by Sophia Reed
We passed another buy. Kid doing the selling looked about seventeen. Kid doing the buying looked about thirteen. I swallowed hard and Cole kept driving, up the street to a middle school where children were leaving the building, their voices shrill and alive in the darkening afternoon.
Cole pulled over and sat watching the school as the students barreled out and headed for rides, headed off on skateboards, headed off running or walking.
Or headed directly to the dealer of choice standing on the edge of the property under a spray of evergreen trees. He looked popular, big smile, friendly greeting for each of the kids approaching him. He obviously knew them all by name.
My fingers itched for cuffs. Hell, they itched for my gun. That was safely locked up back at the apartment I sort of still shared with Mark. My cuffs and the rest of my gear were waiting for me to finish my rehab.
To anyone sane, or anyone asking, I'd already been gone too long. Logically I wasn't in rehab anymore but had just quit and not bothered to tell anybody. But I was still getting direct deposits. My sick leave was still covering the fact that I wasn't there. And Tad Charles wasn't saying anything about me needing to get back before they up and fired my ass.
Then a little blond girl who looked so much like Lauren, the first girl to ever OD while I was deep cover in a local high school, came around the side of the building and walked, grinning, over to Mr. Sunshine. She'd just come out of the middle school building. So clearly she wasn't how she looked, which was like a fifth grader, but like me, she looked younger than she was.
But she was tiny. And blond. Delicate. Fragile came to mind and when she held her hand out, one wrist was encased in a cast.
Of course it was. There were all kinds of kids who used for the thrill of it and the hell of it and because they'd been told not to and because they liked the high.
But there were also those kids who were running hard from something and because they knew they couldn't run yet in the real world – they weren't ready to sleep on the street and do whatever they had to with their bodies to survive. Those kids were buying because they needed somewhere to run to.
I had my hand on the door handle and the door partway open before Cole clamped his hand around my wrist.
Yeah, that was what I figured had happened to the blond girl's wrist. Somebody grabbed it. Somebody a lot bigger than her. Like Mom's boyfriend. Or Dad. I turned in my seat and hissed at Cole whose face was stony. Emotionless.
"Close the door."
"Fuck!" I snarled.
He didn't ask again. My seatbelt was still on, at any rate, and he hit the gas, speeding through the school zone. He drove several miles, actually getting us back to semi-decent city blocks before he pulled over and cut the engine and pulled my phone out of his breast pocket.
"Look up requirements for DEA."
I almost said What? because my brain was back there with the kid and wanting to follow her home and beat the shit out of whoever broke her wrist and sent her into opioid hell.
Instead I looked from him to the phone, then tapped into Google and started reading.
"Bachelor's degree or higher, though that can be waived for candidates with extensive experience."
Cole raised an eyebrow at me, looking very much like the Thunder God's adopted brother. He waited without speaking.
"At least twenty-one and younger than thirty-seven. Got that. Valid driver's license. Strangely, yes, still. U.S. Citizen." That felt like a guess anymore. Staying with Cole was like staying on another planet.
I didn't say so.
"Normal hearing and vision." Yeah, as long as Jesse wasn't around to pop me on the side of the head and nobody was firing off rounds too close to my unprotected ears – or as long as I wasn't with the Brotherhood, in other words – my eyesight and hearing were just fine.
"Is there any of that you don't have or can't get?"
"Background checks," I said, and I was looking them up before he waved his hand. "Criminal record check, credit score check, interviews with former employers, neighbors and friends."
I had a criminal record, but every bit of it was obviously fake to anyone who could do a law enforcement background check. So far, I had no criminal record that was real for Annie and not for Lily. Credit score? I didn't think I had one. Former employers might be a problem, but Cole didn't seem to think so.
"Sir? You're sure about the former employers?"
He smiled a triangular mischievous and angry smile so alarming I wondered what he had up his sleeve. I'd take that response as a yes.
At night, when Cole wasn't with me, and wasn't punishing me, or playing with me just because he felt like it, I had a lot of time out in the holding cell to think. Now that things had changed to an extent, I had criminal justice course work to do and I had martial arts classes through Tad Charles’s YouTube and through Tad just calling up? and watching me on the laptop camera, telling me what to do next, what to practice, how to improve. I was a first degree black belt, but Tad was a third.
That all felt good and it all took up time and so did kneeling on the floor and servicing Cole when he demanded it, so did eating the healthy god-awful breakfasts he forced on me and the morning routine that still made me anxious just thinking about it.
Even so, I had time to think and it hadn't occurred to me that my life could change when I finished my year and a day with Cole. I'd been so focused on getting back to what I loved – what I had always loved and still professed to love – it hadn't ever hit me that I might not love it anymore and that I might want to change.
It definitely hadn't hit me that I could change and that the change could come from me rather than being something external.
I'd never played in my sisters' worlds. I'd never wanted the husband and babies and part time job or work from home or have a career and then a child so I could look back and say I'd done it all. Hell, I was still proud of that day I was talking to my instructor after Taekwon-Do class and he casually took his do-bak off and changed into his street clothes because the men's locker rooms were closed for refurbishment that week. We'd been the only two in the do-chang and it had just been so natural, I don't know that he ever was aware of it and I wasn't until later.
I'd worked hard at being one of the guys and making sure there was no glass ceiling because I was, after all, one of them.
I'd gotten engaged to a man who due to his own career and his own aspirations and the amount of years it took to be what he wanted to be would never be around. I groused about his rotations but I would be gone for months at a time and when I came back and he was actually home, actually present in the apartment, I felt smothered.
For all that I was undercover, not who I said I was, and doing a job that eventually brought down a part of the Brotherhood (though not in time to save Jesse), I still liked riding with them. I liked having rage sex with Jesse. It wasn't just that I could, that I could separate out my feelings, whatever they were, for my fiancé, and have sex with the leader of the gang, but that I actually enjoyed it. For all of that freedom to consider myself who I thought I was – free, independent, brave, in control, able to take care of herself.
All along I'd been doing what men wanted. My father the cop who had no sons and who I adored and hero worshipped and loved. I thought he'd been an awesome cop and if he bent the law a few times to make sure that something that needed to happen actually happened, I'd be on his side every time. He knew what the neighborhood needed. He understood community.
I'd had a male handler who sent me into harm's way because that was my job, but he sat back and watched and when I fucked up too completely for everyone to overlook, he was the one who sold me to Cole St. Martin. And I acted like it was some kind of inside joke, as inside as it can get because I was the only one – other than Cole, other than Samuels – who knew.
My fiancé, guilting me into behavior after behavior that I'd have never participated in without him. You're home, let's have sex. When I wanted to be home drinking a beer and watching a S
eahawks game. He made demands. He made requests. He told me things like I was my mother's rock and she'd need to depend on me when my father was ill but I hadn't seen that for myself and I wasn't sure even now it was true.
Cole. Dominating. Expecting to dominate. For all that I said I was free-thinking, I hadn't even tried to challenge the contract. I hadn't done anything to Jason until Kie did something to me and Cole took care of Jason. Then all I'd done was make an enemy.
Cole St. Martin. Acting as if my body wasn't my own.
Acting as if he knew what was right for me.
It hadn't occurred to me to come out of this trial and out of this contract and go do something else on my own. Even now it was Cole who suggested DEA.
I liked the idea. The war on drugs was a sham, a lie told the American people and a lot of money pissed away. But the DEA were the ones who could bring down the people selling into schools. I could do more with them than I could at this point with Seattle PD. Especially since the DEA could relocate me.
I almost smiled to myself. Letting them relocate me. Bunch of men deciding where I was going to live.
So what did I even want to do?
That would take some thinking.
38
Cole
We drove by her apartment. There were lights on in the window and as dusk fell we could see her fiancé. He got home, pulled off his scrubs top, wandered to the window with a beer in one hand and stared out.
He didn't look like anyone Annie would be with. Bland and white and in good shape but nothing spectacular. If I ordered her to leave him, would she? But I could lock her up again and he wouldn't ever know what had happened to her.
She watched the apartment but didn't seem stressed by seeing him. I wondered what would have happened if he'd been with someone else.
I had a feeling it might have been a relief.
Her parents were in Seattle, her father recovered and starting to run on a daily basis. Her mother was starting to drink on a daily basis, my sources told me. I asked her if she wanted to see them and she said no. I asked her if she wanted to see just him and she said no.
"I want to be totally clean. The last time I saw him, he knew."
I nodded.
"Sir?"
"Yes."
"Why are we here?"
Good. She'd asked. "It's a Wonderful Life," I said.
She looked horrified. "You're not going to make me watch that, are you?"
I gave her my most malicious grin. "Finally! The key to breaking Annie Knox!"
"Only if you don't want to ever put her back together!" she said, sounding almost for real panicked.
I let her linger in well-deserved horror before saying, "Just giving you a chance to see what’s happening here."
She gestured. "Mark's okay without me. I thought Wonderful Life pointed out Jimmy Stewart was important."
"Touché. But maybe we need to know where we matter and where we don't. What you saw at the school? That's since you've been gone. You're needed, Annie, though not necessarily at this level."
"I'm not suicidal," she said. Inadvisably . Sulkily.
I pulled her over my lap before she could even think to resist, yanked down her jeans and hit her so hard and so fast she was crying within seconds. When the sobs became deep-throated and raw and her ass was cherry red and a bit raw also, I relented. "Keep your pants down," I said. "Sit on that naked ass."
She gave a wet, ragged sob and did as I told her.
Still broken. For now I thought she could fall either way. Into submission. Or into the freedom of her own convictions.
Either would save her life. It was the limbo that needed to change.
"You're needed," I said. "You have a place. You have a purpose."
She gave me a long look, then shifted in the seat, yanking her jeans back up and fastening them. I watched, impassive. Let her have a petty victory for now. It was entirely possible she'd figure out someday that she'd been in control all along. Short of actually hurting her, I couldn't keep her from doing whatever she wanted to do. Contract or not.
It was her own will that kept her with me. That allowed me to do what I did to her. It was her own desire playing out. That didn't mean that when I pushed her she didn't hate it.
It also didn't mean that I wasn't doing it for more purpose than my own enjoyment.
Break her. Rebuild her. That had always been my plan.
"If you come back to Southern Nevada with me, there are going to be changes."
There was panic in her face when she looked at me. "The drugs," she said.
I started the car and pulled away from her apartment. We'd go get pizza by the water and head back to the plane. If she didn't take control, I would.
"What about them? And which ones?"
The look she gave me – Are you crazy or stupid? – guaranteed her the crop tomorrow morning.
"The rainforest cure."
I nodded.
"How much longer do I need it?"
It had been months. Even falling off the wagon in Vegas wasn't enough to have set her back. It was routine she needed now. The rainforest cure was still doing something for her. Maybe no more than vitamins would to keep her healthy. But I needed her to stay while I studied it.
"You'll continue to take them for the duration of your contract."
She should have heard the tone of my voice.
"Is that safe?"
"Safer than this line of questioning."
"This is my life, Cole. It's not a game."
I slammed the brakes on and brought the car to a juddering stop at the curb. "Do you think I'm playing a game?" My face was inches from hers. "I've had you sign a legally binding contract drawn up by attorneys. You've promised yourself to me for a year and a day. I'm taking care of you. I'm making sure you have no exposure to opioids or other addictive substances. I've made sure you're eating and working out and getting enough sleep. You're living a disciplined life and you. Will. Submit." I held her gaze. "Do you think this is a game?"
She didn't look away. She didn't look down like she should have. She was shaking with anger that had come out of nowhere. I'd awakened it but I didn't know which part of the trip had. Only that she needed it. She needed to be borne up on waves of it because when we got back to Vegas, I was going to break her again.
"Yes."
"You think this is a game?"
"Yes."
She wasn't looking away.
"You think you can match me in this game?"
She gave a nasty laugh, contempt and anger mixed together with too much surety of herself. "I know I can match you in it. I can fucking beat you," she said and I was certain the emphasis on the words "beat you" was intentional.
"Those are dangerous words." My voice was soft. It was a game. It was a game I loved. But we were rapidly crossing from game to reality and I was becoming angry. She needed to step down. Step back.
And she wasn't doing it.
"What are you going to do about it?"
Take a calculated chance. "Open the door. Get out of the car. Find your own way. If you can find a way to reach me I'll send everything of yours to you."
She froze. Bluff called. Her eyes locked on mine, rigid and unmoving. She wasn't going to flinch.
Not yet.
"No."
"No?" I laughed. "No, you're not going to get out of the car when I tell you to? What, it's like I fired you from a job and you decide not to go? No, I can't tell you what to do after you've signed away your right to self determination? No?"
The shaking was getting worse. "It's a fucking game, Cole." She all but spat it at me.
I reached up and put my hand over her eyes. Startled, she didn't move. Moved it to cover her mouth. To her throat, vulnerable under my tightening fingers. Moved it down and took a nipple, squeezing until she pulled away, a sharp shake of her shoulders, not a sound out of her.
"Pull your jeans back down."
"No."
"Pull them down or get out of th
e car."
Confusion, racing across her features. She'd just refused to get out. Now I was giving her two choices neither of which she wanted.
"Annie."
She glared at me, nostrils flaring, panting breaths.
"Submit."
"Goddamn it, Cole – "
I slapped her. One time. A crack so hard her head twisted to one side. Before she could turn back to me – or lunge for the door – I wrapped my fingers around her throat and held her still.
"What you don't seem to understand is that I have an investment in you. I bought you from Samuels and it doesn't matter if you recognize his right to be paid for delivering you to me or not. I paid, he sold, you're mine."
I tightened my fingers. Just a little. She whimpered but didn't try to free herself. She was a black belt. She could have broken the hold. She could have easily hurt me in such close quarters and with the training she had.
Never once had she tried.
She wouldn't try now.
"As well as raw material – the drugs my pharma company has synthesized – I've invested my time in you. I've twice had you screw up formal events, the only two you've had to attend. I've dealt with you running off and your shows of temper and your – "
I ran out of words. "I'm not going to let you die."
Her eyes opened wide. Her mouth opened. She gagged on a breath and I let go of her throat. "Die?"
"I need to know you're safe. I need to know you're obedient. I need to know you're kept away from the things that can kill you. I need to know that the drug I've created that hasn't been through all the testing it should have yet is keeping you healthy and not causing some form of cancer or some other illness."
"What?"
Very softly, with as much menace as I could put in my tone, I said, "What, sir? And in answer to your properly phrased question, you accepted an untested cure from an unknown man who'd paid money to make you his prisoner and who has already sold you as a timeshare to another billionaire." I paused to let her think about what I was saying. "You do want to know you're healthy?"