Shit. Just what was I getting myself into?

I checked the rearview mirror and then returned my gaze to the road. I reminded myself: 50,000 dollars. That was what I was getting myself into. It was all for one little job, one small favor.

I checked the rearview again and then slammed the radio on. Hell no. This was no little job. This was the biggest fucking motherload of big jobs, no matter how “simple” Sunshine had told me it would be.

The song on the radio was asking me what I’d become, telling me that everyone goes away in the end. No shit. I hit the button to change the station. I didn’t need some grungy band reminding me how much of a piece of shit I’d become, how I could hardly remember the last time I’d felt like I’d really connected with someone.

Now it was a generic pop group asking me where the love was. I couldn’t help an ironic smile. Rich people were always mouthing off about how all you really needed was love to be happy. That happiness was a choice. That you just had to do good and then God would deliver rainbows and angels and singing animals and you’d lived happily ever after.

Damn, how nice it would be to give them a day or two in my body, a nice few hours in my life so they could see just how covered in shit real life was for the rest of us.

I checked the rearview mirror. There she was: my kidnapped Colorado princess, Alice Pryce. My 50,000 dollars.

I should have been happy, really. It was just as easy as Sunshine had promised. Easier even, since the poor dumb girl had sent everyone out of the room right as I’d been coming for some reason. For a good reason, maybe.

I mean, when I’d peered at her from the window, those had definitely been tears I’d seen in her big blue eyes.

“Lie down!” I barked at her, maybe too aggressively.

She obliged. I didn’t want to keep looking at her, seeing if her lips looked less scared than they had the last ten times I had checked.

Jesus, Jake, you’ve always been a sucker for a pretty face, but this is ridiculous.

I pressed my foot on the gas. Maybe if I drove fast enough, I’d have to concentrate on avoiding inept drivers and slow-ass traffic lights instead of thinking stupid things.

What did it matter if she was hot? If, for the few seconds I had watched her quiet sadness from the window, I’d felt like I understood her better than anyone?

She had probably just been upset her husband-to-be wasn’t even richer, just pissed she’d broken a nail or something. Unless…

I threw a gaze back, but she was still laid out on the car seat, her hands and feet bound, her blindfold and gag in place. No, this couldn’t have been a setup. When I had twisted her around and tied up her hands and feet, as I had slid the gag and, finally, the blindfold in place, the fear in her eyes had been real. She hadn’t been expecting this. Sure, she might not have been happy before I’d kidnapped her, but she certainly wasn’t happy now.

My watch timer beeped, and I pulled over. Now for the next part of the plan.

I dialed the number Sunshine had given me on the burner phone I’d gotten from a convenience store and then lowered my voice.

“Heston Pryce?”

“Yes?”

Damn. The poor old fucker sounded like he was already shitting himself.

“We have taken your daughter. She will be released when you pay 10 million dollars to an account number we will give you.”

“Wait! What are you doing to her? Please, can I just talk to her—”

“Papa, I’m okay!” a voice cried from the back.

Well, if it wasn’t little Miss Society Princess herself.

I hung up the phone, grabbed the gun, and, twisting around, pointed it at her.

“Put the gag and blindfold back on and shut up.”

Our gazes locked, and for a few seconds she stared at me, her eyes moving in a triangle from my eyes to my lips. Her lips parted. Then fury flared through her eyes.

“Or what, you’ll kill me?”

She froze, let out a little gasp, as if she were just as surprised as I was by the stupid thing she had said. As my eyes traced her face, I asked myself, really, what I was going to do if she ran or if he didn’t pay up. What was I prepared to do if things didn’t go according to plan?

I aimed the gun at her foot.

“Some injuries you can live through.”

Her eyebrows crinkled in exasperation, and she jerked her chin up at me, apparently trying to return her gag to its former position.

Oh yeah, her hands were tied up. I went back and put the gag and then the blindfold in place.

Until the black thing slid over her eyes, they were glaring at me with an emotion I couldn’t quite identify.

Even minutes later, once I’d returned to the front seat and pulled back onto the highway, my heartbeat was still hammering like a series of gunshots against my chest.

What was I prepared to do if things didn’t go according to plan? And those eyes, those blue, accusing eyes… Would I be able to do what I had to?

Worse still was that attraction I had seen in her eyes. But so what if it had been there?

I turned the radio back on. As some annoying song I didn’t know twanged away, the question returned once more, this time more anxious: Just what had I gotten myself into?