“You…you’re letting us go?”

His gaze slid down my torso then back up.

“Don’t give me a chance to change my mind, because straight up, I got a strong urge to keep you.”

I turned so fast, I opened the door and tried to get out without releasing my seatbelt.

I heard his chuckle, reached, released, and shot out of the car.

The girls were all out of their own cars, looking at me, each other, confused, but I reached my hand their way and shouted, “Come with me!”

They came with me, Hattie getting to me first.

She took my hand.

Pepper took Hattie’s hand.

Ryn took Pepper’s hand.

And we raced to the door of the office building.

I yanked it open and dashed in, only to slam into something solid, and I did it four times. The time I hit it. The time Hattie slammed into my back, Pepper into hers and Ryn into hers.

In a sandwich, I looked up at a tall, gorgeous, Hispanic guy who looked so much like Eddie Chavez, for a second I thought he was Eddie Chavez.

I didn’t get to say hi or ask if he knew he looked just like this hot police officer I knew before he took my hand and dragged us all into the building.

He did not hit the elevators.

I was considering breaking my vow never to own workout clothes so I could take kickboxing classes by the time we raced up four flights of steps and we got to the floor where he pushed through the door.

Through my wheezing, I saw right away Shirleen standing in the hall outside a door.

She got a load of us and said, “Well, shit.”

She then disappeared through the door that hadn’t quite closed before the guy dragging our snake of strippers got to it.

He shoved it open, pulled us in and didn’t stop pulling once we were inside.

I just had time to glance at Shirleen where she was standing behind an impressive, gleaming blond wood receptionist desk as he pulled us through and I saw she was on the phone, saying, “Our eyes weren’t deceiving us. They’re here. Hector’s locking them down now.”

This while I heard a buzz, and the guy, obviously named Hector, dragged us in another door, into a hall, down it, and then shuffled us into a small room that had a bed, a recliner, a bookshelf full of books and DVDs, a TV and that was it.

“You’re safe,” he declared. “And your men will get you after they deal with Cisco.”

On that, he walked out the door and closed it behind him.

I stared at it.

And Pepper murmured a repeat of Shirleen’s “Well, shit.”

“Unh-hunh,” Hattie mumbled.

Ryn stepped in front of all of us, put her hands on her hips, and remarked, “I’m pretty sure the Rock Chicks had a ton more drama. Am I crazy to think that was anticlimactic and be disappointed there wasn’t more drama?”

This from the one of us who’d survived a gunfight in a mall parking lot that day.

In unison, we all answered…

“Yes.”

The door to the room opened and Shirleen stood there.

We all looked to her.

I suspected we all also expected jubilation that we were alive and breathing. Congratulations we’d kept our shit together through another kidnapping. And news about what was going down.

We all had forgotten she’d lived through the Rock Chicks.

So we did not get any of that.

She asked, bizarrely, “Have all you all seen the movie 300?”

“Greatest…movie…ever,” Pepper decreed breathily.

“Right, I’ll get the popcorn,” Shirleen declared. “Be right back.”

And then she was gone.

“Tex! Don’t thump on it! It’s already broken! It doesn’t need to be wrecked beyond repair!” Indy shouted over Tex assaulting the cash register.

“I can’t work under these conditions!” Tex boomed back, jabbing an irate finger at the till. “I’m on strike until that fucking thing is fucking fixed!”

“I’m sorry, I think I calculated that wrong. Hang on. Let me go again,” Jet said to a customer, then she bent back over the calculator she was using.

“Fucking fuck! See! It’s taking years just to get a goddamned order!” Tex bellowed.

“For the last time!” Indy screeched. “Stop saying fuck in front of the customers.”

I was sitting on the couch in front of the window at Fortnum’s, my fingers curled around the dregs of a Textual, my eyes aimed unseeing at the coffee table in front of me, listening to pandemonium at a used bookstore and coffee emporium.

Here’s the catch-up:

I’d now met Vance Crowe and again witnessed all that was Luke Stark.

The latter had opened the door to the room right when King Leonidas bit into the apple.

We were all lying about the bed, piled on top of each other (though Shirleen was in the recliner), waiting for word (okay, maybe desperate for word), so we all jumped when the door opened.

And although I thought I might have heard Hattie sigh at the sight of the big, built, dark-haired man in the doorway, I just wanted to know how Mag was.

“It’s all cool,” Luke Stark announced. “Boys are at the cop shop, givin’ a report. Time for coffee.”

That was it.

He did not go into detail.

And he did not look like a dude you pressed for details.

Therefore, none of us pressed him for details.

Vance Crowe seemed slightly more approachable, but totally more impatient.

“One of his boys has the flu, he’s hankerin’ to get home,” Shirleen told me.

“How many boys does he have?” I asked.

“A thousand,” she answered.

That would require a large harem, and by the looks of that guy, he could not only amass that, he could also service it.

That said, I didn’t think Jules would be down.

Without further ado, Stark and Crowe took us to Fortnum’s.

When we arrived, a gaggle of the Rock Chicks were there. Shirleen had come with us. Gert was waiting fretfully for our return, then she got ornery when we showed and threatened to legally adopt me. Smithie was also there and declared after our latest scenario (even if it wasn’t any of the guys’ fault) he wasn’t a big fan of any of his girls hooking up with a commando, so his vote was no across the board to all the matches. And Lottie was sitting with him, but she just ignored him and went to the coffee counter to get us Textuals.

And last, the cash register was broken so Tex was in a state.

“So…what? The bad guy has a crush on Evie?” Roxie, perched on the arm of a chair, was asking.

“Not surprised about that,” Gert said.

Man, even if Cisco/Brett being into me still gave me the willies, I loved Gert.

“He’s creepy, but at least it made him drop us off rather than keep us captive,” Pepper remarked.

“I was kinda in the mood for a donut,” Ryn put in.

“Then that’s what we should do,” Gert decreed. “Go get donuts. It’s loud in here.”

“We’re not allowed to leave,” Hattie whispered to Gert. “Luke Stark said we had to stay here until the guys got here.”

“You don’t have to say Luke Stark’s full name every time you talk about him, Hatz,” Pepper told her.