After a moment, Damien unlocked the doors and Mia slipped into the passenger seat. She shut it as quietly as she could as Damien hopped in the other side. With a glance in the rear view, he started the car and pulled out onto the street.
They coasted away from the warehouse with their lights off. It wasn’t until they turned onto a main street and Damien turned on the lights that Mia could breathe.
“Are you okay?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“A serious one. Are you hurt?”
She blinked. Mia had so much adrenaline pumping through her veins, she had no idea. She looked herself over. “A few scrapes. Nothing serious.”
“Did Rocco…”
“No. I ran away before he could do anything.”
“Good.” The single word held so much more than its meaning. Damien’s voice carried with it an emotion Mia couldn’t place. Anger? Fear? Jealousy?
After a moment, she risked a glance at his profile as he drove. A bruise was swelling on the side of his face. Blood oozed from a cut above his brow. His knuckles were raw. The man must have punched his way out of that warehouse.
She shifted in the seat. “Are you all right?”
He didn’t take his eyes from the road. “A few scrapes. Nothing serious.”
Mia’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She tried to swallow. “Why did you come back for me?”
“Marcelo had no intention of holding up his side of the deal. I was never supposed to leave the warehouse alive.” Damien flexed his hand and a drop of blood dripped off his knuckle. It landed on his jeans and spread out into a dark stain.
“Is that the only reason?”
“No.” He turned to her and the glow from the dashboard lights turned his gray eyes blue. “I couldn’t let them send you to Valera. The man is scum.”
Warmth spread up Mia’s chest, but she kept going. She had to know. “But you were going to give me to Marcelo, right?”
Damien’s features contorted and he snapped his head back to face the road. “That was a mistake. I’m sorry.”
“So what do we do now?”
Damien almost laughed. “Now we run and hope we’re still alive by morning.”
11
MIA
Mia was losing her mind. For the first hour of the drive, she’d sat quietly in the passenger seat, still reeling from shock. Numbness washed over her and she stared out the window like a zombie.
Sometime during the second hour, she became aware of little things. The tap-tap of Damien’s fingers on the steering wheel. The rattle of a loose fender at the front of the car.
In the third hour, reality crashed through the haze like a drunken frat boy at two in the morning. She was sitting in a car with a murderer who had tried to sell her to a drug cartel. Movies were made of less.
A laugh bubbled up her throat and she couldn’t stop it. Mia had the giggles.
“Are you all right?”
“J-just p-p-peachy.” She tried to talk through the laughter but the words came out garbled and broken up.
“Mia. Look at me.”
She turned to face the man who’d taken her life and flipped it upside down. He must not have liked what he saw.
“We’re stopping for a few hours. You need to sleep.”
Another laugh threatened to break through and Mia clamped her hand over her mouth. She was losing her mind.
The car slowed as they left the highway. Damien parked in the shadows of a broken street light in front of a run down motel.
“I’ll get us a room. Stay here.”
She nodded.
He slid out of the car and shut the door. Mia watched him walk away. A small voice inside her told her to run. Now was her chance to break away from him and call the cops. But what would she say?
Where would she go?
Marcelo would never stop looking for her. If the cops were as dirty as Damien claimed, then she might be handed right over while her kidnapper…
Mia ran her fingers over her lower lip and stared at the motel’s sign. V-CANC-ES blinked on and off in garish pink neon. It was as broken as she felt inside.
The passenger door opened and she jumped. “Room’s this way. Come on.”
Damien held out his hand and she took it, her fingers sliding over the wounds that had turned to scabs on his knuckles. He walked her to a door at the end of the building and unlocked it.
It swung open and the light flicked on, one of those old bulbs that hummed and turned the whole place sickly yellow. Damien shut the door behind them.
Mia didn’t know when she had started to shake. Was it when Rocco had thrown her to the ground? When Damien landed on top of her? Sometime during the drive?
Now that they were behind a locked door, her emotions took over. Her body trembled and quivered and no matter how hard she wrapped her arms around her middle, she couldn’t help but feel like she was falling.