Hush by Cherry Adair Read Free Book Online

irritation.
    â€œFine,” she told him sweetly. “Can we both agree you’re an ass?”
    â€œI’ve been called worse.” Zak turned away as his brother moved from the front of the van to the back, but he heard the small expulsion of air as the blonde let out the breath she’d been holding.
    â€œWhat we got?” he asked Gideon, who was trying the doors.
    His brother turned to look at him. “A blind man who never saw what was right in front of his nose.”
    Ah, shit. “Not this old refrain again. You want to speak ill of the dead now?”
    Gideon gave him a dead-eyed snake look. “Couldn’t speak when she was alive. Can’t speak when she’s … not. When will be the right time, Zakary?”
    â€œHow about fucking never? This is hardly the time or the place.”
    â€œGot somewhere you gotta be?” Gideon leaned a shoulder against the doors. He needed a shave, and with his hair scraped back off his face he looked like a pirate. Or—hell—a hero. The role suited him.
    Zak touched a finger to the bump on his temple. “None of your damned business. Told you then, repeating it now. Leave it the hell alone once and for all.”
    â€œWas not your fault.”
    He had heard this verse and chorus before. About a hundred times in the last two years. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said to pacify his older brother, as he always did when Gideon tried to convince him that he couldn’t have done anything to prevent Jennifer’s death.
    Gideon ran his hand over his mouth in a familiar gesture of frustration. “I wish I could believe that.”
    Zak’s jaw hurt from clenching his teeth, which didn’t help the hellish headache pounding through his skull. “And I wish you’d stop flogging a dead horse.”
    Gideon, damn him, never would back down, and now wasn’t the exception. “Funny how quickly you forgot afterward that it hadn’t been working for a whi—”
    â€œShut up, Gideon. I mean it. I won’t lis—”
    â€œWhile it’s vastly entertaining to hear you two bickering back and forth like two premenstrual schoolgirls,” the blonde said with annoyance, “maybe you could shelvethe argument to concentrate on the here and now. We just turned off onto a different-surfaced road. What are you guys going to do when we stop?”
    Gid, who still wore his metaphorical superhero merit badge, gave the seam between the doors a hard kick, then glanced over to smile reassuringly at her. “Strategize until they open the doors.”
    â€œThen I suggest,” she told him, “we do just that, and quickly .”
    It was a given that they’d have to erupt out of the van and use the element of surprise to take their captors unawares.
    He looked down at her. “Did you walk out of the roach motel under your own steam?” Zak hoped like hell they hadn’t knocked her out as they had him, while she was naked, and …
    She nodded. “There are five soldiers in front. Maybe more.”
    Doable. If there were only that many when they got there.
    Gideon rubbed the back of his neck as he looked around the empty space. Like Zak, he’d already ascertained there was nothing they could use as a weapon. “This make and model carries six passengers in the cab.”
    Zak nodded. “Then we wait.” He slid down the hot metal wall to sit, knees drawn up, a few feet away from her. Gideon sat nearby. “Uzis,” Zak told his brother. “KA-BARs. Various handguns. More brawn than brain.”
    â€œYeah. Saw when they grabbed me on my way to see what all the screaming was about.”
    Barbie screaming. Zak would have that earworm with him for a while. If he’d kept his dick in his pants, she wouldn’t be here right now. So, whether he liked it or not, he was stuck being responsible for her for the duration. And he was going to be responsible