Elizabeth Bevarly - Express Male

“There’s a light switch on the wall to your left,” he told her. “Turn it on.”

Again, she did as she was instructed, her heart sinking when she saw the room was, as she had feared, a bedroom. Again, the decor was cozy and warm, the pine walls and floor continuing into this room from the other, the pencil sketches replaced by watercolor renditions of lake and sky. She felt his hand on her back, his fingers splaying wide between her shoulder blades and she instinctively jerked away. But he caught her easily, circling her upper arm with strong fingers. He tugged her back toward himself and propelled both their bodies forward, kicking the bedroom door closed behind them. He pushed her again, toward the bed, and nausea rolled into her belly.

Her mind raced to recall every self-defense trick she’d ever read in Glamour magazine and could only remember two: Jab him in the eyes with your keys or stomp on his instep with your spike heel. But he’d taken her keys from her and she wasn’t going to do much damage with a pair of knockoff Birkenstocks. Even scratching him would be impossible. She had been a nail-biter since childhood.

When he was undressing, she told herself, that was when she’d make her move. When his pants were down around his ankles, she’d run. Or she’d grab Mr. Happy and make him very unhappy indeed. Something. Anything. The moment his guard was down, she would figure out how best to hurt him. And then she would run like hell.

Little by little, they drew nearer the bed, with him behind her, slowly urging her forward. Closer now…closer…three more steps…two…almost there…one more step…

He walked right past the bed, heading toward another room off the bedroom.

Oh. Well that kind of threw off her plan of attack. Now what?

He instructed her to flip on that light, too, and when she did, Marnie saw a bathroom like any other, except that there was more pine instead of tile, and no bathtub. In place of one was an incongruously modern-looking shower stall in the corner, covered on two sides with frosted glass.

“Get in the shower,” he told her.

Oooh. He was one of those weirdos who had an obsession with cleanliness. That could work for her, she thought. It could. If she could just…If she could just…Well. If she could just get her brain to stop jumping around long enough for her to make sense of it.

“I really don’t think I need a shower right now,” she said. “I took one this morning, and honestly, if I could just wash my face, that would really be all I—”

He interrupted her by uttering a long, exasperated sound. He followed it with a very perturbed, “Just get in the damned shower, Lila.”

She narrowed her eyes at him as understanding began to dawn. Like a good, solid blow to the back of the head. “You mean, get in it with my clothes on?”

He actually had the nerve to roll his eyes and look at her as if she were an idiot. “Get. In. The. Shower. Now.”

She made a face at him. “Oh. Kay.” Just for that, she would leave her clothes on.

A half-dozen steps brought her to the shower door, which she carefully pulled open. Inside, she saw…a shower stall. Clean. Dry. Empty. On one shelf was lined up an assortment of toiletries, no two brands the same. Someone must be a coupon shopper. Marnie knew that because she never had the same brands in her house, either. There wasn’t a shower smell to the stall, though, neither soapy nor mildewy, and she found that odd. It didn’t even smell of disinfectant, as if it had just been cleaned. It didn’t smell like anything.

She was about to turn around, to ask faux Randy what she was supposed to do next, but he was climbing into the shower stall right behind her, something that made the words get stuck in her throat. She opened her mouth to scream—well, it was as good a reaction as any—but he reached beyond her, pointing what she thought was her car-key fob at the soap holder.

Okay, now that was just plain weird.

Weirder still was the fact that one of the plastic shower walls suddenly went sliding to the left, revealing a cubby on the other side. The walls of the cubby were lined with metal, something that looked like brushed aluminum, and when she looked to the left, she saw a flight of stairs heading down. She closed her eyes for a second then opened them. Nope, it was definitely not a hallucination. Sometimes a shower stall wasn’t a shower stall. What this one was, though…

“Go on,” faux Randy said from behind her.

“Go where?” she asked.

“Down the stairs.”

She was going to jokingly ask him if that was where he kept his torture chamber, but was afraid it might not be a joke at all. He must have sensed she was about to refuse—and she was—because she felt the gun press into her back again. She sighed and stepped cautiously into the metal cubby and looked down the stairs. There were about fifty or sixty of them, emptying into a well-lit hallway below. Whatever was down there, faux Randy hadn’t built it by himself. It was too perfect a construction for it to have been completed without some kind of sophisticated technology.

“What’s down there?” Marnie asked, really, really hoping he didn’t reply, My torture chamber.

“Lots of people who have been looking for you,” he said.

“Lots of people?” she echoed, puzzled. That actually might be good. Unless they were all like faux Randy.

He nodded. “Lots of people. And lucky you, Lila. One or two of them might even be happy to see you.”

NOAH TENNANT TUCKED Philosopher’s manuscript under one arm and pressed the gun more insistently into Lila’s back. He honestly wasn’t sure which of the two was the bigger prize. Hell, he’d been that close to collaring Sorcerer tonight, too, and had only let the other man escape after making the split-second decision that Lila was worth more. Had Noah run after Sorcerer, she would have disappeared back into the netherworld where she’d been living undetected for the past five months. And they couldn’t have that.

Sorcerer had a habit of popping up again from time to time. Not so Lila. When she dug in, she stayed there. Noah had decided to seize the moment and grab her now, because he might not have another chance. Frankly, he was surprised she hadn’t used that split second to make her own escape. Or, even more characteristic of her, clean his clock and then make her escape. Lila Moreau could do a lot of damage in a split second. Nobody knew that better than Noah.

Still, had he succeeded in bringing in her, the manuscript and Sorcerer, he would have been promoted to the position of All Powerful Emperor of Everything Without Exception So There. And that would have looked great on a résumé.

“I’m not Lila,” Lila said. Again. “There’s been some terrible mixup somewhere. My name is Marnie. Marnie Lundy.” She’d said that several times tonight, too. Though how she could honestly think Noah would ever believe that was beyond him.

“Walk, Lila,” he said emphatically, “and keep your hands where I can see them.”

He jabbed the gun into her waist again to urge her down the stairs, not hard enough to hurt her, but hard enough to let her know he was willing to pull the trigger if she tried anything stupid. And he was, dammit. She’d pissed him off plenty in the past, but never like this. What the hell kind of game was she playing? She knew better than to try and pass herself off as someone else to anyone in OPUS, especially Noah. Hell, OPUS had created her. And Noah had been her senior agent at one point. He’d been more than that for one night, but that was something he did his best not to think about these days. Bad enough it had happened in the first place.

When he’d received the intel last night that she was in the middle of Lauderdale’s department store hanging up underwear, Noah’s first impulse had been to send every agent they had to bring her in right then. He couldn’t imagine what could possibly be going on at that store to have attracted her attention enough to not just bring her out of hiding, but put herself on display. Then he’d reminded himself that Lila was efficient and expeditious when carrying out an assignment—whether it was one OPUS gave her or not—and he made himself wait. And watch. Now that Philosopher had passed her the manuscript, it all made sense. But having Sorcerer, a rogue agent they’d been hunting for years, show up within moments of the transfer…