My jaw drops open and just hangs there. I’m speechless. And it takes a lot to render me speechless, trust me.
“Why don’t you just take a seat for a little while, and we’ll wait and see if we receive contact?”
I stare at him like he’s crazy, because he obviously is. Finally, my throat unlocks to let my voice free. “First of all, don’t talk about my butt! You don’t even know me! And second of all, you expect me to just sit here for hours on end while we wait for someone to maybe call us? How do you know that they even know we’re in here? They’re probably out there wondering what the heck we’re doing! They probably think we just went for a stroll somewhere. They’re probably all sitting around waiting for us to come back.”
He crosses his arms over his chest. “Do you really believe that?”
I shrug angrily and glare at my feet. He’s making me feel stupid, but I can’t seem to stop this train from running down that track. I open my mouth to argue some more, but he cuts me off.
“You heard that big noise—I know you did. Somebody who didn’t have the access code was trying to gain entry into the warehouse. That tells me it’s got to be trouble. Standard protocol requires that all personnel secure themselves and secure the building when something like that happens. Then we confront the threat if necessary. My team is doing that right now while I keep you secure in here. We have communication lines set up all over the place, so it’s only a matter of time before someone reaches out to us. All we have to do is wait.”
I snort in disbelief. “Please tell me you have a better plan than this.” I’m no security expert or Bourbon Street Boy, but even I can see the holes in this stupid so-called protocol.
He frowns. “Why? What’s wrong with our plan?”
I look around the room with my eyes bugging out. “You do realize that all a bad guy would have to do is start a damn fire in this place and we’d be burnt into two crispy critters before anybody reached out to us.”
He shakes his head, like I’m the pitiful one with no brain juice on tap. “First of all, we have a state-of-the-art fire suppression system in place all over the warehouse. Second of all, this panic room was specifically designed to withstand a fire that lasts up to six hours. Believe me, if somebody wants us bad enough that they’re going to try to set our warehouse on fire, they’ll have to bring a whole army to be successful.”
“I guess I’d better hope they don’t bring an army then, huh?”
“Maybe.”
We glare at each other as the seconds tick by. I feel an epic stare-down competition starting, and I smile with sinister, wicked glee because I’m totally going to win it. I do this with my kids daily, so I have a lot of practice, and I crush their sorry butts at it every time. Boo yah, tall man, you can suck it because you are so going down right now. Feeeel the dry eyeball burn . . .
More seconds tick by. My eyes are starting to get a little tacky. Is there an advantage to staring someone down from seven feet up? I think there must be, because he’s not flinching. His eyeballs are still glistening, whereas mine probably look like hundred-year-old marbles. Dull. Frosty. Damn. I think my eyelids are stuck to them now.
“You’re not gonna win,” he says. “You should just give up.”
“Oh, yes, I am going to win.” I shift my weight to my other foot. “I can do this all day. I have three kids.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I have one kid who’s more like four kids, and I don’t go down easy.”
I blink, so surprised to hear that he’s a father that I lose my focus. Dammit!
He points at me. “You lose.”
I roll my eyes, turning around so he won’t see me blinking over and over trying to rehydrate my poor raisin-like eyeballs. “What are you?” I ask. “Ten years old?”
“No, actually, I’m thirty-five, but I’m also the winner.” He reaches over and picks up the telephone handset again.
“Someone had better answer that damn phone,” I mutter as I walk over to one of the comfortable-looking armchairs. I place my laptop on the side table next to it and my purse on the floor, and then drop down into my seat as I wait in silence for someone to answer our call.
I’m tired of fighting this man. I just want to get out of here and back to my boring old life where I act like an adult and don’t enter into staring contests with near strangers who shouldn’t look that good when they’re sweaty.
CHAPTER FOUR
I know the moment someone picks up on the other end of the line because Dev’s face lights up and his mouth opens as he prepares to speak. Then he doesn’t say a word. He just stands there like an empty-headed, bald-ass mannequin.
“What’s going on?” I stand, getting this crazy idea that I’m going to go over and huddle up next to him, press my face to the receiver, and listen in on the conversation.