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No, not his. Definitely not his.

Once she got away from this place, she wouldn’t want anything to do with him. He would keep too many memories alive for her. Besides, he still had a score to settle with Midnight. He didn’t need any distractions right now, either.

And, tiny as she was, she would still be a big one.

CHAPTER 4

Tildi cringed as the man’s voice penetrated the thickness of the door from the other side. He’d only spoken a few short sentences in her presence, but she would never forget that voice. After a year of waiting in terror for him to show up, he was finally here.

Fear curdled the very blood in her veins. Even the huge man standing beside her, with all his might and confidence, couldn’t stem the wash of terror pebbling her skin. Her gaze fell to the pathetic mat shoved against the far corner. Why didn’t her freaking prison mattress have a frame to lift it from the floor? Then she could at least pretend to have someplace to hide.

Mr. Midnight continued to shout through the door. “Open the door, Boone, or should I call you Bossman like the cowpokes on your farm do? We have that in common. Only I act like a boss, and you hide behind locked doors like a pussy. You might as well open it and face me like a man. If you go out the window, my soldiers will shoot you before you hit the ground. Be smart and open the door.”

Even with terror burning her stomach like acid, Tildi couldn’t keep herself from rolling her eyes at his words. The man was either crazy, or he thought they were. She’d just met Boone, butshe already knew he was nothing like the monster who had held her prisoner for the past months.

At least now she knew her rescuer’s name. She liked the name Boone. It suited him. Strong and bold.

Hopefully, he was also a magician. Only instead of pulling a rabbit from a hat, he’d need to pull a machine gun out of that pack he’d brought with him and shoot everyone outside the door. Ooh, or a rocket launcher. Yeah, that would work even better.

He motioned for her to stay quiet. Like she wanted to talk.

Mr. Midnight wasn’t done. “If you hadn’t been such a coward three years ago, you wouldn’t have lost your woman. I warned you to stay out of Family business, but you wouldn’t listen. You left me no choice but to kill her. Just like I’m going to kill you. It’s only a matter of time until I get this door open. There’s no escape for you.”

“I knew this was a one-way trip from the start. I’d just planned on it being a little longer than this and us both being dead at the end of it,” Boone called out in a deep, confident voice.

Um, what?

He didn’t plan on making it out alive? She didn’t want to be selfish or anything, but how the heck was he supposed to rescue her if he was dead? As if he heard her thoughts, he twisted to face her and winked. Winked!

Her confusion shifted to relief when he snatched open the bag he’d left on the floor. He searched through a massive collection of weapons in his pack, hopefully for a bazooka or a cannon or some other form of mass destruction.

Visions of Boone, bandana tied around his forehead, muscles bulging in his sweaty, bare arms and chest, going all Rambo on the men outside the door popped into her thoughts. Of course, that was just stuff in movies. Those kinds of things didn’t happen in real life. At least not in hers.

When all he pulled from the bag was two blocks of modeling clay with a walkie-talkie taped to each, her confusion returned. What the heck? She was as up for crafting cool things out of clay as the next girl, but not when their lives hung in the balance.

Maybe he’d been using his head to bang on the door earlier. Whatever the reason for his bizarre behavior, she needed to tell him it was not the time for craft night at the OK Corral.

He crooked a finger for her to come closer, muttering, “I’ll keep Midnight talking until you can make it out the window.”

The hair rose on the back of her neck. Had he just said she was going out the window? She opened her eyes so wide the skin in their corners strained. She shook her head. That wasn’t going to happen. But other than that, it sounded like a good plan.

Boone nodded in return. “Yes, you are. My team will be here soon. When you’re safe, I’m going to detonate these C4 charges and blow that door and everyone on the other side straight to hell.”

Holy heck! Who was this guy? What else did he have in that freakin bag? She had no idea what a C4 charge could do, but she knew it must be powerful and effective. From now on, Boone was going to be her go-to guy in a crisis. At least for now, she would. Once they got off this island, she’d probably never see him again.

He pointed one finger at her and then two fingers toward the window. Okay, he wanted her to head back that way. So, he didn’t want her there to zap anyone who made it through the door? What if his plan didn’t work and he needed her help? She opened her mouth to ask, but he held a finger to his lips and glared at her. Again, more forcefully, he pointed to her and then to the window.

Shaking her head, she glared back at him and stomped her foot. He couldn’t tell her what to do. Yes, he’d rescued her from Moretti, but that didn’t make him the boss of her.

And anyway, he acted as if his telling her to go out the window was completely sane. She held up a hand, palm toward him, in the internationally recognized sign for stop. Snatching the stun wand from her other hand, he grabbed the hand stretched out toward him, turned it palm up, and put one of his many handguns in her upturned hand. Evidence would suggest Boone didn’t speak sign language.

What was she supposed to do with a gun? A real gun filled with real bullets if the weight of it was anything to go by. She’d told him she’d never shot one before. She’d never even touched one.

“Go stand by the window while I set the charges. If you see any movement out there, just point the gun at it and shoot,” he whispered.

She clutched the handle of the gun so tight her knuckles whitened, and the cold metal bit into her hand. Her heart stuttered, but after notching up her chin, she shook her head once more. There was no way she was doing that. She was a party hostess, for crying out loud.

His eyes flared his displeasure at her defiance. Why did his stern expression make her tummy tingle? Staring straight at her, he held up one finger. She almost pretended she didn’t know what he was doing but thought better of it. Anyone would know what that meant whether they’d had a course in sign language or not.