“Where is it?” he demanded again.
She had intended to keep her word and give the pin back, but suddenly the idea of parting with it settled like a rock in her gut. The chain was warm and heavy between her breasts, the pin a comforting weight, an anchor she’d come to rely on in the stormy sea that was her life. “I sold it, okay?”
Headlights splashed into the car from oncoming traffic, and she saw the muscle under his eye twitch as he ground his teeth.
Uh-oh. She should have kept her mouth shut. Did she have a death wish? Probably. Why else would she continue poking at him when he was coiled so tight, ready to strike?
At the bus stop, she’d joked about him being like the Hulk, but she was starting to realize that wasn’t too far from the truth. Vaughn definitely had a calm Bruce Banner thing going for him—slow to anger, but once he got there, he was not a person you wanted to mess with.
“For your sake,” he said softly, “you’d better be lying.”
She opened her mouth to tell him yes, she was lying. In fact, she had his pin right here with her. But instead, she blurted, “I’m not. I needed the money.”
Yup. Death wish.
“Must have been a disappointing haul, then, since it’s not worth anything.”
She slanted him a glance. “It must be worth something if you tracked me down just to get it back.”
“So you still have it?”
Damn. He was maneuvering her, and rather expertly. She had to up her game if she planned to play on the same field as Vaughn Wilde. “Pleading the fifth.”
“You would.” He said nothing more for several long minutes. Then, curtly, as if he’d had to rip the words from deep inside his chest, “It’s…a sentimental thing.”
If she closed her eyes and forgot the last two hours, she could almost pretend the sentiment he spoke of was about her rather than a pin. And how ridiculous was that?
“All right,” she said, but the words came out a bit strangled. She cleared her throat, tried again. “All right. Let me go and I’ll give it back.”
He made a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “You know, my mom used to read Cam and me this book when we were kids,” he mused. “If you give a mouse a cookie…he’ll ask for the whole damn world.” He glanced over at her. “You got your cookie. I uncuffed you. You’re not getting anything else, so nice try.”
She stared at him for several beats. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“What? Your parents never read you that book?”
“My parents weren’t exactly the reading type. They weren’t even the parenting type.”
Another beat. The silence was like a storm cloud between them, thick and pulsing with energy.
“That sucks,” he said finally, and if she didn’t know him any better, she’d think he meant it, maybe he even felt a touch sorry for the little girl she’d been. And, yes, it had sucked, but whatever. Relying on others made you weak, and she hadn’t needed parents. She didn’t need anything from anyone. Especially not pity from him.
“I promise this time I will give you the pin if you let me go.”
He grunted. “So you can run off and steal another person’s ID? Not happening.”
“I only take identities from the dead.”
“It’s still stealing. Ever consider the family members of those dead people?”
No, she hadn’t. Family was a foreign concept and wasn’t something that ever crossed her mind. Hell, her family now wanted her dead.
Vaughn nodded. “Thought not. You have no idea the headaches and heartache you probably caused them by resurrecting their family members.” He looked at her again, but with the lights of the city far behind them, she could only see the outline of his jaw, and it was set in hard, stubborn lines. “So, no, I’m not letting you go. I’ll get my trident back when I turn you over to the authorities. Just figured I’d give you the opportunity to do the right thing first.”
She slouched deeper into her seat. “Well, aren’t you noble.”
He scoffed. “Farthest thing from it. I don’t like being made a fool of, vixen, and this is revenge. That I’ll be stopping you from hurting anyone else is just a sweet bonus.”
Wow. His opinion of her couldn’t get much lower. Granted, she hadn’t exactly done much to inspire his confidence since they met last fall. Which meant she couldn’t place the whole blame for his shitty attitude toward her on him being an asshole. Dammit.
Having him think of her as a manipulative bitch stung far more than it should. Because, well, she was a manipulative bitch. She’d had to be to survive. She just wished Vaughn hadn’t found it out.