Page 25 of Burn

I frowned as I stared at him and he lifted his gaze from the book briefly to glance at me. His expression arrested me. For a moment, no emotion seemed to exist there, his eyes seemed pale but it could just be the way the light hit them. The absolute neutrality was more unsettling than a scowl.

“Boom?” I tested the syllable. That wasn’t right. “No… The witch doctor is the other guy. You’re…Bones.”

They had such weird names and at the same time, I kind of liked them. Bones straightened slowly as he studied me and lowered his book and emotion seemed to bleed back into his face.

“You’re Grace Black.” The deep, even voice offered no clue to his actual mood.

“Yes.” No point in keeping that a secret. “Where are we?”

Rather than answer my question, he asked one of his own. “How are you feeling?”

Exhausted. Everything hurt. My muscles. My bones. My heart. “I’m fine.” It wasn’t totally true, but at the moment, my complaints were a lot less than they had been.

“Miss Black, you and I will get along much better if you don’t lie to me.” Pale gray eyes seemed to bore into me as though he were capable of reading my mind.

“I don’t know you,” I said rather than try to argue that I wasn’t lying. I sat up, preferring to face him on a little more even ground.

“You know my guys though,” Bones countered.

“Lunchbox and Alphabet?” At his nod, I ran my tongue over my lower lip. “They’re your guys—how? They work for you?” Was this kind of mafia? I hadn’t really been able to parse the dynamic at the clinic.

The doctor had been straightforward. The men who pulled us out of the truck, they’d been rougher. Not as refined. Alphabetseemed—I wasn’t even sure how to describe it. A little more laid back, but Lunchbox had been more formal. More direct.

Bones?

I really had no idea what he was at the moment, other than intense.

“They’re my guys, my brothers,” Bones said, offering even less of an explanation. “They’ve also offered you protection, which means I have. What one of us commits to, all of us does.”

Pulling my knees to my chest, I frowned. “I’m not holding any of you to this. They got me out of a bad situation—after getting me home.” I sighed.

Home. Then I looked down at the knit blanket that was laid over me, I’d been wrapped up in it. My pictures were missing, but whoever brought me in here had made sure to bring the blanket.

Waking to a strange room was becoming a bad habit. The blanket helped.

“Anyway, I’m not holding anyone to anything. I’m out. If you can get me to law enforcement, I can file a report. I can reach out to my sister.” I still hadn’t called Am. I glanced toward the heavily curtained window. The blackout drape kept the time of day a mystery. “I need to call her anyway.”

“You don’t have to hold us to it,” Bones said as he rose. “They gave you their word. Now I’m giving you mine. We’ll make sure you’re safe. We’ll find out who is after you. Then we’ll deal with it. Until then, you stay with us.”

“No,” I argued. “I have a life and a sister. I need to get back to them.”

“Right now, you have a life because your captors put you on the wrong truck. I don’t like coincidences. I don’t like blind luck. You’ve benefited from both. If the boys had left after you got home, you’d already be back in chains and we wouldn’t know.”

My stomach sank at the description. As much as I wanted to deny the point, I couldn’t. There had been five men in my place. More men in that other car. I really was only free because Alphabet and Lunchbox came back in after me.

“I hate this,” I said, rubbing a hand over my face. All at once, the aches that I’d been ignoring crept through me. The bruises on my chest. The pulled muscles. The strain in my neck and in my back.

“I’m sure you do,” Bones said in an even voice. The pale gray eyes didn’t offer a lot of comfort or even platitudes. It was a directness I could respect. “Like I said, you have my word. We will take care of this.”

That sounded fantastic…in theory. But I didn’t know these men. “Why?” Were they do-gooders? Did they parachute into bad situations and save people? “Just because Lunchbox and Alphabet said they would help me?”

“Not only because of that. No. I explained it already. You need time to think about it and make your peace. You also need a shower and food. Voodoo got you some clothes.” He pointed to the bag on the dresser that I hadn’t noticed before. “There’s some hygiene products in there too, the basics. We’ll get more once we’re back at base.”

Base? What base? Were they military? That might make more sense and it seemed to fit these men. Bones was definitely as tall as the other two and the silk dress shirt and well-tailored slacks did nothing to disguise the thick nature of his muscles. The pair of rings he wore on his right hand—one on the index and the other on his ring finger—were squared and thick. Tiger’s eye decorated one, but I couldn’t see the stone in the other.

The man appeared urbane and well groomed, but that was all surface. He would fit right in on Wall Street. Unless you looked closer, and I wasn’t sure I would see it if we were in amore normal situation. He dressed the part, he spoke in a cool educated voice that held no trace of an accent.

Everything about him was a distraction. Camouflage. Hiding in plain sight. There was a much deeper, darker pool beneath all the gloss. Recognizing that didn’t make any of this easier.

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