She didn’t want to cry, but once the first tear spilled down her cheek, she couldn’t seem to stop. And it was no use trying to keep the sobs quiet, either. She could muffle it to a few helpless whimpers of distress, but there were five of them in the back of this van and no one was going to miss her little gasps for air.

What looks they shared amongst themselves, Lily didn’t know—her face turned to her lap as she tried to control herself—but to her surprise, none of them told her to shut up. No one hit her. No one bound her hands or gagged her to keep her quiet. No one made snide comments about her obvious display of fear and distress.

She’d been bundled into the back of the van quickly, the second-in-command’s hand clamped around her upper arm, but he let her go as soon as she was safely away from the doors. She thought she felt him looking at her, and grimaced at the thought of those eyes. Bad men shouldn’t have such soft, sympathetic eyes.

As the van turned, Lily tried to remember the things she’d always heard about how kidnap victims could help themselves. She couldn’t see any windows so had no idea where she was but from the turns, she knew they were heading to the countryside. A rather hard bump brought her back to reality for a moment, a lucid moment where she remembered James and his sudden need to make a phone call.

And then, moments later in the darkness, her head jerked up, her eyes cold with anger.

“He knew you were coming and he went to the panic room and just left me!” Her words came out an angry hiss, realization painful and tearing at her.

These were hardly people she could expect to sympathize, and she knew that, but she’d no one else to say it to. To her surprise, a few of them nodded grimly, as if acknowledging that this was an entirely unacceptable thing to do. Given that they’d just kidnapped her; she didn’t know what to think of their agreement.

James the ruthless businessman who would do anything necessary to get the deals he wanted, the man brave enough to lose his empire for one deal, had run up the stairs without a word. Like a squirrely little rodent who’d seen oncoming headlights. He’d left her without protection, without warning, and run for the secluded protection of his safe-room! He’d not even asked her to come with him! Did that mean he’d sacrificed her, that he’d left her there as his offering to the men he’d known were coming for him?

The van came to an abrupt halt and she was thrown sideways into the second-in-command’s lap, her thoughts suddenly interrupted by the reality of her predicament. The man set her upright gently, hands lingering on her back, and then took her arm again when one of the others opened the door. It was odd the way he moved, she thought—half as if he couldn’t bear to touch her, half as if he wanted to do it more. He didn’t meet her eyes while he climbed out of the van with her, and she had only a glimpse of a house on an empty street before he gently covered her eyes and guided her inside.

They walked across hardwood floors and a few carpets, turning every once in a while until they came to a room that smelled of old books and leather. Obviously a library or something similar, but that didn’t help her. Where was she?

“You can all go,” the leader’s voice said, making shivers run down her spine. Footsteps receded and the door closed, but the man holding her didn’t go with the rest. He guided her a little further, and then took his hand away, gesturing to a brown leather chair.

“Please,” he said, as if it were a social situation. He walked over to the desk where another man stood poring over papers and photographs with a frown on his face.

She waited, watching them. They were muttering to one another, absorbed in whatever it was that had happened, and she didn’t think they would notice if she slipped away. She moved slowly, slipping her feet out of her high heels and padding across the carpet, eyes fixed on them.

She was nearly at the door when they looked up and she turned to run, wrenching at the handle and finding it—of course, of course—locked. She jerked at the handle, but it was too late. Arms closed around her waist, and another pair of hands prised her fingers from the door handle. The second-in-command jerked her up against his body, hard, as their leader stood close to look down at her.

“I wouldn’t do that again.” His voice drew her gaze, and the fear, anger and confusion, all melted away in a haze.

Awareness flared. His voice was rough and fiery, like whiskey on a cold night, and it slid over her skin like velvet, igniting desire in a flare between her thighs. Pressed between the two men holding her captive, she could feel the hard planes of his chest once more, see the faint light glinting off the stubble on his jaw, and she was captivated once more by those pale blue eyes—like ice, only hot enough to melt her.

She wasn’t so captivated, though, that she couldn’t feel the heat of the second-in-command behind her. One of his hands held her arms locked behind her, and the other had come to rest on her hip. It felt awkward, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. Almost as if he was trying to reassure her…but she could feel every nerve ending thrumming where his hand rested.

“I…” Her voice trailed off. “What are you going to do with me?”

I need to know you aren’t going to kill me. She didn’t know that her eyes relayed that plea, a plea for reassurance that a man in his position should not be able to give.

Their eyes met over her head and she saw the leader’s jaw clench. They stepped backward abruptly, and she stumbled against the leader, her hands on his chest. She wanted to hit him, to demand her release, to get away from the scent of him that made her think of things a woman in her position had no business thinking.

Surely Stockholm Syndrome doesn’t happen this quickly, she thought hysterically, the situation threatening to overcome her finally.

He thrust her away so fast she might have been poison.

“Please sit down. You’re in no danger now.”

“How can you say that?” Lily demanded, and his eyes narrowed. “It’s not like you invited me with an engraved invitation to tea, you fucking kidnapped me!”

“Sit. Down.” His low, seething tone evaporated her moment of angry defiance and Lily’s head fell to her chest.

She padded over to the chair and sat, looking up at him sullenly. Somehow, the fact that this was a comfortable chair made her even less happy.

“You work for Kenneth Watts, I take it,” she said, her brain working again as she grabbed at frantically spinning thoughts, defiant once more as she looked up at them.

The second-in-command raised his eyebrows. “Well done.”

“Cameron…”

“Oh, come on. If she was dangerous, she’d have tried to do more than get away.” Brown eyes held blue ones until the leader shrugged, ill-tempered, and dropped into the seat behind the desk.

The second-in-command smiled as he pulled off his face mask, revealing blond hair, clean-cut features, and a wide mouth that smiled. He gave a bow that, to Lily’s surprise, seemed almost genuine.

“I’m Cameron, and this is Liam.” He waved a nonchalant finger at the leader.

“You’re hit-men.” Lily couldn’t hide the note of accusation she leveled at them.

“You’re awfully righteous for a woman who works with James Dominick,” the leader commented.

“James Dominick does not hire people to go into houses in the middle of the night and abduct innocent women!” Lily said furiously. She waited for shame to cloud their features, but saw, instead, an almost pitying look pass between the two of them. “…Does he?”

Cameron didn’t seem to want to answer. He looked away, folding his arms.

“Yes,” Liam supplied finally, with a look at Cameron that said he was going to remember not having backup in this conversation.

“Oh my God.” She looked away, her head spinning, the world taking on some sick new shade. Oh, God. What had he done? The man said he knew what James had done. He kidnapped someone?

She looked back at them, her eyes begging them to tell her it wasn’t true. It had to be a joke. They were messing with her, trying to make her compliant, to tell them whatever they wanted to know, that was all. “He didn’t really kidnap someone.”

“It seems that some of his business partners were rather less than cooperative lately,” Liam said softly. “He thought he might use pressure to tip the scales.”

“Oh my God.” It was the only thing she could say. Her hand went to her mouth, and her words were muffled, but she knew they heard her. “The gold deal. It was that, wasn’t it?”

The look in their eyes was sufficient answer, and Lily bent over, her face in her hands.

She felt so stupid. How had she ever thought she was changing James? She’d been exactly what everyone called her: a front, a ruse. She was the nice one, the one who asked after people’s children and brought cookies to the office on holidays. And James was free to be the same ruthless bastard he’d ever been, using her time and her words to send emails threatening his colleagues, his rivals. For all she knew, it had been she who put through the wire transfer to pay for the hit-men who cemented that gold deal.

She was so stupid. She could have been more assertive, spent more time trying to check his more ruthless impulses. She thought slow and steady was the way to go, and she’d been so wrong. So fucking stupid!

A touch at her shoulder made her jump. To her surprise, it was Liam, looking deeply awkward as he tried to comfort her, or as much as he could with a mask still in place over his head.

“You should get some sleep. It’s very late.” Such comforting, understanding words from a man that had just kidnapped her made Lily blink.

Lily stared at him, chin trembling. She couldn’t seem to remember how to use any of her limbs, and with a sigh, he put his hands under her arms and lifted her up, easily, setting her on her feet and waiting to see if she would stay up. He was the one who opened the study door, Cameron’s hand on her back propelling her gently forward, and they led her through darkened corridors with Cameron’s low voice guiding her and his hand back over her eyes.

Liam switched on a light—too bright for her eyes after the dim study—to show a bed with a blue coverlet, a bedside table with an old-school windup alarm clock, and heavy curtains pulled down over the window.

“Get some rest,” Liam advised. They stood awkwardly in the door, tall and well-muscled, seeming oddly uncertain of themselves. Then the door began to close.

“Wait!” She was shoeless, shivering—mostly nerves, she thought—and she didn’t want to be alone.

“Yes?” Cameron asked her finally.

“You never answered me,” she managed. “What are you going to do with me?”

Again they exchanged that look, and again she couldn’t decipher it.

“You’ll stay here,” Liam said simply. “No one will bother you.”

His teeth gritted at the last phrase. “You’ll get to go home when Dominick coughs up the information we need.”

“But what if he doesn’t?” she whispered, frantic fear freezing her blood all the way to her core.

“Good night, Miss McDermott.” The door swung closed.

“He left me there to be captured!” She shouted as a plea through the door.

Why she was pleading with them, she didn’t know, but she launched herself at the door and yanked at the handle even while she heard the lock turn. “Please! He doesn’t care about me! He doesn’t care!”

There was a long silence, too long, and then the footsteps receded down the hallway and Lily leaned her head against the door, trying not to sob with fear.