“Not even.”
His deep sigh let me know he was resigned to this. I hadn’t even had a full chance to explain everything that had happened with Ellie, and that was a doozy of a story. Fischer still seemed willing to roll along with it.
“Do we need the needles?” I asked.
“Would you settle for a Wartenburg wheel?”
I grinned. “This isn’t the time to be kinky, dear.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he groaned.
“But yes, that will work, probably better than the needles. The needles are painless, he needs to feel this. We need to stimulate his nerves.”
Fischer pulled the metal instrument from his bag and it nearly pricked my finger. This was a real, honesty to goodness Wartenburg wheel meant to be used for testing peripheral nerve reactions. This was a dangerous instrument, each spike needle sharp.
Best place to start?
I threw the covers back on Lincoln and grabbed his ankle. Carefully, I manipulated his foot so I could run the wheel over the bottom of his heel, down his instep to the ball of his foot.
His whole body jerked when I hit the instep.
“Good,” Fischer said. He pointed to the inside of his leg, just above his knee. “Xuehai SP-ten. There. Follow it up along the muscle.”
Lincoln jerked again, and let out a whimper this time.
Fischer pointed to a spot just next to and below where his navel would be. I pressed in and rolled, and got a jerk and a much louder moan. He grabbed my hand and continued the wheel’s motion over Lincoln’s ribs to just under his arm where I knew there was a cluster of lymph nodes.
As soon as we hit them, the whole bed jolted and he yelped.
“Collarbone line, right into the jugular,” Fischer instructed, pointing.
I rolled the wheel in the direction he pointed and as soon as I hit the skin of Lincoln’s neck, he screamed and jerked so hard, he tumbled off the bed.
Fischer caught his head before he nailed it on the nightstand and I just barely managed to back off far enough that his foot didn’t kick me in the face.
Letting him down slowly to the floor, Fischer backed off and let Lincoln lie face down on the rug. He just lay there for a long moment, and then groaned and started moving to try and pick himself up.
“Slow,” Fischer directed. “You haven’t moved much in a while.”
Lincoln’s voice was gruff, unused, and angry. “Why the fuck did you wake me up? I was fine wasting away.”
“Because Vance didn’t want you to,” I answered. “Because we don’t want you to.”
“What the fuck does any of it matter?” he mumbled into the rug before pushing himself up from the face plant he was in.
“It matters, Linc,” Fischer said, offering a hand to help him off the floor.
He pushed it away, and grabbed for the bed. “Just go. Just all of you leave. Tell Vance to go, too. I…don’t want to feel anymore.”
Hauling himself up, I could see he had dark circles under his eyes, his hair was a mess of grease and tangles. He looked gaunt and worn out—chicken soup and protein shakes were no way for a man like Lincoln Foster to live.
He sat on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Raking his hands through his filthy hair he stared down at the rug. “Go. Leave me here.”
I plopped my ass on the bed next to him. “Nope.”
“Wren—”
“Don’t. Do not even start to argue with me on this, Lincoln,” I said.
I looked up at Fischer who took a seat in the Queen Anne armchair in the corner. He nodded, agreeing we could argue with him all night long if we had to. Which wasn’t long because the sun was going to come up in a few hours.
“What happened?” Fischer asked from the corner.
Lincoln looked up and his eyes sparked with fury. “What do you mean what happened? I bought children, for fuck’s sake. Children.”
“Who are now safe,” I said. “What is going on?”
“They’re children!”
“Is this about the ones you left behind?” Fischer’s words were quiet, but loud in the room.
“The ones I chose not to buy…” Lincoln’s voice was unsteady and unsure. “The ones that others chose to buy. The ones who will never be rescued. The ones who will die because they don’t follow every whim of the one who owns them. The ones who will suffer every single goddamn day because of those fucking assholes.”
“That’s the whole point of what we’re doing, Lincoln,” I said. “We’re trying to stop this.”
He flew off the bed, tearing my hand off his arm. “It’s too fucking late for those kids! Don’t you get that?”
Fischer took a deep breath. “We have done everything we can to get—”
“It’s not enough! They’re gone!” He threw his hands in the air and turned away from us. “They’re all dead now. I don’t care if they’re still breathing—they are all dead inside. It’s just a matter of time before their wrecked and ruined bodies follow!”
I barked out my response before he could stop me, “We’ve rescued almost all of them.”
He spun back, his jaw slack.
“What?”
“Lily and her team have found most of them, and pulled them with the help of the FBI. We’re only missing just a few.”
“…and one of the ones we’re missing we think is being held by the same person holding Benjamin,” Fischer said. “The FBI is all over it, and we think the person who is holding them is still in the city.”
He stared at us. “It doesn’t absolve me.”
I balked. “Absolve you? From what?”
“From my greed…”
“What greed? You like making money,” Fischer said.
“All the stupid fucking rules I had for myself. How I spent time being honest, and drilling the rules into my head. How every penny I made for my clients and myself had to be on the up and up. And fucking Maguire showed up to buy a child with the money I earned for him.”
He snagged the vase on the table and threw it right at the window, sending all of us jumping backward. It didn’t break the window, but the vase hit the sill and shattered.
The echo of the crash hung in the air a moment longer. Lincoln collapsed into the side of the bed, weeping, his legs no longer able to support him.
I slipped off the bed and on to the floor next to him, pulling his head on to my lap.
“I gave them the money. I made every penny for them and they used it to buy children. Children they want to turn into living sex dolls.” A horrified sob ripped through him. “All my rules, all my lines that I drew in the sand. They mean nothing. Not to them. Not to the assholes who use it to do things like buy and sell and rent children for sex. They spend their whole lives being raped and assaulted, even if they are beaten into submission. Just tortured. Killed before they die.”
“This isn’t your fault—” Fischer said, walking over.
“Isn’t it though?” He sat up and crossed his legs, facing us. “Isn’t it? I wanted to make money. I wanted to make more and more money. Piles of it. A money bin like Scrooge McDuck. I wanted them to have the same thing. More, more, more. Enough to keep them and their children and grandchildren happy.”
Shaking my head. “You didn’t know—”
“I didn’t need to know. It shouldn’t have mattered. Money corrupts people. Money makes us crazy, bends our perception of reality. A taste of the power it brings and you’re caught. No matter my rules and laws that I lived by, others didn’t have such compunctions. And I should have known that. It’s not like I didn’t know I had my own weaknesses I had to overcome. Why would others with the power of the money I made them ever realize they couldn’t plow over the basic right of life that all people have?
“They could buy judges, politicians, administrators. Sometimes you don’t even have to buy them off—just ask them to be introspective, and they’re willing to let people off with rape, sodomy, murder because they know they are just as shit as
the people they judge.
“Talk to the right people, and you can buy human organs and lives. There’s nothing to stop them. They don’t have the moral perspicacity to stop themselves. It’s a disposable society, including the lives of children.”
He thumped his head back on the nightstand, and it sounded painful. “I’m just a part of that. All because of my greed.”
Fischer reached down and yanked Lincoln to his feet, then dropped him back on the bed. I scrambled to stand up and was about to scold Fischer when he spoke.
“Okay, listen up, Linc. You’re not part of this. You were never part of this. What people do with their time and lives beyond your sphere of influence doesn’t fall on you. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have found almost all those kids. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be so close to finding Benjamin. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have Ellie healthy in our house, the twins wouldn’t have a place to look forward to, a home to call theirs.”
“You’re not a bad man, Lincoln,” I said, grabbing his hand. “Cocky, yeah. Arrogant, sure. But you’re not evil and you don’t need to punish yourself by laying comatose in this bed.”
Fischer sat next to him. “I was you, before Wren. I was stuck in my own little world, not understanding the power I had to make things different. It was safe, comfortable. I conformed to the rules exactly, and didn’t ever venture out of that sphere.”
Lincoln looked at him, his forehead wrinkling. “You? You were…”
“A coward, really. Slothful, for not wanting to do more than society dictated. They only expect what is necessary—those are your rules. But our morality, our abilities to think, reason, demands we do more. Stepping beyond those rules opens our world. Wren, and to the same degree Ellie, have done that for me.”
Lincoln stared at him. “Are you gonna bust out in a Disney song here about new worlds?”
“I’m going to smother you with a fucking carpet,” Fischer snapped.
“I appreciate what you’re doing here, but I’m guilty. Nothing is going to assuage my feelings that I’ve done everything within the law to forward the cause of child trafficking.”
Glancing at Fischer, I lifted a shoulder in a nonchalant shrug. “Would it help if you could…kill the man who had the last girl? Who is holding Benjamin?”
His eyes shot to mine, and his voice dropped to barely a whisper. “Did you just…”
“Detective Haden is planning a move in a few days,” Fischer said. “The FBI is backing her. The problem is…he’s got money and grease. He’ll be out and gone before they can even bring him to court the first time.”
“And you…”
Fischer clicked his tongue “Would be a real shame if he showed up in the city morgue.”
Lincoln looked back and forth between us a few times. I kept my expression neutral, and Fischer did the same. I could see dozens of thoughts and emotions flash across Lincoln’s face.
His face cleared and moved to shock as he turned and looked at Fischer. “You…”
The words went unspoken. He knew in that moment what Fischer had done. He also knew he would do it again—was planning to do it again.
Mr. Frankford—David Green Maguire—had to die.
His eyes flickered back and forth a few times, and I saw life flare back into them. “Yes.”
I slammed my mouth over his.
Lincoln
She was kissing me.
Right in front of Fischer.
Holy shit, what was going on?
My brain was a mess, a jumble of nonsense that I couldn’t sort out for shit. I couldn’t even get it to stop whirling madly, tilting on all axes, dragging me along for the ride.
I’d gone away in those days. It was the only way to explain it. I’d had to hide from who I was, and the whole time I wanted to die. But some part of me still wanted to live because I still got up to piss, and still drank the offerings Vance had left me.
When I felt the needles in my neck, I had no choice to but come back from gone away. Snapped back into myself with a gasp and jerk to find Wren and Fischer there.
They offered me the chance to kill someone. A person who had used me, lied to me, abused and fucked children.
How could I ever even think to say no to that?
Wren’s lips were hot against mine and I wrapped an arm around her, pulling her closer.
“Do you want her?” Fischer’s question was brutally quiet in my ear.
More than my next breath, I wanted her.
I had thought my simple desire for a gorgeous woman was my right, and given enough time I could pull her away from Fischer.
But as her lips danced over mine, I realized I was so, so wrong. I was not in control of her, I would never be in control of her. My desire had been superficial, a part of the greed I wielded to make myself feel powerful. It was not my right to desire her… It was my duty to earn her desire.
“She’s yours,” I whispered as Wren lifted her lips away.
His next words sent a chill down my spine. “She can be ours if you ask…”
Ask. How did you ask for something like that? How did I ask her to share her heart with me? How did I ask him to share his most amazing gift with me?
How the hell was I even worthy of that?
“Ask,” Wren whispered the words across my lips.
“Will you let me share your bed with you?”
Her mouth covered mine again and I could feel Fischer at my side. “She is ours, Lincoln.”
“You are both mine,” Wren whispered. “Claim me.”
Fischer nodded, and stood from the bed. I gasped, looking over to him. He walked across the room and sat in the Queen Anne chair. “Claim her, Lincoln.”
Wren stared down at me from where she stood. “I’m yours alone this time.” Her eyes shone with a deep desire. “You can share me later.”
If I hadn’t been sitting, I would have fallen. A glance over at Fischer caught him mid-smirk, and sporting an obvious erection.
Jesus. He wanted to watch.
I stood and slipped my hands around the soft skin of her neck, and traced my thumbs along her jaw. “What is this?”
“We don’t know, not yet,” she whispered. “But it’s big. Bigger than we think right now. Lincoln, we need you. You’re part of this, part of whatever this us is.”
“You have me,” I whispered and sank my lips to hers.
She was soft and pliable, and she opened to welcome me inside. She tasted like strawberries and a scent like fresh ocean air washed over me.
I pulled back, just a little. “I’ve been in bed for ten days. I’m filthy…”
“Good.” Wren grinned. “Let’s get even more filthy.”
Her hand found my already-erect cock covered by the pajama bottoms I was wearing. She stroked the fabric over me and it made my legs tremble with desire. I wanted to give into the caveman that rose up in me, but this was her show.
It would always be her show.
Wren slipped her hand up to the waist of the pants and slid her hands under them. I wrapped my hand around her wrist and halted her. “You’re wearing too much, gorgeous.”
She smirked, and moved my hand from her neck to the first button of her shirt. “Do something about that.”
In just a few seconds, I had her shirt unbuttoned and on the floor. Her breasts, a pale cream offering, peeked out from the top of her bra, and I bent to trail my tongue along the skin there. It tasted as wonderful as I imagined.
My hands made quick work of her pants as well, dropping them to the floor a moment later. I reached behind her and wrapped my hands around her perfect ass and lifted her up to move her around to the bed behind me.
She held on tight while I threw the bed spread off and climbed on with her. Reverently, I lowered her to the mattress, still kissing and sucking at the flesh of her breast. Her hands found the waistband again and she flicked the pants off my bottom, and she kicked them away.
Kneeling between her legs, I sat up and looked at
her. She was perfect, everything on her was perfect. Reaching out, I traced my fingers over her collarbone, and flicked the straps of her bra off her shoulders. Slipping them down, the fabric that covered her breasts followed, peeling down to reveal her pert, hard nipples.
“Jesus, Wren, is there anything about you that’s not going to get me even harder?”
“Just wait until we tie her up,” Fischer whispered from the corner.
Holy shit, she’d let us do that? I groaned as my cock twitched from just the idea of tying this gorgeous creature up. I leaned down and sucked her nipple into my mouth, rolling it against my tongue, memorizing the flavor of her skin.
Wren wasn’t wasting anymore time. She reached behind her and unfastened the bra, flinging it to the floor with the rest of her clothes. I took full advantage of the situation and nibbled my way down her stomach, past her navel, to the downy smattering of a happy trail directly to the waist of her panties.
I grabbed the waist with my teeth—as my hands were still busy with her nipples—and pulled them down just enough to see her sweet pussy.
Perfection.
The cloth was just out of my way enough to dip my tongue between her lips and find the hot bud of her clitoris. She was so very wet, and tasted wonderful—sexual and ready and willing.
“Protection,” I murmured against her sensitive skin.
“Covered,” she gasped. “Unless…”
I lifted my head and looked at her. “Ever since I met you, I haven’t been able to gather even the remotest interest in anyone. There’s been no one but you and my fantasies.”
“Good.” She smiled, skimming her fingers through my hair. “I want you inside me, Lincoln.”
“Whenever you need me,” I whispered.
I reluctantly let go of her breasts, but only so I could pull her panties all the way off and let them join the rest of her clothes. While my tongue traced the outline of her sex, I slipped a finger inside her, finding her channel and discovering that she had a greedy pussy that tried to pull me even deeper. The soft skin of her G-spot was easy to find and stroking it lightly, Wren bucked off the bed, shoving her hot, waiting clit onto my face.
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