Page 12 of Chasing Paradise

I couldn’t exactly tell him my actual plan. Or that I was still kind of hoping I could accomplish it.

“Knock me over the head and smuggle me back?” he asked, lips curving up ever so slightly at the edge.

“That’s always an option. That becomes more likely with each moment spent in your… pleasant company.”

“Can’t imagine I’m obligated to be friendly to someone who wants to bring me to jail.”

“For crimes you committed.”

“So, that whole ‘innocent until proven guilty’ thing…”

“Makes a nice soundbite. But you’ve already been convicted in the court of public opinion.”

“And if I didn’t do it?”

“That’s your lawyer’s problem, not mine.”

“You don’t even care if I did it or not?”

“I care that youdidskip out on your bail.”

“And if you haul me back to be locked up for a crime I didn’t commit?”

“I’d say that if I had a dime for every time a skip told me they were innocent, I’d be a wealthy woman. Little secret,” I said, leaning in for dramatic effect, “they’re all guilty.”

He considered that, biting the inside of his cheek. “Statistics say that roughly five percent of everyone incarcerated is innocent. That’s, what, one in every twenty? How many skips have you handed over to a system that was hellbent on convicting them, regardless of if they did it or not? More than twenty?”

A hell of a lot more.

“That’s on the lawyers and the jury. I’m doing my job.”

“Well, you can’t do your job here. So maybe you should turn around and head back to the States.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, turning to walk away.

“Warwick,” I called.

“Wick,” he said. Turning his head over his shoulder, he gave me a raised brow look.

“I’m going to bring you in.”

“Yeah?” he asked, lips curving up in a way I totally didn’t find annoyingly attractive. “I’d like to see you try, duchess.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Wick

Fuck.

She was a complication I didn’t need.

Between the fake IDs I paid a small fortune for, but was just testing out for the first time, the wanted posters of me that had—no doubt—made their way to international airports, and the fact that I was innocent of the crimes I was being charged with, I had more than enough on my plate.

I’d seen her looking at me at the airport back in Miami. But my ego had let me think she was just checking me out. And, to be fair, I was doing a lot of my own checking out too.

Because… damn.

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