Читать книгу The Dragon's Hunt - Jane Kindred - Страница 12

Chapter 4

Rhea dropped her bag in the doorway. “Leo? What the hell happened?”

Leo looked embarrassed as Rhea examined the restraints at his wrists. “I came back to get my hat and surprised these two guys. I guess they were looking to steal your equipment or something. One of them pulled a gun and ordered me into the chair and cuffed me.”

The restraints were professional looking, heavy-duty leather cuffs secured with a pair of electronic padlocks. Rhea turned one of the locks in her hand. “These look serious. I’m going to have to cut the cuffs off.” She probably had a pocketknife or a box cutter in the toolbox in the back of her car. Rhea pulled aside the curtain and headed back out. “I might have something I can use.”

Leo called after her. “Maybe we should leave it. They said the locks were on a timer and they’d open automatically when the time was up. It can’t be that long. They probably just needed enough time to get away, right? We should just wait.”

“Wait?” Rhea glanced over her shoulder, incredulous. She shook her head and opened the door. “I’m not waiting around to see if they were telling the truth. Let me find something.”

There was no pocketknife, but she found a fish-gutting knife she’d forgotten about. It had belonged to her father, whose toolbox she’d been hauling around since leaving for college. Some girls kept letters and stuffed animals to remember the dead. Rhea had a toolbox.

A bell tolled distantly as she crawled out of the hatchback, some church clock chiming the hour. The mark of passing time brought her focus back to Leo’s claim. Who would use a timer on a padlock? Why would a couple of crooks even have wrist restraints with padlocks? Something didn’t add up.

When she returned, Leo had one leg crossed jauntily over the other as though he was just relaxing in the tattoo chair. He no longer looked embarrassed but completely at ease.

“Ah, you’re an angel.” He nodded at the knife in Rhea’s hand. “I knew you’d come through.” His eyes looked different somehow. Darker. Or bluer. Maybe it was just because he wasn’t wearing his glasses.

“You’re lucky I came back.” She unsnapped the sheath and slipped the knife out.

“Guess it’s a good thing I stopped in, though. Otherwise you’d have been robbed.”

Rhea paused with the knife at the edge of the first cuff. “But you’re tied up. How does that keep me from being robbed?”

“I guess finding someone here spooked them and they didn’t want to hang around.”

There hadn’t been much to rob because she’d locked up her machines and needles, and even the ink. The only thing of value had been right on the front counter in plain view of the door. The tablet hadn’t been touched. But they’d hung around long enough to threaten Leo with a gun and strap him to a chair with timed electronic locks?

Rhea regarded him. “So where’s your hat?”

“My what?”

“Your hat. You said you came back for your hat.”

“Oh.” Leo shrugged. “Yeah, guess it wasn’t even here. How dumb am I?”

Rhea straightened. “You don’t even remember telling me about a hat, do you?”

“Of course I do. It just wasn’t the most pressing thing on my mind.” He wriggled his wrists in the restraints. “Come on, doll. These are starting to chafe.”

Rhea slid the knife back into its sheath. “Don’t call me doll.”

Leo’s smile was mischievous. “What would you like me to call you?”

“How about my name? Rhea will do fine.”

“All right, then, Rhea, sweetheart, would you please get these off of me?”

Rhea folded her arms. “Is this some kind of joke?” She glanced around, half expecting to see a hidden camera. “Are you punking me?”

“I wouldn’t even know how to ‘punk’ you—unless that’s a euphemism for something. I wouldn’t mind euphemizing you, now you mention it.”

“Leo, this isn’t funny. I thought you seemed like a nice, normal person, so I gave you a chance—”

Leo’s laughter interrupted her. It infuriated her, and, at the same time, there was something deeply sensual about the way he laughed. It somehow managed not to be mocking. It was as though he genuinely found the idea amusing.

“Nice and normal aren’t words I would use to describe myself.”

“I’m beginning to sense that.”

Leo laughed again, and the timbre of his laughter tickled along her skin. “Come on, Rhea. Just release me. I promise to make it worth your while.”

“You’re kind of creeping me out right now.” Or maybe the fact that she was aroused by his laugh was creeping her out. She shivered as he chuckled softly. Nah, it was him.

“I’m sorry. I promise to be good.” He straightened in the chair and blinked at her from behind a messy lock of hair. “I solemnly swear I am not a creep.”

“You just said you weren’t nice or normal, which kind of leaves creep.”

“Oh, come now. There’s plenty of room between nice and creep. There’s interesting. Fun. Unusual. Exciting. You don’t really like nice, normal people. Admit it.” Rhea blinked back at him, matching fake innocence with fake innocence. “You’re not nice or normal.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Leo studied her, taking stock with a frank gaze that made her blush. “You don’t dress like every woman your age.”

“What do you mean, my age? You can’t be much older.”

He ignored the question as if he hadn’t heard it. “So many tend to wear tight, revealing, bright colored clothing, as if they’re afraid of not being seen. The plain white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, loose cotton pants in black, practical boots—they speak of comfort, both physical and with your own individuality. Your dress is confident and unconcerned with being ‘right.’”

“I see.” She shifted her weight, feeling downright uncomfortable under his scrutiny, appreciative though it was.

“And your hair... I’ve never seen anything like it. How many colors have you got in there? I see dark roots beneath an almost platinum fair and little streaks of pale blue, pink, lavender—”

“Okay, so I like color.” Rhea ran her fingers through her hair, trying to get the floppy point out of her eyes.

“And then you put something in it to make it do that, to separate it.”

“Look, why are you going on about my hair?”

“It’s not nice or normal. It’s rather exceptional. I quite like it.”

Rhea could feel the heat in her cheeks. “Well, goodie for you. I didn’t ask for your approval—”

“I know. It’s extraordinarily sexy, you not wanting anyone’s approval.”

“And you’re trying to distract me from the real issue here, which is that you’re up to something weird in my tattoo shop. I don’t believe for a minute that you came back here for your hat, and a couple of random thieves happened by and locked you up at gunpoint with restraints and timed padlocks.”

“Don’t you?” Leo’s eyes glinted with amusement.

“No, I don’t. I think somebody else tied you up. And you let her. Or him. But I’m guessing her.”

“Sex games, you mean.” Well, there it was. Blunt and out in the open.

“Maybe you didn’t play by the rules, so she left you to cool your heels. Or you were paying for it, which is more likely—paying for sex in my tattoo shop—and she robbed your ass and took off after she’d tied you up like a sucker.”

Leo seemed pleased. “I like that story. That’s really good. I should use that. But why would I do such a thing in your tattoo shop?”

“I don’t know, because you’re obviously a freak? I don’t care why. Because I’m calling the cops.”

Leo’s plump lower lip protruded in a mock pout. “That’s not very nice.”

“Yeah, well, as you’ve pointed out, neither are you.”

“Why don’t you cut me loose and find out how not nice I can be?”

“Cute. Enjoy your jail cell.” Rhea pocketed the knife and took out her phone.

“Well, it’s not ideal. But so long as somebody cuts me loose, I’ll have won the contest. I can work with that.”

Rhea paused and sighed. “What contest?”

Leo looked surprised and chagrined. “Contest? Did I say contest? There’s no contest.”

“Uh-huh. Good luck with that, then.”

“All right.” Leo sighed audibly. “All right, you caught me. It’s a little game I play with a friend. He bets me I can’t escape before the time runs out on the clock. If I’m free before dawn, I win the whole pot. And the pot is substantial. We’ve been at this a long time. If you help me win, I’ll split it with you, eighty-twenty.”

“Eighty-twenty.”

“Seventy-thirty, then.”

“You’re so completely full of shit. Tell you what. Let’s pretend there really is a game, and I won’t call the police. If you’re gone when I come back tomorrow morning, good riddance. And if you’re not? If your ‘friend’ doesn’t return to let you loose because you’ve been such a very naughty, naughty boy, then I call the cops. And you can tell your bullshit stories to them. Have a super night.” She switched off the light and left him sitting in the dark.

“Rhea.” The way he growled her name sent a shiver up her spine. “Rhe-a.” The musical lilt to his voice this time, deep and rich, made goose bumps skitter over her arms, the slight accent making her name into a promise of unspeakable pleasure.

She dug her nails into her palms, steeling herself to ignore him, and went out, locking the door behind her. There was nothing he could steal. She had the tablet. Let him get out of his own mess. And hopefully she’d never have to see him again. Which sucked, because she’d really wanted to like him.

It was a long, boring drive back to Cottonwood, and she couldn’t stop rehashing the strange scene she’d walked in on. Leo had to be on drugs. It was the only explanation for his odd behavior and for the bizarre change in his demeanor. It would be just her luck to have hired a meth head. Though he didn’t look like a meth head. He looked like Thor. The snug T-shirt fit him like one of Chris Hemsworth’s costumes in the Marvel Avengers movies. Did he own anything that wasn’t stretch cotton and snug? Who was he to talk about Rhea’s clothing, anyway?

His amber-resin scent still lingered somehow, and Rhea let out a quiet, frustrated growl. It wasn’t often a guy really got to her physically. She appreciated a hot body and a pretty face as much as the next person, but she was more likely to be affected by cerebral attraction. And there was nothing cerebral about Leo. At least, not the Leo she’d met yesterday, not the Leo she’d tattooed this evening. The Bizarro Leo currently shackled to her tattoo chair, however... Maybe not cerebral, exactly, but he certainly seemed to have a layer of depth the “other” Leo lacked.

A familiar thundering drew her out of her reverie, and Rhea gripped the wheel and slowed the car. The spectral hunting party galloped out of the darkness several yards ahead. Beside the leader, a woman in a long, flowing and utterly impractical gown rode a white horse that lacked the skeletal features of the others. She lacked them, in fact, green eyes bright in the headlights reflecting off the snow and healthy, rosy cheeks visible, as if an altogether different light shined on her. Or perhaps she refracted light differently. The gown was layers of brilliant cobalt blue fluttering in the wind, with a kind of leather breastplate covering the bodice, and flowing copper hair streamed out behind her.

Rhea slowed to a stop. The female rider did the same in the center of the highway, while the others thundered onward. She turned and smiled, and it was by no means a friendly smile. It sent a little chill up her spine. Or maybe that was the frigid air seeping through her windows. Rhea turned up the heat, her gaze drawn away for a second as she sought the knob. When she focused on the road once more, the huntress was gone.