The Shaughnessey Accord by Alison Kent

biggest question answered. As if there had really been any doubt. Tripp Shaughnessey was not at all who he seemed.
    "We counted six intruders. Is that right?"
    She thought for a minute. "It's hard to say. I can't tell one from the next. Except for Danh and the one Tripp knocked out, they're all still wearing their masks. I haven't seen but four together at a time."
    " Danh ?"
    "The one in charge." She swallowed. Her hands began to shake. "The one holding Tripp."
    The dark-haired man nodded, turned to his friends, gestured in what looked like a series of coded signals. Both gave sharp affirmative shakes of their heads, and then the first man approached.
    "I need you to follow my instructions, okay?"
    As if she'd expected otherwise. "Sure."
    "Lock yourself in one of the stalls and don't move until we're back."
    "And if you don't come back?" she asked, because she couldn't help consider the possibility after the day she'd had.
    He smiled at that. Camo paint or not, it was a look she was certain had left more than a few women speechless, a look that was all about confidence and certainty, even while it glinted with a cockiness that said she had no idea who she was dealing with.
    Before today, she would've agreed. But that was before today. "Right. You'll be back. And what then?"
    "First things first," he said and motioned for her to lock herself away.
    She did, only reluctant because she wanted to see and hear and know what was going on. This was her shop, dammit . Her customers, her employee, her livelihood under siege. As it was, she wasn't even able to pace. The space between the toilet and stall door was nil.
    She knew Tripp's three associates had left the room, though she'd never heard them go. Now all she could do was wait . She did so with her head braced against the stall door, her body flat, her hands splayed at her sides, her fingers spread. It was a silly pose, really, but it enabled her to breathe calmly instead of hyperventilate.
    A thud in the hallway outside brought her head up a short time later. She laced her fingers tightly, then loosely, worrying them at her waist. Minutes passed, or seconds—she had lost all sense of time—another thud sounded, followed by a scuffle, though she never heard a single voice cry out or call orders.
    She was crazy with wanting to know what was happening, insane with the realization that there was nothing she could do to help. She was locked in a toilet; it felt so wrong to pray, though she was certain her mother's First Presbyterian prayer circle would tell her a toilet was as good as any place.
    And so she did, sending up wishes and hopes and supplications as best she knew how, wondering if any of the unanswered phone calls had been her father checking in, ready to give her his lecture, wondering how hurt her parents would be to know she'd fallen for another dangerous man.
    Suddenly she wanted more than anything to ask about her father's meat loaf sandwich. To find out if the potato pancakes had been too salty as they usually were. She wanted to talk to her mother, to hear her scolding voice and promise to go out with any guy she wanted her to meet.
    A patently untrue promise, of course, because the only man she wanted in her life was three doors away if she counted the one on the stall. Three doors and an entire lifetime of experience. The fact that he had any interest in her at all left her surprised.
    She was no one but Glory Brighton, hardly interesting to a man who had seen the world, though she had to admit she did seem to attract ones followed by trouble. Yet even as she entertained the thought, she knew it wasn't true. Tripp was nothing like the troublemakers she'd known in the past.
    He was all about solving problems and saving the world from men like those others. From men like the ones who had threatened all that she knew, all that she had. If she got out of here in once piece, she swore she'd pull a Scarlett O'Hara and take an oath to stand up for what was hers and