Travis thought about it for a few minutes until the perfect solution came to him. There was a house he’d recently started work on, a foreclosed property in a five-year-old gated community just off Bissonet in swanky Bellaire. The former owners had trashed the place before vacating—out of frustration and spite, he supposed. It had to be tough, losing your home and everything you put into it. The developer had hired Travis to fix it up before they put it on the market.
The house, on picturesquely named Marigold Circle, sat on a double lot in a cul-de-sac and backed up to a creek. There were no close neighbors. The walls were thick, the windows triple-glass thermals. You could set off a bomb inside and no one would hear. Anyway, this wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where people gave a crap what their neighbors did. Most people there didn’t even know their neighbors’ names.
Another advantage of this location was that it couldn’t be connected to Travis by any paper trail. He didn’t write anything down. His schedule, the address of the house, everything was in his head. He hadn’t yet received any written work orders. His client was logged into his phone, but so were a hundred other contacts the police would have to check out.
He only needed one day, maybe two. If this harebrained plan hadn’t worked by then, it wasn’t going to work at all. Either way, he’d be off to jail when it was over.
Travis had a passkey to get him through the neighborhood gate. He entered the back way, where there wasn’t a guard. The fewer people who saw him here, the better.
The trickiest part would be getting Elena from the truck to the house. The garage wasn’t accessible; the former owners had stripped the house of everything valuable that wasn’t nailed down, and some things that were, including the garage door opener. The door was too heavy to lift manually.
Travis pulled around to the back of the house. Elena had gone awfully quiet; he was worried about her. Though he’d tried not to be too rough with her when he’d grabbed her, he’d been in an awful hurry. What if she’d hit her head when he was driving so crazy, making all those sharp turns?
He got out and unlocked the hatch, then slowly opened it. “Elena?”
Suddenly something flew straight at his face. A crescent wrench? He tried to duck, but it whacked him on the forehead and he was stunned for a moment. Unfortunately, during that moment, his hostage rolled out of the truck, gained her feet and started running and screaming for help.
Travis was after her like a dog after a rabbit. She hadn’t gone five steps before he grabbed her and clamped a hand over her mouth.
“No, no, Elena, shhh!”
She tried to bite his hand as he dragged her toward the back door. God, she was all sharp elbows and heels and...and breasts. Yes, as he’d grappled with her, trying to get a more secure grip on her, he’d accidentally copped a feel. Nice. Let’s add sexual assault to the charges.
She grabbed on to the door frame as he tried to pull her inside. A brief tug-of-war ensued, but her muscles were no match for his and her grip gave way. They both tumbled into the hallway onto a damnably hard tile floor. He took the brunt of the fall.
“Would you just knock it off? You’re only making things worse for yourself.”
“I’m supposed to just let you kidnap me?”
He wanted to reassure her that she was in no danger, that he’d never harmed a woman in his life and he wasn’t about to start with her. But he resisted the temptation. He needed to keep her scared and cooperative.
Somehow he regained his feet. Before she could wiggle out of his grasp he leaned down, placed his shoulder against her midsection and hoisted her up into a fireman’s hold.
She was still kicking and screaming, but her arms were flailing against his back where they couldn’t do much damage, and he had a firm arm around her legs. He also had an enticing view of her rounded bottom, but he felt guilty as hell about his attraction to a woman he was using in such an ill way.
What to do with her now? He didn’t want to tie her up. That seemed so unnecessarily cruel, so Snidely Whiplash. He needed to lock her up in a room with no windows, so she couldn’t escape or break a window and scream for help. The walk-in pantry could work. With a chair, and maybe a pillow and blanket, she wouldn’t be too uncomfortable. He carried her into the kitchen.
Damn it. One of the pantry doors was broken. Even if he latched it from the outside, Elena could probably collapse the door if she threw herself against it a few times. And what if she needed to go to the bathroom?
Then he had a thought. The master bath—it was huge. Luxurious. And it had no windows except the skylights, which were far too high for her to break.
Elena’s movements had all but stopped. “The blood is rushing to my head. Figure out where you’re going to put me and do it already.”
Hmm. She didn’t really sound that scared anymore. In fact, she sounded mad. Had she seen through him? Had she figured out he wouldn’t hurt her?
He carried her through the living room, where red paint stained the carpet and someone had defaced the marble fireplace with a hammer and chisel.
“What happened to this place?” Elena didn’t sound like a terrified hostage should.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t want to get chummy with the woman. He didn’t want to get to know her. If he started to see her as a person, rather than part of the system keeping his brother in prison, he would find it impossible to mistreat her like this.
“This isn’t your house, is it?” she tried again. “Hey, you know, this is really uncomfortable. Maybe you could let me walk. I won’t try to run again. Obviously, I can’t get away from you.”
She was trying to lull him into a false sense of security. He’d give her credit—she wasn’t stupid. He suspected the tears and hysteria had been calculated to manipulate him, too. Well, no dice. He wasn’t falling for it.
The master suite was down a short hallway off the living room. This was the first room Travis had worked on, and it was pretty much finished. He’d replaced several sections of the hardwood floor, which the former owners had gouged with an ax, and installed a new light fixture. The walls had required a gallon of paint to get rid of stains left by permanent markers. Now that he’d repainted it in the neutral off-white his client had requested, it didn’t look half-bad.
The bathroom was in pretty good shape, except for a chunk broken out of the sink, probably with a sledgehammer. Travis was going to try his hand at porcelain repair rather than replace the whole sink. He’d heard about a new product that produced amazing results.
Hell, why was he even thinking about that? He’d never get the chance to finish this job. He’d be in jail.
Travis set Elena down. She balled up her fist and hit him in the shoulder, rightfully pissed off. But as she shook off the pain in her own hand—it had probably hurt her more than it had hurt him—her face instantly transformed from anger to dismay.
“You’re bleeding!” She sounded horrified.
“What?”
“Look at your face!” She stood aside so he could go to the mirror and look, and damned if he didn’t almost do it. She would have slipped out the door right behind him.
Instead, he put his hand to his forehead and felt moisture. When he drew it back, his fingers were indeed covered with blood.
“Well, what do you expect when you throw a wrench at someone?” He realized now that his forehead still throbbed where the wrench had hit him.
“You are not making me feel one bit guilty. I would have hit you with a hundred wrenches if I’d had them.” She winced.