Nico (The Mavericks Book 8)

“I just want to go home.”
“And we’re getting to that point,” he said. “Just not yet.”
She nodded and shifted. “I don’t suppose you have my clothes, do you? Or can we collect it all? I really want a shower.”
He looked at her in surprise and said, “You didn’t bring much with you, did you?”
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t. I am only here for a few days, then turn around and go home. I wasn’t happy to be here so I wanted to return immediately.”
“Well, I have a few things that you left in your room. You can’t go back up there again.”
“I don’t want to,” she said. “Honestly, as I said, I just want to go home.”
He walked to his bag and pulled out a roll of her clothes with her paperwork.
She gasped in joy. “Oh my,” she said. “I had no idea. I was so afraid my paperwork was gone, and I couldn’t get home. I’d gotten into my room, unpacked some things, then went downstairs to meet a coworker but returned. They immediately attacked me at my door.”
“Well, what you need to enter the country is all here,” he said. And he handed everything over to her. She selected a change of clothes, got up, walked to the bathroom, and asked, “Will you be okay with him?” She stared at the prisoner malevolently. “Maybe we should hit him over the head again, just to make sure he doesn’t wake up while I’m in here.”
“What will you do if he does wake up?” he asked in interest.
She frowned. “I don’t know,” she said, “but I could help somehow. Would you knock him out again?”
“Well, if I needed to, yes,” he said. “Why?”
When she didn’t answer, he just smiled and said, “Go shower. I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want anything to happen to you because you came to rescue me.”
“Not an issue,” he said gently. “This is what I do. I’ll be fine.”
She hesitated but then realized that she was so damn tired, and she needed to do something fast if she hoped to accomplish anything. With a quick nod, she disappeared into the bathroom, stripped, turned on the hot shower, and finally stepped underneath the water.
Only as she stood, letting the water cascade over her head, her hands resting against the wall, supporting herself, did she let the tears flow. The occasional sob broke loose, but mostly her body heaved as the sobs rippled through her in silent motion as they always did. She wasn’t a noisy crier. She was somebody who preferred the silence and to blend with it instead of disrupting it.
When she finally ran out of tears, she slowly reached for the soap and scrubbed herself down from top to bottom, then added shampoo to her hair and rinsed it out, and finally turned off the water.
She sagged to the side of the shower, tired, worn out, and shaky. But she was determined to get dressed so that she could go back outside. If she were lucky, she’d collapse on the bed for an hour or two at least. She needed a night or two to recover from this, but she didn’t know how quickly she could get home, and that’s where she would really recover. She was too damn grateful to be here and not wherever those horrible men had planned for her to be.
Once again dressed with her hair brushed and still wet, but too tired to use the hotel’s blow-dryer, she slowly opened the door and made her way out to find Nico sitting beside one of the men who had kidnapped her. He was awake now. The kidnapper turned, looked at her, and glared. “Bitch. I told you not to make a sound.”
“You did,” she said with more calmness than she felt. “But why the hell should I listen to you?”
“Because now you’ll die,” he said simply.
She froze in place, turned to look at Nico. “Why would he say that?” she cried out in alarm.
“He’s trying to scare you,” Nico said. He smacked the kidnapper across his face, hard, and walked over and gave her a quick hug. “We have only the one hotel room. I can’t shield you from this, so why don’t you go to the bed and lie down?”
“I’m too scared to sleep,” she whispered. “Yet I’m exhausted, and I need sleep, but I’m afraid that, if I do, something will happen, and he’ll overpower you and take me again.”
“Not gonna happen,” he said, as he walked her to the bed and got her settled.
The door opened just then, and Keane walked in. He looked over at the kidnapper and smiled. “Oh, good. Time for a talk, is it?”
“Yes,” Nico said. “What did you find?”
“The helicopter’s gone,” Keane said.
The kidnapper stared at him in shock. “No, no, it’s supposed to wait for me.”
“Well, guess what?” Keane said. “You missed your ride, buddy.”
“That’s not good,” the man said. “They were very strict about making that appointment.”
“Well, you don’t have her to deliver to them anyway, so you’re in shit for a whole lot more than just that one reason.”
The guy sagged in place. “Maybe, but at least there was a hope of fixing it.”
“And how do you figure that?”
“All you had to do was give her back to me, and it would be all fine.”
“And why would we do that?” Nico asked in surprise.
“Because they’ll still come after her. Just because I failed doesn’t mean they don’t still want her. They do. Now they’ll just send more men.”
After that comment, their prisoner shut up. Nico looked over at Keane and shrugged. “I guess he’d rather not deal with the cops and prefers to face the wrath of his coworkers.”
Keane nodded. “If this is serious business, which it seems like it is, since they’re killing off all the loose ends, then we have to assume that his miserable life is in danger.”
“Well, I’m not protecting him,” Nico said. “He’s the one who screwed up. They’ll