Chapter 1

The rain was a cold sheet against the borrowed ski mask.

My heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs, loud in the sudden quiet of the luxury sedan's interior.

Clara Hayes stared at me, not screaming, not crying.

Just... watching.

Her eyes, wide and a startling blue, held a strange calm that unnerved me more than any struggle would have.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

"You're Leo Maxwell, right?" she asked, her voice even.

I flinched, my hand tightening on the steering wheel of her car.

How did she know?

My worn-out olive drab backpack sat on the passenger seat between us, a silent testament to my failure as anything but a desperate man.

"Just be quiet," I managed, my voice rougher than I intended.

She was supposed to be terrified, begging.

Instead, she looked almost... bored.

This was all for Lily, my sister.

Lily, who was fading in a sterile county hospital room, her body attacking itself with a ferocity I couldn't fight with my bare hands or the pittance from my dead-end jobs.

Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

That was the price tag on her life, the cost of an experimental treatment insurance barely acknowledged.

It was a number that had become my entire world, eclipsing everything else, even the man I used to be.

A U.S. Marine, honorably discharged, now a clumsy, first-time kidnapper.

The irony wasn't lost on me.

Clara shifted slightly, the expensive fabric of her dress rustling.

"So, the cabin in the national forest, is it rustic or just plain rundown?"

My head snapped towards her. "How do you-"

"Your browser history," she said, a small, almost pitying smile on her lips. "You used my laptop in the library an hour before you so gallantly accosted me in the parking garage. You' re not very good at this, are you?"

My stomach plummeted.

This was already a disaster.

Her Bipolar I Disorder, something I' d only vaguely read about on a medical website when I researched her, was clearly not going to make this easy.

The profile said "unpredictable."

It didn't say she'd be dissecting my incompetence before we even left the city limits.

I just needed the money for Lily. That' s all that mattered.

But looking at Clara Hayes, with her unnervingly perceptive gaze, I had a sinking feeling that getting it was going to be the least of my problems.