Page 118 of Hot for Hostage

I could feel Vince’s glare boring a hole into my head. “What do you expect me to say? You abducted a woman I met twenty-four hours ago. I barely know her name.”

He scoffed. “Cut the crap. Fessy saw you with her, and you cared enough to join this call.”

I made a show of sighing and looking at Sadie—but the sight of her stopped me cold.

She was staring straight at the camera and blinking like a maniac.

A flurry of quick blinks. Then five slow. More quick ones.

My brows pulled together in a frown.

I couldn’t tell if she was having a seizure or trying to blink back tears, and I had to stop myself from asking her if she was all right.

Luckily, I wasn’t the only one to notice her sudden tic.

Zain clapped his hands in front of her face. “What the hell is wrong with your eyes?”

Sadie immediately stopped blinking. “Huh? What do you mean?”

“You’re blinking like a spaz.”

“Oh. Um, I think something flew into them,” she lied through her teeth. When Zain eyed her doubtfully, she looked up at him with her big, innocent eyes, which didn’t fool any of us. “Don’t worry. I’m not trying to get any coded messages to Davian or anything like that, if that’s what you’re worried about. I don’t even know Morse code.”

Vince stifled a snort, and I wanted to hit my forehead against the desk.Coded messages?

What the hell.

When Zain only stared at her, Sadie slowly faced the camera again. After a pause, she quickly blinked twice.

“You’re doing it again!” He scowled. “Stop it.”

She immediately stopped. I wasn’t sure what she was even trying to say to me, but a new distraction stopped me from thinking about it too hard.

“What’s that brown thing on top of you?” I asked. It looked like they’d covered her with an old tarp.

Sadie glanced down at it and cleared her throat.

“Oh. It’s a little chilly in here, so the boys gave me a blanket,” she answered brightly. Only her head was moving, and my unease grew. “It was very hospitable of them.”

This time, I was the one staring. Had she just shown gratitude toward her captors?

“Let’s cut to the chase, Reed.” Zain stepped closer to Sadie and spun a blade around his fingers before deftly catching it. “How much is her pretty face worth to you?”

My eyebrow rose. “You want money?”

“Just answer the question,” he shot back. “What are you willing to offer to get her back?”

Like I said. Amateur hour.

“That’s not how this works, and I don’t have time for games.” My thumb tapped the armrest. “You have the hostage. You make the demands. State your price, or we’re done here.”

I’d said something similar to Sadie at Bruno’s ice cream shop, but it’d been almost playful then. There was nothing lenient about my tone now.

Zain took it in stride, even if he did grit his teeth and give me a look that told me he’d love nothing more than to see me dead. “I want everything from Rex’s border all the way to downtown. The territory’s rightfully ours.”

I chuckled. I couldn’t help it. The boy wasn’t just delusional—he’d lost his damn mind. Over half that area was mine, and Iwasn’t giving him even a single square foot. “Yours? According to who?”

“Our father?—”

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