He leaned his large body way past her personal boundaries until his mouth brushed against her ear. Elle cringed.
“I told you to shut. The hell. Up.” He emphasized each word and punctuated it with a nudge to her ribs. It took a moment to register the cool steel as a gun. “If you so much as twitch, sputter, or look at anyone cross-eyed, I won’t hesitate to make this very bad for you.”
Elle forced bile back down her throat. Yeah, she had luck—bad luck that smelled worse than a skunk den. “I should probably warn you that I don’t have any money. Well, I have about ten dollars’ worth of Thai baht, but that’s about it. And maybe a fuzzy breath mint.”
“I don’t want your money, Miss Monroe.”
His grip tightened as he steered them away from anyone who would remotely care what was happening. And let’s face it: this was one of the busiest airports in the country. No one was going to notice one travel-ravaged blonde and a tank of a man, probably not even if she stripped down to her cotton undies and streaked through the terminal.
Her armed captor kept the barrel of the gun snug against her side as he directed them to the airport exit.
Elle’s heart went from a steady thunder to an apocalyptic roar when it finally sank in. Her name. He knew her name, knew she’d be returning to the states today. At this airport. Elle Monroe, certified trauma nurse, wasn’t exactly a hot commodity for kidnapping, which left only one other reason…and a desperate need to get away.
Elle whipped her head from side to side in hopes of catching someone’s eye, but everyone was too involved with their own travels. Even the station cop clear across the room seemed to be dealing with a minor scuffle between two passengers.
“So I’m your meal ticket, huh?” Elle kept talking, hoping someone would eventually catch on to her dilemma. “You obviously need me alive or you wouldn’t be going to all this trouble to get me out of here. I could scream bloody murder at the top of my lungs.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it. Not only could you get hurt in the process, but you could get a lot of innocent people hurt, too. You wouldn’t want that on your conscience, would you? And what about your friend? You don’t want anything to happen to Miss Chandler while she’s in the bathroom. And just so you know I’m not bluffing, it would be the bathroom directly across from the newspaper stand—the one with one working stall and a dripping faucet.”
Oh God. She wouldn’t jeopardize Shay’s safety or that of any other innocent bystanders, but she also couldn’t continue to let this man lead her straight into whatever hellish nightmare he had planned.
She needed to think. She needed her own plan. She needed—
Elle’s gaze snapped to the far wall where she’d last seen Mr. Tall, Ripped, and I-Can-Flick-a-Man-with-My-Fingers-and-Send-Him-Across-the-Room.
Her baseball cap–wearing stranger stood in the same spot, but instead of leaning against the wall, he stood erect, newspaper tossed to the side, and was looking straight at her, twitching smirk nowhere to be seen.
“Keep up.” Elle’s captor tugged her closer to the exit.
She dragged the tips of her toes in hopes of slowing him down even the slightest bit. When she looked back to her looming stranger, he was gone.
Panic seized her throat, making it nearly impossible to breathe. Even though her life plan was currently one big question mark, she knew it didn’t involve ending up in an unmarked burial plot somewhere near LaGuardia Airport.
The second she felt the cool January air slide through the glass exit doors, she locked her legs and forced both herself and her captor into a stumble. A small bit of space was all she needed to plow-drive a fist straight into his man goods.
He released her arm to deflect the blow. Thank God for those hospital-sponsored defense classes. Anticipating her new freedom, she snapped her tennis shoe straight across his kneecap. The man howled, his legs buckling for a split second when a whir of black zipped by her shoulder.
Sounds of flesh on flesh sent her gaze backward just as her wall lounger’s fist connected with her captor’s jaw. Much to the horrified fascination of nearby travelers, the two men exchanged punch after punch. People stopped and stared. Across the lobby, the uniformed cop finally looked their way. But with one final blow, her stranger put Mr. Attitude down on the ground—and then Elle found herself in a completely different set of hands.
“Walk faster.” Her stranger hustled her through the sliding doors and into New York’s as-fresh-as-can-be air, one hand resting on the small of her back. The tingling touch was far better than the other’s bruising grip.
She opened her mouth to object, but he cut her off. “Save the questions for when we’re not about to become target practice.”