Page 46 of Locked and Loaded

"Until I know more about who sent them."

"That could be days."

"Yes," he agreed.

She stared at him. "You can't just decide that."

"I already did."

The arrogance of it stole her breath for a second. She wanted to throw something at him. A fig. The teapot. The entire basket of bread. But she was also intensely aware that she was sitting in his kitchen, eating his food, wearing the same dress she'd slept in, and he had the only key to the only door in the entire riad. Throwing things wouldn't change any of that.

“Every day my sister is captive is another day someone inflicts pain and trauma on her. I can’t sit around and wait.”

Dragan popped an olive in his mouth, then deftly removed the pit and put it in an empty bowl. “That’s true, but A, we don’t know where she is and B, rushing around trying to find her without a plan could mean you get killed, and then any hope of her getting out dies with you.”

Once again, the bluntness of his words took her breath away. She swallowed some tea to push the bread down that had suddenly gotten stuck in her throat.

She tried to regroup. "You said we'd talk," she reminded him, forcing her voice level. "You said you'd tell me what you know."

He settled his gaze on her. "I will. When I know more."

"Not good enough." Frustration was damn near choking her.

"It will have to do for now. You have to give me time, Lennox. It’s a big wide world out there, and I have little to go on. When I know something solid, I will tell you.”

She took a bite of fig to keep from saying something she'd regret. It was perfectly ripe, the flesh sweet and jammy on her tongue, the tiny seeds crunching between her teeth. She ate another one. Then a date. Then she refilled her glass of tea and drank half of it in one go.

Maybe there was another way of coming at this. "Who hired you, specifically?" she asked.

"Armand Fontaine."

The name meant nothing to her. “Who the hell is that?” she demanded.

“He’s the head of the Lock and Key Society?”

“Is that who you work for full time, or are you a freelancer of some kind?”

Dragan broke off a piece of bread. “I work for Callahan Security. Armand hired them, and they assigned me.”

Lennox's pulse ticked up. She kept her face carefully blank. She’d heard of Callahan Security. Most people in the industry had. “So…this Fontaine. He hired you to find me so I could stop saying the Society was behind my sister’s kidnapping.”

“In a nutshell, yes.”

“Is that why you are keeping me hostage here?” she demanded.

Dragan met her gaze. “I’m keeping you here so you don’t get dead. The Society has nothing to do with your sister, but we need to find out what the hell is going on and who is behind it. That trail led us to you because of all the questions you were asking.”

"How do you know I've been asking questions?"

"Because I was sent to find you. Fontaine's been tracking you since Portugal. He knows you've been investigating the Society, and he wanted to know why."

She set her glass down with a little more force than necessary. "You’re not protecting me. You're interrogating me."

"I'm keeping you alive," Dragan said evenly. "The interrogation is a bonus."

She almost laughed, although it wasn't funny. But there was something about the way he said it, matter-of-fact, no apology, no attempt to sugarcoat, that cut through her anger in a way she wasn't prepared for. He wasn't lying to her. He wasn't pretending to be her friend. He was telling her exactly what he wanted and exactly what he was willing to give in return.

She could work with that.