Ultimate Escape Read Online Free PDF

head-on.
    “There’s only one high school, and I’d expect you to know the same, considering it’s the same as yours, Asa Thornehill IV,” she gritted out through clenched teeth.
    He’d left town long ago, but she’d immediately recognized him, his dark hair, dark eyes, and intense demeanor things that had always made an impression. Her answer made him pause, but only for a moment.
    “You know me, so why don’t I know you?” he asked, his features, which had always been menacing at home but seemed downright lethal here, twisted with skepticism. An improvement over the outright disdain and disbelief that had marred them earlier Nola supposed.
    “No reason you would. The Thornehills don’t get over to the east side too often,” she said. She might have been skirting the edge, sparring with this dangerous-looking man, but her quota of fucks to give had been exceeded.
    The younger guy at the computer chuckled under his breath.
    “Sam?” Ace called over his shoulder, voice a mix of danger and question.
    The younger guy stopped laughing and then began to spout off facts.
    “I have employment records and school transcripts for one Nola Bailey, born at the Thornehill Springs Medical Center, graduate of the aforementioned Thornehill Springs High School, associate’s degree from a community college outside of Charlotte.”
    “Satisfied?” Cruz said, glaring at Ace. And as silly as it was, Nola felt a flood of warmth for him sticking up for her.
    Ace looked at her and then back at Cruz. “I buy it.”
    “So, you see, this is all some kind of terrible mistake. You can let me go now,” Nola said, not bothering to try to hide the pleading in her voice.
    Cruz, who was now facing the computer screen, replied, “’Fraid not. Looks like you’re stuck with me for a while.”
    “Stuck with… No!” she exclaimed, looking around the room wildly. There was no way. She had to get out of here, get to the airport, and get her butt back to North Carolina where she belonged and doubted she’d ever leave again.
    Ace and Sam stared at her, but there was no laughing; no one popped out with a camera and giant microphone telling her that this had all been a horrible joke. No, to a man, each of their faces was set and determined. But maybe…
    That fledgling little seed of hope was crushed when she looked at Cruz again. He’d turned away from the monitor and now glanced at her with eyes that were deep, rich, and, much to her annoyance, as damn dreamy as they’d been on the shuttle.
    They were also completely, absolutely, utterly unyielding.
    “You can let me go,” Nola said. “I’ll go straight to the embassy.”
    Cruz moved from the computer, stalking over to her with precise steps, his bulky body somehow more intimidating now than it had been before. She’d seen the man kill, for God’s sake, had nearly had a heart attack when she’d first glimpsed him in her hotel room, but neither time had he seemed as uncompromising and implacable as he did now.
    When he stood directly in front of her, he stopped and stared down at her, his expression growing even more unyielding with each second that passed. But Nola, finding courage she didn’t know she had, didn’t shrink away. She wanted to, couldn’t think of a situation in her life when she wouldn’t have, but something, probably the loss of higher brain function due to fear-induced psychosis, made her hold her ground.
    “I need to go to the embassy,” she said, keeping her eyes on Cruz’s.
    “Do you have a passport?”
    “Yes!”
    She brightened and lifted the tiny handbag that she’d somehow held on to during everything that had happened, and thanked the Lord that she hadn’t cared how nerdy she might have looked. The travel guides had warned her against standing out and wearing anything that would make her more of a target, but the small cross-body bag that she hadn’t had a chance to take off in her hotel room was still around her midsection, the strap nestled