Express Male by Elizabeth Bevarly Read Free Book Online

that would really be all I—”
    He interrupted her by uttering a long, exasperated sound. He followed it with a very perturbed, “Just get in the damned shower, Lila.”
    She narrowed her eyes at him as understanding began to dawn. Like a good, solid blow to the back of the head. “You mean, get in it with my clothes on? ”
    He actually had the nerve to roll his eyes and look at her as if she were an idiot. “Get. In. The. Shower. Now.”
    She made a face at him. “Oh. Kay.” Just for that, she would leave her clothes on.
    A half-dozen steps brought her to the shower door, which she carefully pulled open. Inside, she saw…a shower stall. Clean. Dry. Empty. On one shelf was lined up an assortment of toiletries, no two brands the same. Someone must be a coupon shopper. Marnie knew that because she never had the same brands in her house, either. There wasn’t a shower smell to the stall, though, neither soapy nor mildewy, and she found that odd. It didn’t even smell of disinfectant, as if it had just been cleaned. It didn’t smell like anything.
    She was about to turn around, to ask faux Randy what she was supposed to do next, but he was climbing into the shower stall right behind her, something that made the words get stuck in her throat. She opened her mouth to scream—well, it was as good a reaction as any—but he reached beyond her, pointing what she thought was her car-key fob at the soap holder.
    Okay, now that was just plain weird.
    Weirder still was the fact that one of the plastic shower walls suddenly went sliding to the left, revealing a cubby on the other side. The walls of the cubby were lined with metal, something that looked like brushed aluminum, and when she looked to the left, she saw a flight of stairs heading down. She closed her eyes for a second then opened them. Nope, it was definitely not a hallucination. Sometimes a shower stall wasn’t a shower stall. What this one was, though…
    “Go on,” faux Randy said from behind her.
    “Go where?” she asked.
    “Down the stairs.”
    She was going to jokingly ask him if that was where he kept his torture chamber, but was afraid it might not be a joke at all. He must have sensed she was about to refuse—and she was—because she felt the gun press into her back again. She sighed and stepped cautiously into the metal cubby and looked down the stairs. There were about fifty or sixty of them, emptying into a well-lit hallway below. Whatever was down there, faux Randy hadn’t built it by himself. It was too perfect a construction for it to have been completed without some kind of sophisticated technology.
    “What’s down there?” Marnie asked, really, really hoping he didn’t reply, My torture chamber.
    “Lots of people who have been looking for you,” he said.
    “Lots of people?” she echoed, puzzled. That actually might be good. Unless they were all like faux Randy.
    He nodded. “Lots of people. And lucky you, Lila. One or two of them might even be happy to see you.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    N OAH T ENNANT TUCKED Philosopher’s manuscript under one arm and pressed the gun more insistently into Lila’s back. He honestly wasn’t sure which of the two was the bigger prize. Hell, he’d been that close to collaring Sorcerer tonight, too, and had only let the other man escape after making the split-second decision that Lila was worth more. Had Noah run after Sorcerer, she would have disappeared back into the netherworld where she’d been living undetected for the past five months. And they couldn’t have that.
    Sorcerer had a habit of popping up again from time to time. Not so Lila. When she dug in, she stayed there. Noah had decided to seize the moment and grab her now, because he might not have another chance. Frankly, he was surprised she hadn’t used that split second to make her own escape. Or, even more characteristic of her, clean his clock and then make her escape. Lila Moreau could do a lot of damage in a split second. Nobody knew