“Excuse me?”
“Niece as in singular. Leena did his bidding, not me.”
He heard her going through what sounded like drawers. “What are you doing now?”
“Looking for something, anything.”
“Another knife would be nice. Or a gun.”
More rustling. “You don’t know how to shoot.”
“Under these circumstances, I think I’d pick it up pretty quickly.”
She let out a huffing laugh that didn’t sound at all full of amusement, and then suddenly, she was back at his side. How the hell she’d been able to maneuver around in the utterly complete dark, he had no clue. Just another secret to the life of Maddie Stone.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“For not listening to me or for giving me a headache from bashing my head against the brick wall of your stubbornness?”
“For everything. For how this turned out-”
“Hey.” That sounded an awful lot like a good-bye. Oh, no. No. “Bullshit to saying good-bye, we’re not dead yet.”
“Also, I’m sorry for lying to you. If I could take anything back, it’d be that.”
“You mean when you tried to come here without me?”
“No.” She came to stand right in front of him. He could smell her shampoo, then felt her hand on his arm. “I lied when I said I don’t love you.”
Well. If that didn’t stun him into silence.
“Brody? Did you hear me?”
“I don’t think I did, no.”
“I said…”-she got closer and louder-“that I lied when I said I didn’t love you!”
Wow. That sounded just as amazing the second time, and in spite of everything, he felt a ridiculous smile split his face.
“Brody? Did you hear me?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I just wanted to hear it again.”
She smacked him in the chest. It didn’t hurt, but he nabbed her hand and tugged her close, cupping her face in his hands. “Maddie.” His throat felt rough as sandpaper, and his voice reflected that, but he was both unbearably moved and pissed off. “No fair tossing those words at me now just because you think we’re going to die-”
Before he could properly finish that thought, whatever it might have been, the door to the cellar opened, and a rectangle of light flooded in from the hall. Brody quickly sighted several no-neck thugs, each of whom tossed someone into the cellar and slammed the door.
The lock sliding into place rattled through the silence.
“Hello? Is anyone here?” came a voice that sounded just like Maddie.
“Leena,” Maddie gasped, and given the rustling and the low, muffled murmuring, the two of them had located each other, a feat utterly beyond Brody.
“I’m sorry about the cell phone switch!” one of the twins cried.
“But not about taking off?” the other demanded. Maddie. “Or how about running The Plan without me?”
“That was for your own good,” Leena told her.
“How is that even possible?”
“I was trying to preserve the life you’d made for yourself! And I had it, too, Mad. We were both home free until you came here.”
“Oh, this is my fault now?”
“Ladies,” a guy said, but neither sister was listening.
“It’s no one’s fault, but don’t worry. I’ll fix this.” Leena sounded stubborn. A family trait, apparently. “It’s my turn to fix things.”
“No,” Maddie said firmly. “I’ve got a plan-”
“I’ve got a plan-”
“How about this plan-we get the hell out of here,” Brody said.
“Sounds good,” a mystery guy agreed. “A voice of reason.”
“And who are you?” Maddie demanded.
“He’s with me,” Leena said. “It’s Ben. He was with me when Rick snatched me.”
“Brody wasn’t snatched,” Maddie told her. “He bullied his way along.”
“I came along,” Brody said. “Because you were going to be stupid about it.”
“Oh, so he calls the woman with the knife stupid,” Maddie said to the room.
“I didn’t call you stupid. Your plan is stupid. And don’t even bother yelling at me. You can yell at me all you want when we get off this island.”
“Count on it,” she promised. “Okay, a new plan. I’ve got a knife and a gun, so-”
“Wait a minute.” Brody reached out for her. Finally got her. Fisting his fingers in her shirt, he yanked her close.
When she tried to knee him, he did as she’d done to him the other day-he pinched her ass.
“Hey!”
Oops. Wrong sister. “Sorry.”
“You pinched my ass!”
“What?” Ben asked. “He did what?”
Brody felt around for the right sister. The one who drove him crazy. Snagging her, he held tight. “I’ll take one of those weapons.”
“Leena has tools in here. We can all arm ourselves, right, Leena?”
This was tricky in the dark, but Brody somehow ended up with a hammer, though he’d managed to hold on to Maddie as well. “You have a gun and a knife, and I’m stuck with a hammer?”
“I realize that goes against your Boy Code of Ridiculous Ego and Controller, but I’ll protect you.”
“Give me one or the other.”
“Fine.” She slapped the knife into his hand. “No stupid heroics, do you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, and back attcha.” He tightened his grip on her. “Did you really say you love me?”
“Actually, what I said was, I lied when I said I didn’t.”
“Jesus. Was that in English?”
She fisted her hands in his shirt. “You said no good-byes, not like this.”
“Maddie-”
“Listen to me. I want to know you’re going to fly another day, okay? I want to picture you standing in the lobby of Sky High with your iPod making you deaf before your time, buying candy bars by the dozen out of the vending machine, dating any of those fancy schmancy bimbos you favor-”
“Dating?”
“Real world, remember? You’re going back to it.”
“That’s right,” Leena said. “That includes you too, Ben. Now this is my fight, so all of you, stand back.”
“No way in hell,” Ben said tightly.
“Ditto,” Brody said just as tightly.
But the decision was taken out of all of their hands when the door opened and light flooded into the room.
“Clearly,” Rick said from the doorway, “we have a little problem.”
No one answered. No point when they all knew they were the little problem.
“My men wanted to deal with you,” Rick said, “since you’ve made fools of a couple of them.”
“Not that difficult to do,” Maddie muttered.
Rick’s eyes narrowed. “I plan to give them their wish. But I wanted a private moment first. You two…” He divided a look between Leena and Maddie, clearly unable to tell them apart. “You banded together to trick me.”
“We wouldn’t have if you’d just let us go,” Leena said.
Rick eyed her standing on the other side of the shelving unit from Maddie and then shifted to Maddie. “Dammit. Who’s who?”
