Fire and Ice - Anne Stuart [63]
Then again, she’d learned one thing in the past few days. Being a child brainiac with an astronomical IQ didn’t do a spit of good if she had absolutely no common sense. And where Reno was concerned, she was brain-dead.
Whoever had tied the ropes was far too good at it—it probably came from practice. They weren’t tight enough to cut off the circulation, and she could move her muscles enough to keep from cramping up. But there was absolutely no way in hell she could even begin to untie them.
She looked at her bound wrists. Maybe she could try her teeth….
Unbidden came the memory of Reno suggesting she undo his fundoshi with her teeth. She dropped her head down on her knees with a groan. It was bad enough being kidnapped and, probably, eventually murdered. Did she have to be haunted by the biggest mistake in the history of the world?
Though, maybe it wasn’t that big a mistake. She’d never expected anything from him, and the fact that they’d had mind-shattering sex could be construed as a good thing. At least she wasn’t going to die a semivirgin, even if she’d been as bad at sex as he’d told her.
But if she’d been that bad, that uninspiring, then why had he come back to her, over and over again? Why hadn’t he walked away?
She lifted her head from her knees, leaning back against the wall with a groan. There was no way she was going to make sense of it, make peace with it. She wasn’t going to be seeing him again—that was at least one small blessing of being kidnapped by a Japanese gangster. She could live out whatever days or hours she had left knowing she’d never have to look at his far-too-pretty face.
The door to the storeroom opened, and one of the blank-faced men appeared. Except that he was young, probably younger than Reno. He had a nasty-looking knife in one hand, and she wondered if it was going to be over that quickly. Why had they even bothered bringing her here if they were going to kill her so quickly?
If they thought she was going to go down without a fight, they were wrong. She waited until he got close enough, and then she kicked out with her bound legs, trying to knock him off balance.
He scrambled to his feet and backhanded her across the face, hard, and she saw nothing but a red haze for a moment before she shook her head to clear it. He was already slicing through the ropes, not through her. Okay, she could put up with being slugged if it meant she got to live for a while longer. She wasn’t big on going gently into that dark night.
He hauled her to her feet, smart enough not to cut the ropes on her ankles while she could still kick him in the head. He only came up to her shoulder, and he had a sullen expression and a slick, black pompadour, but she didn’t make the mistake of underestimating him. He was the one who held the knife.
He leaned down and sliced through her ankle bonds, roughly, the blade nicking her skin as he jumped away, wisely not trusting her. She was considering making a run for it when he put the knife away, only to pull out a small, serviceable-looking gun instead. Maybe not; he was probably a decent shot and she didn’t want to die with a bullet in her back, running away.
Without a word he pushed her out into the barren hallway, gesturing for her to precede him. For a moment she didn’t move, wondering exactly what he’d do, but then she thought better of it. Her face still stung from his backhanded blow—yakuza-boy would not hesitate to hit her again to get her to do what he wanted. So she put her head down and began walking.
The hall was ill-lit and cold, and it looked like the corridor she and Reno had run down, stark and empty, the kind of corridor a trapped rat might race down. That eerie, trapped sense got worse as she turned the corner three times, at her captor’s prodding, and each corridor looked exactly the same.
“Dozo,” he said, stopping her in front of a door, and her stomach knotted. It looked like the room where she’d seen the