again everything was a surprise with Carter.

  Nina stayed close to his side as he walked up to the check-in desk of the Tivoli Hotel and asked for a room with twin beds then slid his credit card across the desk. Nina was quick to take a peek at the name on the card: Carter Hamilton. Nina looked to him, wondering if that was really his name. Or was he Nathan Walls?

  She made a note to go back to Nathan’s profile and see if there was any mention of his siblings—alive or deceased—in his profile.

  They waited at the elevators and Nina looked over her shoulder, expecting Dante’s men to be right behind them. Maybe it was because they were so close to safety, but something didn’t feel right.

  CHAPTER 15

  CARTER

  He felt the moment that Nina tensed beside him, looking over her shoulder. Carter used the mirrored wall to survey their backs, but he saw no immediate danger.

  The elevator opened and he guided Nina inside. Two women also walked in, but Carter didn’t recognize them. His eyes lingered on them, though, watching what they were doing with their hands. Hands were often a giveaway. Nervous minds made for nervous fingers that fidgeted constantly, but more than that, he needed to see if they reached for a weapon so he and Nina weren’t blindsided. Carter didn’t actually suspect them, but he’d learned to never rule someone out. Dante’s men were stupid, but Dante was not, and Carter didn’t know what lengths he would go to now to get what he wanted. By taking Nina, Carter had made her more valuable. And that’s the problem: when something becomes too valuable, others would rather destroy it than let someone else have it.

  J: He’s hiring another hacker. If Nina doesn’t move fast and get the money, she’s of no value to him.

  Carter exhaled with relief at the communication, even though it wasn’t the news he wanted. While Dante wanted Nina alive, the odds were in her favor. She still had time, but it was running out.

  C: Working on it.

  The elevator beeped, signaling their arrival on the tenth floor. Carter wished the women had gotten out before them, but just to be on the safe side, he turned left and they walked out of view of the elevator. When he heard the doors close again, he turned around. “Wrong way,” he said.

  Nina screwed up her face, like she was surprised he’d make the wrong turn to the room. But everything Carter did was intentional, and Nina would soon understand the game they were all playing.

  Carter’s gaze swept the empty hallway before he stopped at the door, swiping the electronic key against the door lock. He pushed it open, holding the door ajar for Nina, took one last look over his shoulder, then closed the door, deadlocking it.

  He went straight to the refrigerator and grabbed two bottles of water, passing one to her. “This is nice, Mr. Hamilton . . . do you stay here often?”

  He grinned. “You need to put your skills to work. If Dante finds another way to get his money, we lose our bargaining power.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “He has other hackers?” she asked, seemingly alarmed, as though she hadn’t considered the possibility.

  “He can find them. So let’s make this happen,” he said, pulling out two chairs at the dining table.

  “I had an idea, actually, as we were driving. Or more correctly, as we were being shot at. Better than health insurance, I’ll look at car insurance companies. If anyone has gotten wind of this within the industry, they’ll all be madly upgrading their cyber security to make it harder to penetrate. Not good for me,” she said, matter-of-factly. “But, insurance companies as a whole need a percentage of funds available to pay out to customers, so they’re still the best bet. At least it would be another option if I can’t get inside the system I’ve already targeted.”

  Nina paused, thoughtful for a moment. “If they incrementally increase their customer identification numbers, that makes stealing the data much easier—but I won’t know if they do that until I get inside the system. That’s the tricky part. Once I’m inside I’ll write the code, steal the data, and demand a ransom,” she said, placing her laptop on the dining table.

  “What can I do to help?” Carter asked.

  “If you truly know nothing about computers, the best way to help me is to be quiet,” she said, placing her laptop on the table.

  A smile tugged at his lips. He wondered if he’d ever so politely been told to shut up.

  Carter set about making two hot chocolates—a weakness from his childhood he’d never been able to give up. Every night, when his father had gotten home from work, he’d make sure all three of his children were bathed and ready for bed. Then they drank hot chocolate around the dining table while Carter’s mother disappeared for a few minutes—likely to take a break. Carter wondered now that he thought about it, if feeding a kid sugar before bed had been a great idea, but as far as he could recall, he’d never had issues sleeping as a child.

  The nightmares started later.

  The night Evie died.

  Carter placed two mugs on the kitchen counter and walked around to the other side, taking a seat beside Nina. She didn’t look at him, nor did she seem to notice he was there. She was typing code onto a black screen, but other than that, he had no idea what she was doing. Nina could be trying to rob him, for all he knew—but if that were the case, he’d know soon enough. In Carter’s line of work, it was always a matter of focusing on one task at a time. While it was good to think ahead, with so much uncertainty, it could be paralyzing so he'd always been taught to focus on the present moment and deal with whatever happens next when it happens.

  Nina sat back. “Everything is in place, now we wait.”

  “Wait for what, exactly?” he asked.

  She looked at him like he was an idiot. “To see if I cracked the system.”

  Carter nodded slowly, but he had no idea what that meant and he didn’t care to know—he just needed the money to ensure her safety.

  “While we wait,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest as she angled toward him. “I need more information from you. I can’t do this if I don’t know whether I can trust you.”

  “What do you want to know?” Carter asked casually, but what he really wanted to say was the conversation was over.

  “Where do you think Jedd is?” she asked.

  Carter exhaled a long breath. “If I knew where he was, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

  “I understand he’s your brother, but I’m not sure he deserves your loyalty. Why are you willing to die for him?” she asked, searching his eyes.

  His heart raced and he felt like, for the first time in a long time, someone saw right through him. Past the façade. Past the carefully created man he looked at in the mirror every day. It was unnerving and yet he wanted her to see him.

  “Because he’s family, and I will do anything to protect him,” he answered, every word the truth. Jedd was the only one he had left. His parents had passed away six months before Evie’s death, which Carter was grateful for. It would’ve killed them to know what had happened to her—to have had to bury her.

  She pressed her lips together, her eyes narrowing. “Why?”

  “Because he’s family. In my family, we protect each other at all costs,” Carter said.

  “Does he protect you at all costs?” she asked gently.

  “Yes,” Carter answered without hesitation. Jedd was still paying the price for Carter’s mistake. He could never repay him, so the least he could do was keep him alive and get him away from Dante.

  But it would never give Jedd back the years he’d lost, the years he’d spent in prison for a crime Carter committed.

  Time was the one thing there was never enough of, yet more time was wasted than anything else. Time worrying, time giving attention to the wrong people, time spent mindlessly wandering through life.

  Carter couldn’t give Jedd back the years he’d lost—the years Dante had robbed from him. But he could make sure that Dante paid a price for those years because it was Dante who had set Carter up.

  “It’s complicated, but Jedd wasn’t always like this. He was actually training to be a pilot before I derailed his life and he ended up in Dante’s hands. If I thought it was safe to tell you, Nina, I would—but the less you know the better. The issue I have with Dante is a decade-old feud that has nothing to do with the reason you’re here now. I wish there were an easier way out of this for both of us, but there’s not. We take down Dante, dismantle his organization, then we go back to living our lives,” he said.

  She looked at him a long moment. “What were you training to do before you ended up in Dante’s hands?”

  “I worked in hostage retrieval,” he said.

  She blinked. “For whom?”

  “The government,” he said.

  She chewed on her cheek, seeming to mull that over. “So you went from hostage retrieval to taking hostages?” she asked, salty.

  “Like I said, Dante changed everything. Jedd and I were forced into this life—we didn’t choose it. I understand, Nina, and I know all too well that no amount of remorse or apologizing can bring someone back. But the Jedd you saw . . . that’s not who he is.”

  “He’s not an impulsive killer, you mean?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean,” Carter said, his tone steady. Nina’s pain and anger were valid, but she didn’t know the full story.

  Nina wrapped her arms around her like she was cold. “What’s going to happen to Ed’s body?”

  “He’s with his family. I called someone . . . they dealt with it. Ed’s family has his body and they will have closure. Dante’s men will be framed for the death,” Carter said.

  “But Dante’s men didn’t kill him, Carter,” Nina said, her words short.

  “Jedd fired the bullet, but Dante was behind it. You can hate me, you can hate Jedd, but it doesn’t change anything,” Carter said calmly.

 

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