Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 51832 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51832 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
Once we’re in the lobby, a few people mill about but no one raises a red flag. Ana and I find the room signs and follow the arrow to our destination. Once we’re at the door to our room, I use our electronic key and we’re inside. She enters first, and by the time I’m inside, she’s already searching the room. When we’re all clear, she tosses her coat on the bed and lays down her rules. “The club is basement level and through a door,” she says. “It should take you five minutes to get to the locker. Another three to unlock it and pack it up. Another five to return to this room. You have twelve minutes, from the time you leave me here to return, or I’m coming after you. And that’s too long as far as I’m concerned,” she states.
“That adds up to thirteen minutes.”
“Not if you go faster. Go faster, Luke.”
I laugh at her demand, and she scowls in reaction. “This isn’t funny,” she reprimands. “Do you know how intense it will be for me to wait here and worry about you?”
I toss my backpack on the bed, catch her to me, and stroke her hair from her face. “When I told you I had a reason to live, I meant it. I missed the hell out of you, woman. I’ll be back.” I kiss her, and not fast or gently. I close my mouth over hers, tongue stroking deep, drinking her in, every last drop of sweet, sexy woman, I can dare right now, in this room with danger punching at our door. It’s with a herculean effort that I tear my mouth from hers and promise, “Eleven minutes.” I release her, grab my bag, walk to the door, and fuck me, leaving her in that room feels as if I’m leaving her forever.
As I walk away, I decide eleven minutes just became ten.
Chapter Nineteen
Luke
My walk to the fitness club is eventless.
I’m at the club check-in desk, scanning my electronic entry pass, also compliments of Blake, in about three of the ten minutes I’ve given myself. I’m questioning the sanity of that timeline vow right about now but still determined to see it through. Ana will come after me and I need her in that room and protected.
I’ll make the damn ten-minute mark.
Once I’m on the other side of check-in, I evaluate the workout area and size up any potential threat. I find everyone in my view either eyeing how they look in the mirrors lining the walls, focused on chatting it up with a friend, or sweating up a storm. No one sets off alarms.
The locker room sign directs me to my right, on the other side of the leg equipment, and as it turns out, down a set of stairs. Once I’m inside that private room, I find a bunch of sinks, a shower room, and then several cubby-like rooms with benches surrounded by lockers.
As for people, there are none outside of a couple of guys in the showers talking it up like a couple of naked fools. I mean holy hell—what makes a man stand next to another man naked and think it’s time to talk about the Broncos football season, specifically their ball-handling skills?
Get me the fuck out of here, I think, eyeing the numbers on the first cubby of lockers and moving onto cubby number two. Once I’m there, this mission ends quickly. Darius’s locker is wide open and empty. It’s clear to see there’s also no lock. Damn it to hell. Please, Lord, tell me he wrote the number down wrong. It’s a long shot, but I have to try to find a better answer than I have at present. I survey the rest of the lockers, looking for a similar number, and actually try the key in the locks.
Some big-bellied dude, in a barely-there towel, rounds the corner and huffs out a protest. “Hey, man, that’s my locker.”
“Sorry, man. I could have sworn it was mine.” I scrub my jaw. “My bad.” I leave him standing there in his itty bitty towel and I can’t do it fast enough.
Darius taught us all a lesson about pushing our luck. Not with a dude in a barely-there towel in the locker room, and definitely not with our enemies.
Chapter Twenty
Ana
Where you start doesn’t define where you end.
The man who recruited me into the FBI told me that.
I pace the small hotel room, waiting on Luke, counting down the minutes with those wise words in my head. Luke and I started out amazing. The end is not always the end. We are not over unless, of course, we end six feet under. The very idea that this is even a possibility in my mind, has me asking myself how we got here? How did two such trained individuals become prisoners to someone else’s rule? And a stranger at that.