Chapter Three
THEY seemed to trek for miles . . . and miles. Endless sand and desert, dotted only by brittle brush, even as snowcapped mountains surrounded them. Mystery felt as if they’d be lost out here forever. The thought of never seeing her father again chilled her veins with icy panic. The weather didn’t help. The desert at night was freezing.
Axel had long ago ordered her to eat the sandwich her captor had left. He also put on his jacket and made her wear Alvarez’s. He had to be exhausted, too, but he just kept putting one foot in front of the other, looking up at the sky periodically, then checking an old-fashioned compass he’d pulled from his pack.
“How are you doing?” he asked suddenly in the silence broken only by the sound of footfalls on the never-ending sand.
Ready to fall over. Beyond exhausted. “Fine.”
He smiled grimly. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a terrible liar?”
Despite everything, she smiled. “My dad. Apparently, I’m not as good as the professional liars he works with. That’s what he calls actors. He stays behind the camera—rather than in front of it—more often now, but over the years, he says he’d heard every lie ever told.”
“I’m sure. You sound fond of your dad.”
She smiled up at Axel. “He’s really fabulous. The press isn’t always kind, and I know he’s had a well-documented love life, but as a father, I couldn’t ask for more. What about you?”
“My dad did the single-parent thing, too. I’m the third of four boys, so he always had his hands full. But he tried to do right by us.”
Mystery nodded. She didn’t want to pry, but she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t deeply curious about this soldier who’d saved her life. “Where’s your mom?”
“Who knows?” He shrugged. “She wanted more excitement than a small town could give, so she left.”
His conversational tone stunned her. That was it? “Do you miss her?”
“It wouldn’t do me any good. Besides, it was a long time ago. You still miss yours?”
Everyone knew about her mother’s death. It had been the stuff of tabloids since the police still classified it as “unsolved.” Some believed her mother had committed suicide. Others were convinced her father had murdered the wife he hadn’t wanted and couldn’t afford to divorce. But the DA had never been able to gather enough evidence to indict him—or anyone. Mystery wished she had someone to blame and hate for taking away the woman who had birthed and loved her. Her father had many faults—an eye for the ladies and a wandering dick among them. But he wasn’t a killer.
“All the time. Maybe . . . it’s different for me. Mine didn’t leave; she was taken. I know if she’d had a choice, she would have stayed.”
“Sounds like it.” He paused, sending her a direct stare full of honesty . . . and a surprising dose of concern. She wouldn’t have been able to see it out in the desert except the moon was full and bright tonight. “You know there will be a media fervor when we make it back, right?”
She felt every pound of that pack on her back with each step, but she refused to wince. “I’m used to that. I was three when Dad won his first Oscar. It hasn’t slowed down since. The spotlight is all I’ve ever known.”
Granted, she usually stood just outside its bright light, but the glare caught her every so often.
“Interesting life.”
“It’s whatever you get used to, I think.” She shrugged. “Everything is a trade-off. I’m not that fond of the limelight, but being the only child of Marshall Mullins opens doors.”
“You going to follow in your dad’s footsteps?”
People asked that a lot. She shook her head. “I’m not much for the whole . . . Hollywood scene. I prefer books. My dad thinks it’s funny, but I like mysteries.”
He sent her a speculative glance. “So why were you at a nightclub when you were taken?”
“I let some of my friends talk me into it.” And wasn’t she annoyed with herself? “I was also leaving. I’m sure they stayed for hours. Was my dad all right when you saw him?”
Axel’s mouth flattened into a grim line. “He’s really worried; I won’t lie. Your disappearance shook him. He kept waiting for a ransom note.”
“He never got one?” That surprised her.
“Unless he’s received one in the last eighteen hours, no.”
Mystery shook her head. “That makes no sense. I mean, none of this does. My captor didn’t say much, just kept me isolated. He didn’t mention any demands he or his boss planned to make. The weirdest part is, the morning I arrived, the bastard holding me drew blood.”
Axel frowned. “He cut you?”
“No. He took out a syringe and physically drew my blood like a phlebotomist, then said something about waiting a couple of days. I have no idea why or what that’s supposed to mean.”
That frown of his became a downright scowl. “I don’t know, either, but I’m sure once your father hears this, he’ll look into it.”
He would, but Mystery just wanted this incident behind her. She wanted to be away from Hollywood, the club scene, the press. She certainly didn’t want to fixate on some freak’s motives and try to find logic.
“Yeah. Sure.” She tried to send him a wobbly smile.
He continued his strong, sure cadence through the desert. Something about his face fascinated her. Big, kind of square, not at all refined . . . and she still couldn’t stop staring. He wasn’t so much handsome as rugged. Mystery had grown up knowing many of the most gorgeous men on the planet. People had labeled her as one of the most beautiful celebrity children, which kind of creeped her out. Suri Cruise and those Jolie-Pitt kids qualified. She had her mom’s hourglass figure, a fall of dark hair that in no way resembled the sea of California blondes around her, and a wide mouth some Internet sites speculated would look great giving blow jobs. The individual parts of her didn’t add up to the most stunning sum, in her opinion, but whatever. What mattered was that she was alive.
“We’ve gone five or six miles. Let’s stop for a water break.” He paused near an outcropping of rocks and sat his pack down, extracting her half full bottle.
“I’m not thirsty. I can conserve awhile longer.”
“No. It may be cold and dry tonight, but you’re still working up a sweat. You have to replace your fluids.” He thrust the bottle at her with a demanding stare.
She sighed and took it. “Anyone ever tell you you’re bossy?”
A faint grin crept across his face. “All the time. Some people actually like it, princess.”
Mystery suspected that he alone understood the punch line to his joke, but she was too tired to care what it might be. Instead, she washed the taste of sand out of her mouth with a couple of swigs of water. He’d put a water purification tablet in the bottle before he’d let her drink it, and it had a strange chemical taste, but she could stomach it if that meant not getting sick.
She handed the bottle back to him.
He just shook his head. “Finish it.”
Then he lifted his own bottle and polished it off in four long swallows. She watched his thick neck working, the Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he gripped the plastic with his large hand. Then the reason for her fascination with him hit.
Besides being her hero, he was a man.
Yes, she’d been surrounded all her life by members of the opposite sex, some even very attractive in that polished, Hollywood, metrosexual way. But Axel was a walking, talking billboard for testosterone. He oozed it, gave it off as easily as others exhaled carbon dioxide. It hung around him like a pheromone. He would never worry about whether his hair looked just right or if his pants weren’t perfectly fashionable. He wouldn’t care if he was seen at the right restaurants or what anyone thought of him. Axel was one hundred percent secure in himself and his masculinity.
Mystery had never seen anything more attractive in her life.
She swallowed against the sudden surge of awareness as he shoved his empty bottle back in his pack, then gave her an expectant look. Dutifully, she swallowed the rest down, wondering all the while what, if anything, he thought of her. Stupid, spoiled little rich girl?
Wasn’t she?
Refusing to let the thought defeat her, she handed her bottle back to him. “How long until the sun comes up?”
“About three hours. You hanging in there?”
“I told you I would.”
“You’re not used to this, so if you need a longer break . . .”
She shook her head. “I’m good.”
His expression turned somewhere between amused and impressed. “Then let’s do it.”
Axel led. She followed. But for all her big talk, Mystery was exhausted and nearing her limit. Every step made her feet ache, jarred her very bones, made her back cramp. Not for anything in the world would she confess that. Adrenaline and lingering terror had gotten her through the first couple of hours. After that, just talking to him had melted her discomfort. Maybe she could distract herself again.
“The stars out here seem so bright.” She looked up at the night sky, stunned anew by the stark beauty. “It seems as if there are a million more here than in the city.”
“No other light to dilute their appearance.” A small smile curled his lips. “It’s one reason I don’t mind the desert. Just me and that bright sky. No trees to obscure it. The colors are unlike anything else. This kind of landscape has a haunting beauty.”
She’d never thought about it before, never really noticed. But Axel had a point. Yes, they were in a dangerous situation, hiking toward freedom. But it didn’t look as if they’d been followed. They hadn’t seen any scavengers or snakes. Out here, she could pretend for a little while that they were the only two people in the world. She could fantasize for just a moment that Axel could be interested in her.
“Yeah, I can see that,” she murmured. “Did you grow up in the desert?”
“Nah. I’m originally from Tennessee. I joined the Army and shipped out to Afghanistan. I saw a lot of desert over there. You learn to appreciate it or you go insane.”
Mystery felt her gaze cling to him. She should probably stop staring and embarrassing herself, but she enjoyed the view of him too much. But he wasn’t just attractive. She really liked the way he rolled with the punches, accepted what was, and learned how to embrace the moment. Most of the men she knew, other than her dad, were creative folks with the artistic temperament to match. Very high-maintenance. Nothing seemed to faze Axel. He’d lost at least one friend today, yet that hadn’t sent him into a rage, a drinking binge, or a catatonic frenzy.
“I never gave it much thought, but I suppose you’re right.” She bit her lip and hesitated asking the next question on the tip of her tongue, but couldn’t help herself. “Is Axel really your name?”
“Nope. Troy.” He shrugged. “It’s a family name.”
“Do you like it?”
“No one has called me that since I was about nine, so I don’t really think about it. Once I started working on cars, my dad gave me the nickname and it stuck.”
“Troy doesn’t sound like you.” She frowned. “Sorry. That didn’t come out right.”
“No offense taken.” He scanned the empty horizon, seemingly always on alert. His sharp profile fascinated her. “What about you? Mystery is a very unusual name. Where did that come from?”
She grinned. “Well, besides the fact that celebrities always give their kids weird names, my mom told this story about how my father did three movies on location in different parts of the world shortly after they married. It wasn’t really planned that way, but he didn’t get to come home much. She joked that it was a mystery how she got pregnant, and it stuck.”
That made him laugh, a rich, deep rumble out of his chest. “I’m assuming she eventually figured it out.”
Mystery rolled her eyes. “I suspect.”
A few more minutes passed in silence. Axel’s hand swung right next to hers. Their knuckles brushed. She wished she had the courage and the right to tangle her fingers in his. Instead, she just watched him. He hovered protectively, constantly surveying her, their surroundings, the conditions. He made her feel secure. Nothing that had happened, nothing she’d said, nothing about her life freaked him out.
People made movies about men like him. Actors fought to play his character. But as soon as the director cut the scene, Axel didn’t head for his trailer, which he’d demanded to be stocked with a cool-mist humidifier, Casablanca lilies, and a case of Red Bull. He just kept right on being exactly who he was.
Mystery watched him—not the landscape—when she managed to stumble over a rock directly under her left toe. As she fell forward, Axel wrapped his strong arm around her middle. His other hand clamped around her wrist and dragged her upright, against his chest, so hard she felt every moment of his years of physical exertion.
Mystery dashed a glance over her shoulder, blinking up at him. “Thank you.”
He nodded. “You all right?”
Getting her feet back under her, she nodded. “Yeah.”
Though her breathing still felt a bit uneven. Then again, he had that effect on her.
“You’re tired. And you didn’t tell me.” He looked disapproving.
She eased out of his embrace. Not that she wanted to, but leaning on him didn’t help them or prove that she could stand on her own two feet.
Hoisting the backpack higher on her shoulders, she shook her head. “It’s just dark and I didn’t see the rock. We need to keep going, right?”
“I’ve also promised to bring you back healthy. Tomorrow will be more difficult. Let’s rest.”
But they had hours of cool darkness left. “No, I promised that I’d keep pace. I will.”
He sighed. “Now you’re just being a stubborn brat.”
Because she wanted to pull her weight? “This is me being resolved.”
“At the risk of your well-being. I’m not having it.”
Mystery wanted to ask him why he thought he was the boss of her, but she knew the answer. Without him, she’d very likely be dead. With a heavy breath, she shook her head. “Fine.”
“Good. I’ll scout for a good place to sleep.”
She looked around the expansive, open landscape. The moonlight put a silvery glow on everything, and it almost looked magical.
“What about over there?” She pointed to a small trail just off to her left. “That looks like a dried-up riverbed.”
He shook his head before she even stopped speaking, looking up to a cropping of rocks on the right. “See the grooves through the rock leading straight down into that gully? That’s the path from past flash floods. It runs off the stone and down to the low point.”
She scoffed. “I don’t see flash flooding being a big problem here.”
“It is,” he corrected. “In a good storm, it can rain six inches or more in an hour. All the water will race down the surrounding hills and collect right here in the old riverbed. People can wash away and drown like that in minutes.”
“In a place as dry as this, doesn’t the soil soak up all the water before it can flood the low spots?”
“This earth gets baked until it’s nearly as hard a concrete. Gravity rolls the water down. It happens really fast. If you’re asleep, you won’t see it coming. You’ll just be overcome by water and die.”
As serious as he sounded, she believed him. “Okay, where do we camp, then?”
“Up higher. Stand right here for a minute. Let me do a little climbing.” He dropped his pack and kept his rifle slung over his shoulder. Then, as if he hadn’t been walking in near-freezing temperatures for the last few hours, she watched Axel grip a rock, then put his foot on the one directly below and climb the side of a hill with the same ease he’d ascend a ladder.
He was so physical and capable. She couldn’t help but admire everything he was and had accomplished. He was probably in his mid-twenties, but had already served two tours on one of the most dangerous battlefields in the world. His mother had left. He lived away from his family. He’d lost a friend today. Nothing broke him. And Mystery admired his courage so much. She wanted to be that brave.
He disappeared up the rock face, then when he reached a ledge, he walked into some opening she couldn’t quite see.
A few moments later, he reappeared and bounded his way back to her side. “This will work. It’s high so that if the bastard who paid for your abduction sends a search party, we won’t be immediately visible. There’s a little bit of an overhang to protect us from the wind. We’ll still have to watch for things like scorpions and mountain lions, but we were going to have to be cautious about those wherever we stopped.”
Some protective rock sounded great, but . . . “How do you expect me to get up there?”
He crossed his arms over his chest as if this point was nonnegotiable. “You’re going to climb.”
Automatically, she shook her head. Yeah, she wanted to be brave, but she knew her limitations. That wasn’t happening. “I can’t. I’ve never climbed a rock like that in my life. I don’t know how, especially in the dark. Isn’t there something else closer to the ground?”
“There might be, but I’m not wasting more time searching for it. We need to eat something, drink more water, get settled, then catch some sleep. You might find that harder as the sun and the temperature come up.”
And he wouldn’t? Then again, she knew from that military film of her father’s that hard-core soldiers like him could close their eyes and sleep just about anywhere. They trained themselves to grab a few minutes of shut-eye here or there, never knowing when the opportunity would come again.
Mystery looked up the face of the rock again. It wasn’t a sheer vertical climb, but it still looked steep and daunting. She tried the honest approach. “I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m scared.”
His body language relaxed, losing the stiff and authoritative stance. Instead, he bent to her and clasped her shoulders. “I’ll be with you every step of the way. The man who abducted you didn’t defeat you. The desert hasn’t gotten the best of you. A few rocks won’t, either. I’ll take your pack up with me. You’ll do great, princess.”
It had to be the trauma of the last few days, coupled with lack of sleep. She teared up. His encouragement was some of the nicest words anyone had ever said to her. He believed she could do it—whatever she set her mind to. No one expected her to be capable of anything. Her father had always indulged her and told her to do whatever she enjoyed. So she’d shopped a lot, read, hung out with friends, and had done just enough to slide by in school. College had been more for show than anything. Daddy was an implacable, driven man. Kind of like Axel. Suddenly, she was a little ashamed that she hadn’t developed more drive or more spine as she’d grown from a child into a young adult. Maybe Axel was right; maybe she could do this.
“I’ll try.”
“You’ll succeed,” he promised. “You watch.”
She gave him a shaky nod.
He bent a little lower and put his face directly in front of hers. “Be verbal. We’ll need to communicate as we climb.”
She’d forgotten. “Yes, Axel.”
He picked up his pack and slung it over his beefy shoulder beside the rifle, then took Alvarez’s pack, stuffed with a canteen and most of the food, in his hand. “Now grab that rock just above your head. When you set your fingers back deep enough, you’ll find there’s a little dip that will make a nice ledge for your grip.”
He eased the strap of her pack up his arm, to rest in the crook of his elbow, then anchored both of his hands around her hips. As he touched her, pure lightning heat zipped through her body, flashing to her extremities, then conflagrating inward, centering between her legs. She gasped. That had never happened to her. Ever. The few boys she’d had sex with in high school had been ultimately uninteresting and forgettable.
Somehow, she already knew she’d never erase Axel from her thoughts.
“Something wrong?” he asked, releasing her middle from his grip.
“No.” She swallowed and tried to think of a plausible lie. “I just can’t believe I’m going to do this.”
“Believe, princess. You’ve got too much spark to let a rock defeat you. Put your right foot on the jutting section of that stone at knee level. Yes,” he coached as she did what he asked. “Now just use your hands and the muscles in your legs to pull yourself up. It’s not much different than climbing a tree.”
Mystery refrained from mentioning that she’d never climbed trees as a kid. There weren’t many in Beverly Hills not manicured within an inch of their lives. Besides, the nannies her parents had hired when she’d been younger would have had a heart attack if she’d tried to shimmy up some bark to hang out on a limb.
“Sure.”
Axel gripped her hips again, and as she hoisted herself up, he gave her a push, his thumbs so, so close to cupping her butt. Did he think of her as a child? Or had he noticed that she was a woman? The thought distracted her from all worries of falling and breaking half the bones in her body. Suddenly, she stood on the little outcropping and had a better view of the vast landscape all around them, along with Axel smiling up at her with something like pride.
“I did it!” Mystery knew she wore a cheesy grin that TMZ and the tabloid press would make fun of, but she didn’t care.
“Told you. Wait for me there. I’ll coach you through the next level.” He reached for her pack, tossed it up to her, then headed up the face of the cliff again, climbing as if he’d been doing it forever.
She watched in fascination, then felt her body ping when he stood beside her again. The ledge was narrow. They had to stand close. Axel didn’t touch her, but she wished he would.
She sent a smile up his way before she felt heat rush through her, and she pretended to look up as if studying the next part of the climb. “Now what?”
“This part is a bit trickier . . .”
But like before, he coached her up, holding her by the hips and lifting her when the rocks beneath her felt a little crumbly and unstable. They repeated that twice more before she stood at the top of the hill and glanced at the outcropping as he pulled himself up beside her, slinging the last pack onto the ledge below her feet.
“Here we are. You did great.”
She loved the way he encouraged and praised. It seemed unusual for a soldier to be so good at what her father would call touchy-feely stuff. Even his communication skills were amazing. Mystery wondered where he’d learned and gotten so much practice that it seemed as natural as breathing to him.
“With a lot of help from you, thanks. The rescue was harrowing, but the journey since could have been grueling and terrible. You’ve made it really . . . all right.”
He nodded her way, pretending to tip his imaginary hat at her. “Just doing my job, ma’am.”
She giggled. “That is the worst cowboy accent.”
“We all have our limitations.” He shrugged.
In her estimation, he didn’t have many. He’d make a great husband and father someday—if he wasn’t already. OMG, she hadn’t even considered that. She’d been mooning over him and crushing hard, and he might already have a significant other in his life. The thought deflated her. He was too awesome to be alone, and imagining him with a wife or girlfriend tugged her into a sad little exhaustion.
“Here’s our home sweet home for the night.” He pointed to an alcove under an overhang of rock. Another outcropping protected them from the fierce oncoming wind swiping at them up this high.
It didn’t look like much, but it certainly beat dropping onto the sand and trying to drift off, she supposed. She ducked under the overhang and started to lower herself to the cold rock below.
“Wait.” He fished through his pack and extracted a flashlight, quickly scanning the area. Seemingly satisfied, he flipped it off, then pulled out a thin, khaki blanket with a tinfoil-looking lining. “We’re clear. I needed to check for scorpions and any other venomous creatures that like warmer, dark spaces.”
Yikes, she hadn’t even thought of that. “I’m glad we’re alone. I don’t like pinchers.”
“It’s not just the bite, but the venom. Bark scorpions lurk around here. I know a guy who got stung once. He said it was the most painful seventy-two hours of his life. They’re hard to see because they’re about a third of the size of the desert hairy variety, but those suckers can be lethal. We’ll start a fire to keep them away. They burrow. They like warmth but not flames. So now we just need to be careful of rattlers doing their equivalent of hibernating. They’re too sluggish to move this time of year because they’ve already hunkered down against the cold, so if you disrupt them, they’re more likely to strike.”
He knew everything about the landscape and the wilderness. Again, he filled her with total awe. Kind, smart, built, manly . . . “Is there anything you don’t know and can’t accomplish?”
Axel looked taken aback. “I don’t think I’d do too well if you tried to put me in a ballet.”
Mystery tried to picture him in a tutu and burst out laughing. “Probably not.”
“But I cook a lot, sew when I have to, keep things tidy because I don’t like clutter.”
“The woman in your life is really lucky. My dad can’t boil water. And he won’t pick up after himself. I’m constantly moving his stuff out of my way.”
He shrugged, and she held her breath to see what his answer would be. The whole fishing expedition was a little silly. He probably had no interest in her, but that didn’t stop her from wishing.
“I probably have it easier since I live alone,” he said. “I only have to keep up with myself.”
He sounded single. That made her sizzle. He might not consider nineteen grown up . . . but she was pretty mature by virtue of being an only child and having grown up in Hollywood. Dad tried to shelter her but she’d experienced more than a few adult vices. She wasn’t an innocent kid. Maybe if Axel saw that, he’d see her as woman enough for him.
“Let’s get settled,” he suggested before she could continue their conversation.
That would probably be best. She felt a bit tongue-tied, and the wind was picking up. Alvarez’s jacket blocked some of the cold, but her exposed legs were freezing.
Axel spread out his blanket, then crawled in and bunched his jacket into a makeshift pillow. He set it against the rock behind him and eased his head back. Then he patted the spot beside him on the odd silvery material. “C’mon, princess.”
Sleep curled up with him? She flushed hot. No, it wasn’t exactly a sex invite, but lying beside him, sharing blankets barely big enough for two, entwined together all night . . . it seemed so intimate. She wasn’t a virgin but she’d never actually shared a place to sleep with anyone of the opposite sex. Her heart stuttered.
“Something wrong?”
Mystery wished she could have a minute to herself, but where? The little ledge on which they slept wasn’t big. Two steps in any direction and she’d be falling down the mountain, probably to great injury or death.
“No. I’m good,” she lied, then dropped to her knees beside him. She couldn’t stop herself from looking into his eyes as she slid under the blanket. It was a buffer from the wind, but Axel was far warmer. Being against him was like cozying up to a blast furnace. After hours of feeling her hands stiff and tingly from the chill, she breathed a contented sigh.
He dragged his pack into his lap and unzipped a bulging pouch. It tipped over and into her lap. Holy cow, that sucker was heavy. And he’d been carrying it all day? Slinging it around like it weighed nothing?
“Sorry,” he muttered, then righted it again, delving inside.
“It’s fine. I guess we’re going to be really close up here. Not a lot of space.”
“Roger that.” Moments later, he withdrew two brownish plastic pouches from his backpack and handed one to her, along with another bottle of water. “I want it all gone.”
Mystery held the little package and tried to read the black writing in the dark. She didn’t have a lot of luck. “What is this?”
“MRE. I think you’ve got the meatballs in marinara sauce.”
She tried not to wince. How was that going to work without a microwave? But she knew soldiers survived on these all the time. It fueled them while they defended the country, so she could swallow it down and just thank God she was still alive. “Good. What about you?”
“Scalloped potatoes with ham.” He smiled at her in the darkness. “They all suck. You get used to it.” He bumped his MRE with hers. “Bon appétit.”
“Bon appétit.”
As she pulled her meal open, a little glow warmed her inside. They felt a bit like a couple on a camping trip, having an adventure for the hell of it. With Axel, she could almost forget that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to abduct and keep her hidden from her father and the world. Beside Axel, she felt safe again.
Oh, she had it for him bad.
In silence, they ate. The dehydrated meals tasted like cardboard, and she’d be damn glad to get back to some of her favorite restaurants. She’d certainly never look at a ham sandwich again without thinking about her terrifying days at the shack.
“How did you find me in the middle of nowhere?”
Axel swallowed a bite and washed it down with some water. “The club had a parking lot cam that captured footage of your abduction. We noted the license plate of the van. Whoever pulled the job either didn’t know he was being taped or didn’t care if we caught the plate number. We managed to pick up that same plate number on freeway cams on Highway 14 heading north out of Palmdale, so we knew the general direction he’d headed. The last place we picked him up on camera was on the 395 junction with 190, and he headed east. From there, we worked with the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office. We did a thermal sweep of the area, and they were able to tell us where the heat signatures from towns and settlements should be. We started investigating anything that didn’t belong, which led us to you.”
“Wow, you made quick work of finding me.”
“We got a couple of lucky breaks, and your father moved mountains to make it happen.”
Money talked. It always had, and Dad was never afraid to throw it around if he believed in the cause. “I’m so grateful to everyone involved. I’m particularly sorry for Carr’s and Alvarez’s families. I feel awful that my stupidity caused their deaths.”
He took her hand in his. “You weren’t stupid, and nothing you did caused their casualties. You were being a teenager, Mystery. Which meant you were sneaking away to do typical stuff teenagers do. You didn’t ask to be kidnapped. When Carr, Alvarez, and I took the job, we knew the risks. We plan as much as we can for every eventuality and all do our best not to get dead. Not every mission goes our way. It’s something you accept as a soldier.”
“Carr and Alvarez did something for me I can never even thank them for. I feel terrible for the wives and children they left behind.”
“Carr only had a mutt I’ll probably inherit. His parents passed away last year. He never married or had kids. Alvarez’s wife, Rose, will take it hard. They’ve only been married two years. Their son is six months old.”
Hearing that was like a stab in the heart. She had to talk to her father when she got home, see if he could do anything to help the poor woman who’d just lost her husband and become a single parent.
“But if I hadn’t gone to that awful club . . .” she choked out.
“If the asswipe who took you hadn’t accepted that job, if someone with cash and a nefarious purpose hadn’t contracted your abduction . . . Mystery, it’s really not your fault. Don’t beat yourself up.”
“Do we have any way of knowing whether the guy you killed outside the shack is the same one who took me?”
Axel nodded. “Yeah. That’s him. I pulled off his ski mask and saw the same prince charming who appeared on the traffic cams. I got a good look at his face on some footage from a gas station where he stopped to fuel up.”
That was a terrible relief, to know that the bastard who’d forced her into the van and taken her away couldn’t do that to anyone else ever again. But that presented another problem. “Do we have any idea who hired him?”
Axel looked reluctant to answer. “No. It will take a little longer to identify this guy and comb through his finances, see if we can track the mastermind that way. Your captor was a pro, though. Whoever hired him wasn’t an idiot. I’m not expecting to find anything but a dead trail.”
Anxiety seized her. “So that means whoever wanted me kidnapped in the first place could do it again. He could hire someone else to—”
“Maybe. But you’re more aware now. You know better than to have your head in your purse while you’re walking through a dark parking lot. When I get you home, you need to take self-defense classes. When you go out, observe some basic safety precautions—go out in groups, always be aware of where you are and who’s around you.”
“My dad will hire a bodyguard, I’m sure.” The idea depressed her a bit. This whole incident smacked her again. It represented the end of childhood, freedom, and in an odd way, innocence.
She’d grown used to the idea of her father being so public and everyone wanting to talk to him. Mystery had always regarded herself as a mere curiosity in the white-hot realm of his spotlight. But the paparazzi had never focused on her as an individual. Axel had warned her the abduction would change that. He was probably right.
“I know it’s inconvenient, but it’s not a bad idea. I’d rather have you safe and slightly annoyed than fighting for your life again.”
He was right about that, too. She nodded. “Do you have any idea why all this happened? I’d thought it was to extract money from my dad, but the fact that he never received a ransom note makes me wonder.”
Axel shook his head, directing a concerned gaze down at her. “Sorry. You might find out as the investigation continues. But if you don’t learn who engineered your kidnapping, you may never know.”
That would be a bitter pill to swallow. And she had to believe that if her father had managed to pull the right strings to find her, then he’d find out this madman’s reason for taking her in the first place.
The wind picked up, whistled past her as if singing an eerie tune. In the distance, a coyote howled. Mystery curled her arms around her knees and froze.
Axel slung his arm around her. “It’s okay. The wind is normal. The coyote sounds miles away.”
“Everything makes me jumpy right now, I guess.”
His face softened. “That’s normal, too. Close your eyes and try to relax.”
Their faces were so close. His body was plastered against hers from shoulder to knee. Her heart thumped. Desire was probably the wrong response to this situation, but she couldn’t deny it existed as she blinked up into his face.
“Go on,” he urged.
She was still wearing Alvarez’s jacket to ward off the cold, so she had no pillow. Axel made up for that by cradling the side of her face in one of his large hands and leading her cheek down to the slab of his chest. Mystery went willingly, her eyes sliding shut. His heart beat a steady rhythm in her ear.
He wrapped her tighter in his arms. “You’re safe, princess.”
Yes, she felt that. “I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done.”
“You don’t have to thank me. Just close your eyes and rest.”
She was never going to sleep on a rock, against an unfamiliar man, with the wind whipping around her. She wasn’t comfortable and wasn’t sure she could get tired enough to stop the terrible abduction from playing in her head over and over like a bad horror film. The drugs her captor had given her left her in a groggy waking state for the most part. She hadn’t really slept, just been out of it. When she had drifted off, nightmares had plagued her. Terror crept in and disturbed her. She wouldn’t sleep tonight, but Axel had done so much. She would humor him.
“Sure,” she murmured and closed her eyes to play along. “I’ll try not to hog the bed.”
He chuckled in her ear. “If you do, that’s all right. I’m just happy you’re safe.”
* * *
HEAT overwhelmed her. Suddenly, Mystery felt sweltering. Sweat broke out along her hairline, between her breasts, along her back. Sleep dragged her back down, but the need for cooler air and a bathroom brought her back.
She cracked her eyes open. Sunlight sliced at them like a pickaxe. She gasped. Where was she? What time was it?
The last few days came rushing back to her, then she realized that the rock at her back was moving gently, a rise and fall that emulated breathing.
“Hold still,” he muttered in her ear.
Axel—beside her with his arm around her waist, holding her against a body that felt hard everywhere. But something in his voice warned her.
“What’s wrong?”
“I heard a helicopter fly overhead. It could be one of the good guys or nothing to do with us at all, but . . .”
It could also be whoever had paid for her kidnapping wondering where his investment had escaped to. She swallowed. “What do we do?”
“We wait. When daylight wanes, looking for us on the desert floor will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Whoever it is seems to be flying pretty low, which tells me it’s either a search-and-rescue mission or someone determined not to let you get away. The less we move now, the more we look like part of the scenery. The more likely they simply fly over us and away.”
That made sense, but her heart beat a hundred miles an hour. The distant sound of chopper blades seemed to get closer, closer. Axel tensed.
“Son of a bitch,” he breathed. “That’s the third time I’ve heard them fly overhead. I’d hoped the wind would blow away some of our tracks in the sand, but I’m guessing not enough.”
What if the helicopter landed? What if someone got out with guns and hunted them down? Axel was good, but he was still one man with one gun against people who would be better rested and prepared . . . It sounded like a recipe for death.
To her right, the helicopter swerved and headed straight toward them.