LITMIR.BIZ

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I can’t say the same.” I tried to twist my arm free, but his grip was relentless and I couldn’t reach anything with the blade.

      “Kristopher, what the hell is going on?”

      My shoes brushed the floor when he spun with me still in his grip, evidently as startled as I was to find his grandmother standing in the kitchen doorway, her stern frown aimed at us both.

      “Call the police,” I demanded, tossing hair out of my face. He grunted when my skull smashed into his … something. “I’m a hostage being held against my will.”

      Her frown bled into a sympathetic smile. “Oh, hon, you’re not being held, you’re being moved. We’re the good guys. But I need you to hold it down, so you don’t wake up the rest of the kids.”

      “The rest …” Fresh panic made my pulse trip faster. “How many other hostages do you have?”

      “None.” Kris groaned in frustration. “She’s not a kid, Gran. We don’t have any kids right now, remember?” He shifted, and his next words were softer, spoken near my ear. “You’re not a hostage. She’s confused.”

      The old woman propped wrinkled fists on ample hips. “Kristopher, let her go. That’s no way to earn her trust.”

      “I can’t let her go. She has a knife.”

      “Good. I hope she skewers you with it.” His grandmother marched past us both, glanced in obvious irritation at the stove with no knobs, then pulled a mug from the cabinet above the coffeemaker. “You can’t keep bringing them in with no notice, Kris. We don’t have a bed for her right now. One of the boys will have to sleep on the couch until we find someplace safe to send her.”

      Boys?

      Kris groaned again. “She’s not a kid, Gran. She’s fully grown.” His declaration carried equal parts appreciation and frustration over that fact, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. “And we’re not sending her anywhere.”

      “What the hell are you people talking about? I haven’t been rescued, I’ve been kidnapped.”

      Kris’s grandmother shot him a questioning look over her mug, as if I were the one who made no sense.

      “I didn’t kidnap her. Exactly,” he said. “But if I let her go now, she’ll stab me. Again.”

      Again? Was he already bleeding?

      The grandmother pulled the full carafe from the coffee machine. “Is this decaf? You know I hate decaf.”

      “It’s fully leaded,” he said, his mouth inches from my ear, his grip on me unrelenting.

      “What is wrong with this family?” I demanded when the hard kick I landed on his shin did no good, and she made no move to help me.

      Gran gave me a stern frown and poured coffee into her mug. “We have a strict no-weapons policy for the residents. He’ll let you go as soon as you put the knife down, but not a moment sooner.”

      My grip on the knife tightened. “Who are you people?”

      “Don’t tell her anything,” Kris said, hauling me backward when I tried to kick the nearest cabinet. “I think she works for the Towers.”

      Gran’s eyes widened. Then she blinked and gave her head a little shake, as if she’d just woken up and needed to clear the cobwebs.

      I kicked backward again, and again I caught Kris’s leg. He grunted, but didn’t let go. “I don’t work for anyone,” I insisted, but no one was listening.

      His grandmother looked up from her mug, scowling fiercely, and everything about her was suddenly different, from the harder edge to her voice to the stiffness of her posture. “Kristopher Daniels, tell me you did not bring a Tower employee into this house.”

      Kris groaned into my ear. “Gran, my name is top on the list of things you weren’t supposed to tell her!”

      “Take her back.” Gran blew calmly over the surface of her coffee as I kicked her grandson over and over again, growing angrier each time he only grunted and squeezed me tighter. “If she works for the Towers, she’s dangerous.”

      “Taking her back won’t make her any less dangerous. And anyway, I can’t take her back.” Kris oofed when I threw my head back and my skull caught his … chin? But his grip around my waist never loosened. “They tried to shoot her. Right now, I can’t really blame them.”

      “Why would they shoot their own employee?” Gran asked.

      “I don’t work for them! And they weren’t shooting at me, they were shooting at him.” Though they were clearly willing to count me as collateral damage. “Let me go!” I shouted when my anger crested, and I shoved the knife back with all the strength I had.

      The blade snagged on material again, and Kris gasped, then grunted in frustration. “Damn it, Sera!” He let go of my waist, but before I could do anything with my freed left arm, he spun me around and slammed me against the front of the refrigerator.

      Air burst from my lungs, then his forearm pressed into my collarbone through my sister’s yellow scarf, pinning my shoulders to the fridge. Panic tightened every muscle in my body. I fought blindly as memory obscured reality and it became hard to focus on his face.

      His free hand curled around my right one, which still gripped the blade. His angry blue-gray gaze bored into me, his legs pinning mine so that I couldn’t kick. “Please drop the knife, Sera! You got me. I’m bleeding. You win.”

      “Open the door and let me out,” I growled through clenched teeth.

      He exhaled heavily. “I can’t. I’m sorry you can’t see that, but I can’t let you leave yet, for your safety and for ours. I have to ask you some questions, and you have to answer them. But it doesn’t have to be this hard. Please, please, please let’s do this the easy way.”

      “Fuck you.” I glared into his eyes from inches away. “I don’t owe you anything.”

      His expression hardened. “Fine. We’ll do it the hard way. Just keep in mind that that was your choice.” He squeezed my left wrist, but I gripped the knife in spite of the growing pressure and pain until I actually lost control of my own fingers.

      The knife slipped from my failed grip and clattered on the floor. He kicked it across the linoleum and it thunked into something I couldn’t see. In the second my left leg was free, I tried to knee him in the groin, but he deflected the blow with the outside of one very solid thigh.

      He was just plain too big to fight, unless I was willing to fight dirty—and I was—or I could catch him by surprise. Which became the new Plan D.

      His eyes narrowed, his gaze cautious. “If I let go, are you going to play nice and show me your arm?”

      I stared back at him. “Are you going to hand over your phone and power tools?”

      His grandmother laughed from the kitchen table, and I realized she’d been watching us the whole time. Sipping her coffee.

      Kris groaned. “Are you this much of a pain in the ass every time someone asks to see your marks?”

      “No one’s ever asked to see my marks. And again, I don’t have any.”

      “How have you never been asked to prove that? What, are you from Mars?”

      “Worse,” his grandmother said, and I saw her watching us over his shoulder, a shrewd gleam in her eye. “Suburbia. There isn’t much syndicate activity in the outskirts, Kris. You know that better than most.”

      He did? What did that mean?

      “Yeah, I do.” His grip on me loosened and his gaze softened, but he didn’t let me go. “Okay, I get that you’re out of your element, and you’re obviously

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