This is all insane, and I know it. I’m on the run from the Ukrainian mob. Me, the small-town, straight-A, honor’s program, never-had-a-parking-ticket me. Oh, and I’m naked in bed with a man I have no business even knowing let alone sleeping with.
Actually, “insane” maybe doesn’t give it enough weight.
Lunacy, that’s what this is. Absolute lunacy.
And of course, that’s before I add in the other crazy part of all of this - the fact that I’m strangely comfortable with the whole thing. It’s the fact that I’m fine right now, here in this beach house while we’re on the run, with his arm around me. I’m still worried, of course, and my mind clearly won’t stop analyzing the whole thing.
But the me of a week ago would have had a meltdown by now. The me from before he took me would’ve been huddled in a corner going into frozen-mode, unable to even deal with this.
The new me - the me who has kinky, wild, unbridled sex with dangerous mob men, apparently, and the new me who grabs the wheel while aforementioned dangerous mob man shoots a gun at people out of the window of a moving car?
Well, the new me is strangely all right with this whole thing.
There’s a sudden beeping sound from downstairs. I frown as it goes off again, my eyes darting around the darkness of the room. Connor stirs, and I almost want to wake him to see what it is, but I push that thought away.
Wasn’t I just saying I was okay with all this, and no longer the scared, freaked out girl I used to be?
I leave the warmth of his arms and his skin as I slip from the bed, grabbing a blanket and padding downstairs. There’s the lingering smell of the fire we had earlier in the fireplace, and my eyes scan the dark living room. The beep comes again, and my eyes narrow in on my bag, tossed in the corner.
My heart suddenly jumps in my chest as I rush for the bag, dig around the bottom of it, and yank out the fucking burner phone Agent Marlow gave me.
“Evening, Ms. Hammond,” he mutters, before I can even say anything.
“Wouldn’t the whole point of a secret phone be that it stays a secret?” I hiss, glancing back at the dark staircase. “The fucking ringer was on!”
“Well, you should have checked it,” Marlow hisses back. “Roarke-”
“He’s asleep.”
“Did someone tire him out?”
My face goes hot at the sneering tone in his voice, and I scowl into the phone. “What do you want.”
Marlow chuckles. “Touchy thing aren’t you. I want information, kid.”
“Well, I don’t have any informa-”
“When exactly were you planning on telling me about the little shootout you had this morning in Southie? Or that you and Roarke were off on a goddamn road trip?”
I swallow the lump that forms in my throat, fingers tightening on the phone. Even talking to Agent Marlow like this - without even giving him anything - feels like some sort of disloyalty to Connor. It feels like selling him out, without even saying anything.
“What exactly do you think you owe him, Sierra?” Marlow says, as if reading my thoughts. His voice is without his usual edge this time, using my first name instead of “Ms. Hammond” or “kid”. And even though I’m sure it’s some sort of FBI trained tactic of “getting through to me” or showing empathy…
It works.
I close my eyes, biting my lip and slowly shaking my head.
“Are you aware of the phenomenon of Stockholm syndrome?”
It takes everything I have not to bark out the bitter laugh I can feel on my tongue.
“People who’ve been taken or held against their will and put through stressful situations sometimes begin to empathize with their captors.”
I know what Stockholm syndrome is. Hell, I’ve been wondering if it’s what this is for days now. But I sit there squeezing my eyes shut in the dark, trying not to listen to Marlow as he psychoanalyzes me over the phone.
“These people sometimes begin to feel so close to their captors - their captors, Sierra - that they’ll actually refuse to be rescued.”
Is he right? Is that what all this is? Is whatever is going on with Connor and I just some fucking manifestation of my own mountain of stress and bullshit?
Is he just the perfect escape I was looking for, no matter the utterly fucked up way we were thrown together?
“You see, Sierra, the syndrome can manifest itself in very strang-”
“I’m aware of what Stockholm syndrome is, Agent Marlow,” I say icily, cutting him off before I lose my fucking mind.
“Now, since you apparently know everything anyways before I had a chance to call you, is there anything else you need?”
He’s silent on the other end of the phone, and even if I’m pretty sure he’s not buying my half-assed attempt at a lie, he lets it be.