“Come on, princess,” he said as he charged toward the Camry he’d parked hours earlier. “This is how it works.”
He reached the car in fewer than ten strides, held her immobile with one hand, yanked the back door open with the other, and shoved her in as the van screeched back into the street to catch up.
“Not…” He slammed the door and barely heard her muffled, “Yet!” She pounded the window in protest.
Yes, yet.
The van approached just as he jerked open the Camry driver’s door. “Hey, asshole, what are you doing?” The angry voice from the van was as Boston as baked beans and Johnny didn’t take time to respond. He’d assumed that Lucy had prearranged this with the site, but even if there had been a communications breakdown, he knew what his job was. He slammed the car door and stabbed the keys into the ignition, but furious fingers seized a handful of his hair and pulled like hell.
“I can’t believe you did that!” she shrieked.
Shaking her loose, he managed to start the car, threw it into drive, whipped it in front of the van, and flew across three lanes to turn right on Beacon. The van didn’t follow. Still, the real rescuer could be close by with orders to find out who had just muscled in on the business. Just in case, he blew out of there.
She smacked her hand against the back of his seat so hard, he felt it in his chest. “That was too fast! I didn’t even get kidnapped! I paid to get kidnapped, you son of a bitch!”
He managed to snag her furious gaze in the rearview mirror. “You’re welcome.”
She choked and threw herself back. “That’s not what I paid for. I didn’t get a thing out of that.” She kicked his seat with a frustrated, “Ooh, damn it all!”
What the hell kind of buzz was she after? Climbing into a van with some creep for pretend danger? Was that really some kind of good time?
“You paid to get rescued,” he said, looking at her in the mirror again. He hadn’t seen a picture, like he usually did. On a normal job Lucy would have given him a dossier an inch thick, with every detail down to bra size. He adjusted the mirror slightly south. A decent—very decent—B-plus. “I am just doin’ my job, miss. Where to?”
“Where to?” She sounded incredulous. “I didn’t flag a cab to cruise Beacon Street. I paid to get abducted, thank you very much. And I did not get two thousand dollars’ worth of abduction services.”
“Two?” He coughed. “You bought the deluxe?”
Her eyes sharpened. “Don’t you guys communicate at that company?”
“I was told it was a standard rescue operation,” he said, hoping that would be the right term. “No deluxe.”
She crossed her arms, her cheeks flushed with fury. “I was very clear in the application. I wanted the most amount of time I could possibly have before the rescue. My contact promised me at least an hour of kidnapping. An hour with the guy who’s supposed to be the best there is.”
“An hour? For what?” The question was out before he could stop himself. He backpedaled fast. “I mean, isn’t the whole reason you sign up for this the rescue part? From a knight in shining…” He glanced at the dash and gave her his most endearing grin. “Toyota?”
She rolled her eyes. “I wanted the whole package.” She turned to the window, lost for a moment, then back to the mirror. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Awhile.”
“Do you do a lot of the rescues? Are you a regular?”
“Rescues? Oh, yeah, that’s all I do, sweetheart.” A bodyguard could certainly be considered a rescuer.
“And do you only work for takemetonite.com, or are you a freelancer for other operations?”
How many sites were there where chicks paid for fantasy adrenaline rushes? “Just this one.”
“Do you talk to them much? The girls you save?”
“If they want.” He had to give it more than this or she’d never believe he worked for the site. “I mean, I’ll talk if they, you know, bought the deluxe package.”
She leaned forward, pressing her fingers on his shoulders. “Let’s be clear here, pal. Is that deluxe business straight sex or something kinky?”
He tapped the brakes at a light and shrugged. “Hey. It’s your two grand, babe.”
“You need to turn the car around.”
“Huh-uh. No way. You’re not going back to that park. You’ve been rescued. The first part is over, whether it lasted long enough for you