Free Loaded: A Bad Boy Romance by Roxie Noir Page A

then, a visit from my boss.”
    “Who’s your boss?” she asks.
    “Sorry, classified,” I say. “But nice try. You want chicken noodle soup for lunch?”
    “I guess,” she says. She pulls her feet onto the couch and sits cross-legged, staring out the window.
    “What happens if my dad doesn’t do what you want?” she asks, and suddenly she seems fifteen years younger, like she’s a kid.
    “He’ll do it,” I say, searching the drawers for a can opener.
    “But if he doesn’t?”
    “No one has ever picked their sense of guilt or justice or whatever over their own kid,” I say. I open another drawer and paw through it. “Especially when the kid is all they’ve got.”
    “I hope you’re right,” she says.
    There’s a long, long pause as I finally find a shitty can opener in the back of the drawer and crank it against a can.
    “Are you gonna be the one who has to kill me?” she finally says.
    The simple answer to that is yes . I’ll get a call, and Manny will give me the go-ahead.
    “If your dad goes to the feds, we’ll probably find out when the DEA lands a helicopter outside,” I say.
    It’s not outside the realm of possibility: we’d find out when the DEA or the FBI or the ATF, or maybe all three, attacked. But they wouldn’t be likely to hit here first.
    “So you’re not actually in contact with him,” she says.
    “Not technically,” I say. “But he knows you’re missing by now. And he knows who did it, and how to make it right.”
    I dump the soup into bowls and put them in the microwave, then turn around and look at her.
    “Everyone gives in when it’s their kid’s life in danger,” I say. “Everyone.”
    She looks at me and her eyes fill with tears.
    “Thanks,” she says.

Twelve

Tessa
    I sit on that damn couch all day. It turns out being kidnapped and held hostage is a little like airplane travel: long periods of boredom, of waiting , punctuated by short bursts of intense stress. Only more so.
    I pick Die Hard , and then Alex picks The Fast and the Furious . I’m bored to tears of watching movies, but the only other thing to do is read, and I’m too sleep-deprived and rattled to concentrate on a book.
    “I’ve got that car,” Alex says, suddenly.
    “What car?”
    “The charger,” he says, nodding at the screen.
    “Which one’s the charger?” I ask.
    He looks at me.
    “Seriously?” he says.
    “I’m not a car person, really,” I say.
    “The charger is a major plot point in this movie,” he says. “It’s one of the stars. They mention it like a thousand times.”
    I look back at the screen.
    “Is it that one?” I ask, pointing at some character’s red car.
    “Oh my god, Tessa,” he says.
    “Yellow?” I ask.
    “You’re killing me.”
    “The black one?”
    “ Finally ,” he says, and looks over at me with a teasing grin. “I bought it after my first big bonus.”
    “You get bonuses?” I ask. I’m only half-watching the movie. It’s a bunch of people driving cars really fast, and then there’s some plot thrown in.
    “I did a big job, so I got paid extra.”
    “What kind of job?”
    Earlier I was fishing for info, trying to find something that I could use to help the police track him down later, but now I’m just making conversation for lack of something better to do.
    “I coordinated a trade,” he says.
    “Guns for cocaine?” I guess.
    “Cotton candy for puppies,” he says.
    I have no idea what that means, and I look at him, frowning.
    “Is that like... drug slang?” I ask.
    Alex grins. Then his grin becomes a laugh as he looks at me, and I’m increasingly bewildered.
    “No,” he finally says. “It was a joke, because I’m not telling you what the trade really was.”
    “Oh,” I say, feeling like an idiot. I turn back to the movie.
    “Sorry,” he says.
    “I’m not really hip to the drug slang,” I say. He laughs and it’s hard not to feel pleased. “I did coke once in college, though.”
    “Just once?”
    “Yeah,” I