Then she realized he was eyeing her with the slightest hint of amused resignation, and she realized she hadn’t responded to the accusation.

“Following you? What are you talking about?” It was weak, she knew, but everything about this interaction was throwing her off. She didn’t know if he was going to kill her slowly and painfully or give her tips on shadowing fellow criminals. It was disconcerting. “I’m here to meet…uh…?”

“Martin,” he offered helpfully.

“Right.” She eyed the door and then snapped her gaze back to him. It was so tempting, having the path to the exit clear, but she worried that he was just setting a fun little trap for her. Still, she dared take a step forward. When he didn’t grab her, she edged forward again. “Since Martin isn’t here, I’ll just go find him.”

Despite those icy eyes and the hard line of his mouth, she was pretty sure he was amused. Strangely, she wasn’t as terrified of Kavenski as she’d initially been, and she wondered if she was in shock or, perhaps, under the effect of a fast-acting strain of Stockholm Syndrome. Telling herself to wait until she was safely outside the motel room to analyze her emotional state, she took another cautious step toward the door.

Then he moved, and she froze, her mind clamoring that she should’ve known it was too good to be true. Of course the brutal killer with the ice-cold stare wouldn’t just let her walk out after catching her breaking into his room. She’d fallen into his trap, and now she was in grabbing distance, and she was going to die.

When his hand grasped the doorknob instead of reaching for her throat, she stared at him. With a hard twist of his wrist, he yanked the door open and then looked at her expectantly. A hard breath shuddered into her lungs. Had she not been breathing this whole time? It was an easy thing to lose track of while waiting to be murdered.

“Oh…um.” She took the final step to the now-open door. “Thank you? Sorry for…ah, intruding.” Slipping through the opening, she hurried away from the room, jumping as she heard it close behind her with a loud snap. It was only after she’d reached her car and was cocooned in the familiar safety of the driver’s seat that the danger really hit her, and her breathing sped up until she was taking in short, rapid puffs of air.

That was the closest she’d ever come to dying. What a failure of a bounty hunter she was. If it had been Molly or Felicity or Charlie trapped in the room with Kavenski, her sisters would’ve had him tackled and cuffed before he could even glare at them. It was mortifying that the only reason Cara managed to escape was because a known killer had stepped aside and opened the door for her.

As her breathing gradually slowed, she started the car, her fingers trembling just a little now. “It’s okay,” she told herself out loud. “You just need to walk before you can run. Work your way to the upper levels, rather than jumping right into them.” It was clear, now that she’d seen him in all his close-up power and glory, that Henry Kavenski was not a skip for a beginner bounty hunter. He’d known that she’d been following him, and he’d obviously set her up to catch her breaking into his room. She needed to find a skip who was a little less deadly and a lot dumber.