I grimaced. “So what am I worth?”
“Ten.”
“Thousand?” I blinked when Dane glanced back at me over his shoulder, his gaze hooded. “Ten million?” I’m not ashamed to admit I screeched the word.
His lips twisted to one side. “Ten if you’re alive. Less otherwise.”
I refused to ask how much otherwise, but his tone suggested he’d considered it, either way. Fucker.
Jen glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “There’s another life lesson here, girl. Never undervalue yourself.”
I glared back. “Hey, you know what? If I needed a mentor, it sure as hell ain’t gonna be you. In fact, here’s some career advice. Maybe don’t work for some black suit sociopath who asks you to kidnap, pincushion, and drug defenseless girls, huh?”
Next to me, Carlo chuckled. “She’s got you there, Jen.”
I hissed at him. “And maybe don’t zip-tie them either.”
He sat back with a grunt. “You don’t have to be conscious for this deal to go down.”
The threat of being that defenseless shut me up even though I had plenty left to scream about.
“Enough,” Dane said quietly. “You’ll be safe if you stick with us. We just need to flush this buyer into the open and take him down.”
“And do I get my million?” It was a joke. Because the deal was that I’d get the money upfront, and here we were headed for the meet-up, and I was pretty sure my bank account was still in the low twenties.
“Just keep your end of the bargain and everything will be fine.” And he had to be joking right back at me. A couple of comedians, we were.
We turned off onto a narrow road that led to a parking lot in the San Tan Mountain foothills. I sort of knew the area. Vaguely. People came here with their horses to ride the trails. It was so dark that heavy, hulking shadows of the mountains on my left seemed to crowd right up against the window.
“If I were planning an ambush,” I said, “I’d hide some of my campaigners up in the hills.”
Dane cocked his head to look at me. “Do you plan ambushes often?”
“Yeah, actually, I do.”
“Well, you’re not wrong.” He looked ahead at the road again. “I have us covered. Hold tight and this will all be over within the hour.”
“That’s not particularly comforting,” I muttered.
Carlo snorted and shook his head. Jen drove to the middle of the lot and parked, but she didn’t kill the lights.
Dane got out and came around to my door. When he opened it and stared down at me, I couldn’t look away from his hard gray eyes. My own expression must’ve been beyond panicked, but he didn’t say a single word, just levered me out of the seat. Gripping my upper arm, he marched me around the SUV to stand in the glare of the headlights. And fuck it was cold.
Another car advanced out of the darkness, its headlights off, tires crunching on the scatter of asphalt pebbles. Someone got out and approached.
The flash of white teeth hit our headlights first.
Alling?
He opened his arms in welcome. “Imogen! Now I know why you haven’t been answering my texts.”
What the hell? Dane had said the interested parties were a dark web global security threat. This was just all-smiles Alling. Daddy BantaMatrix himself. “Why are you…? How did you even get my number?”
Not the best questions for the moment, but I was thrown by the glint on his pearly whites.
“Your mother gave it to me,” Alling said. “We were worried about you.”
My moth—?A piercing pain rammed through my heart. Mom…
