by Sophia Reed
His arms slipped around me from behind, going around my chest more than waist. He was taller than me but he still seemed to fit there. He let his chin rest on my head, a gentle touch, his breath warm in my hair. After an initial moment of surprise, my hands went up onto his arms and I relaxed into his touch, letting my body relax against his.
For a little while we watched the morning come to life in the desert. Then Cole stirred and kissed the top of my head. I startled, moved, and he turned me gently in his arms until we were face to face. I looked up into his eyes, expecting the usual mocking, challenging expression, the devilish triangular grin.
And found him serious and still, his eyes searching mine, his mouth right there. I didn't move, didn't tilt my head, didn't go up on tiptoe, didn't move in any way except to lower my gaze, my eyes on his mouth, and then to look up at him again, feeling wonder creep through me.
Cole ducked his head and kissed me, his lips soft and cool with the desert morning. His hands slid around and pressed against my back, drawing me in and up to him. Without thinking I snaked my arms up and around his neck and I did go up on tiptoes, pressing myself against him as his tongue gently touched my lips, then licked into my mouth. His lips brushed mine as he pulled away, paused long enough to gently bite my lower lip, then brushed his lips over mine as he pulled away.
We stood looking at each other, wordless, even our gazes not speaking, just watching each other until he pulled my head against his chest and held me there, and I listened to the hard, fast banging of his heart, which matched mine.
43
Annie
We walked part of the way back, which was unusual in itself. Cole pushed everything. It wasn’t like him to relax into a walk. Why walk if you can run?
The times we did run, it was largely playful. Like the coyotes we'd seen in the morning, we'd lunge a little at each other, chasing briefly, little bursts of speed and playfulness. We were both tired, I think, the unexpected emotion adding to the long run we'd already had.
Once, before I started with PD, working as a waitress and stone broke, I drove from Washington to San Francisco to spend time with friends. On the way home something either jabbed a hole in the radiator of my junker car, or it simply wore through. Nothing happened until I stopped to get gas in a little hole-in-the-wall town on the California Oregon border. Once I stopped, the pressure or centrifugal force or magic or whatever it was keeping the liquid inside the car let loose and coolant sprayed out and puddled beneath the car. Stranding me until my Dad could be convinced to stop laughing over the phone and send me money.
A run like we'd just taken could be like that. Keep running and the energy keeps up. I suspect it’s how people run marathons and ultra marathons and whatever crazy mileages may be past that. We'd stopped and now we both felt the effort of starting again. That's why we strolled and played and didn't run.
That's what I told myself. Because telling myself that our encounter out there in the dawn landscape had rattled Cole too, seemed arrogant and presumptive and impossible. And like something I shouldn't ever allow myself to wish for.
But of course as we got closer to the house Cole became Cole again, or maybe he became Mr. St. Martin, Sir! It was funny how easily I called my instructors sir in martial arts and Mr. whatever the last name was, but calling Cole sir because of the circumstances was galling.
Nevertheless, things hadn't changed to the point where I thought I could get away with lagging behind when he said run. Or not running faster when he said run faster.
The sun was fully up and the March day heating up when we flew out over the flat desert floor, nearly back to the compound. The sun was in our eyes as we ran up to the isolated buildings. I was watching the ground because trail running was a recent activity for me. Cole was watching me, I think, because he was behind me making suggestions of what he'd do to the ass he was watching if I didn't make it go faster, faster, faster!
So I was laughing and breathing hard when I rounded the back of the compound, came up on the front of the main house and stopped so short that Cole literally ran into me.
There were men there, lots of men, wearing black cargo pants and tight black t-shirts that emphasized muscle. Not that they needed to because they held black satiny looking assault rifles, standing in kind of wide-legged parade rest stance.
My first thought, insane and made up out of nothing, was that Cole was under arrest for trafficking in controlled substances. Maybe the vines and roots and leaves he brought in from the rainforest were classified as drugs. The men standing there, moving from parade rest to active threat, looked like they could be DEA or some other alphabet soup agency. There were black SUVs arranged in a semicircle beyond them and that added to the first confused thought.
After that I went the other way, thinking they were there because of Cole's money, that they had been planning some kind of heist, some attack on Cole and his money and that I instantly discounted because Cole didn't keep millions of dollars in his home. Why would he?
It was only after these two wrong guesses that I saw Vincent step from one of the SUVs, wearing black also, but very obviously tailored and expensive black. His face was stony and at the same time, maliciously gleeful. He held an enormous automatic handgun at his side, holding it the right way, muzzle pointing down, gun following the line of his leg. His little rock hard eyes darted back and forth between me and Cole with dark pleasure.
Behind him, Kie climbed from the SUV, shivering a little in the dawn air. She wore a wisp of dress and absurdly high heels that would have hobbled her on any surface that wasn't concrete or wood. She was smiling despite the marks on her face where someone had crudely cut slashes on both cheeks. They were still red and puffy, not healed yet and looked infected. It was appalling to think anyone would have done that to her. I hated Kie, flat out hated her, but she was beautiful. Whoever had done that to her was crazy.
But of course Vincent had done that to her. And Vincent was crazy, I was convinced of it.
Vincent was crazy. And Vincent was here for me.
44
Cole
Vincent Geddes. Standing with his men, vehicles behind them and running, ready for the getaway.
My own men were - where? But a fast look around and I saw them all down, on their faces in the dirt. They were all armed. All of their guns were laying beside them. Three guards. One lay in a pool of blood spilling out from his shoulder.
They'd done what they were supposed to do. They’d defended the keep, even with me and Annie out on a run. The lead guard, Keith, lay with his hands laced behind his head and his face turned to the side. His cell was still in his fingers.
He'd tried to call, tried to warn me.
He was the one lying in an ever-expanding pool of his own blood. I needed to get an ambulance out here for him.
But first things first. The only thing I could do for Annie was step between her and the guns. I'd already done that. I couldn't tell her to run. She's fast, but they had cars, and those SUVs would easily skim the desert here. She couldn't outrun them.
We didn't have a panic room because we'd never had a need for a panic room and I disliked such things on principle.
Even if we did, the men in black had already surrounded us where we stood. She couldn't get into the house or into her own cell.
Everything went through my mind at the speed of light. The weight of the small Beretta Nano pressed into the small of my back, concealed carry in a custom holster for easy running. I could get to it, but Vincent had come armed with so many men, there was no way it would do any good.
He was grinning as he made his way over to me. His blond hair caught the early morning light and lit like a halo. Totally inappropriate. The son of a bitch made sadist sound like saint. I didn't know what to call him. He was one of our unofficial group of whatever we were, the Dark Philanthropists who got their kicks hurting each other's women and paying for the privilege, the proceeds going to charities designed to both do good, and make us laugh
.
Stopping human sex trafficking. Charitable contributions from men who bought and sold women and used them as we did.
Programs to teach girls in other countries skills they could use to stay out of the sex trades, while we bought and sold prostitutes when the games we were bidding on and meant to play were too rough even for the concubines in our beds and homes.
Those nights we assembled to eat good food, smoke good cannabis, drink amazing bourbon or tequila and whip and fuck the women we’d brought until they collapsed from the pain or shame or stress.
I watched Vincent. He was violent. He was crazy. Stepping out from behind him, grinning like a gargoyle and clearly at this point as insane as her owner, Kie sported new and unhealed cuts on her face.
I'd gone cold, the sweat of my run cooling on my back. "What do you think you're going to do?"
He laughed, sounding delighted, and clapped his hands as if he were a child, about to be given the best toy ever. But the display was purely to unnerve. Nothing of what he was doing had touched his eyes.
His eyes were cold and dead and avid. His gaze kept going back to Annie.
I'd wanted to keep her away from him and keep her safe. Safer. Because she was safer with me. I'd only hurt a girl permanently once. She was a freak and was partially responsible for what had happened, but I had been wielding the cane that broke her ribs and I'd never forgotten it. For all the sadism and savagery I inflicted on Annie, I knew where every blow would land, what every strike would feel like.
By trying to keep her away from him and keep her safe, I'd made her a target. By telling him he couldn't have her, I'd made him want her more. When I had put her up for bidding, I'd done so because it was early days. She meant nothing to me then.
That's what I told myself.
But then, I'd refused her to him.
So maybe I was lying to myself.
"Don't worry, Cole. It's only two weeks, right?" He turned his burning grin on me and I got an idea just how far gone he was. It wasn't drugs. It seemed to be simply insanity. "I'll leave you a marker," he said. "Collateral?" He gestured at Kie and she gave him the beatific smile of someone just as unhinged as he was and maybe, impossibly, even more cruel. "But I'm afraid that Kie is owed a bit of recompense from me – " He reached out and cupped her face hard, squeezing her damaged cheeks. Clear fluid oozed from the unhealed cuts. My head swam. "And I think from you as well."
He moved directly toward me and I didn't reach for the gun, schooled myself, put a hand up against him. His fist looked the size of a grapefruit as it came at my face. I deflected it easily and grabbed him by the front of his tailored shirt.
"Take your men and leave while you still can."
He looked down slowly at the fist curled into the linen. One hand rose and gestured and suddenly the men with guns weren't at parade rest any longer, they were on top of both of us, because Annie hadn't run.
Annie had only moved closer to me.
Now there were the barrels of assault weapons pressed to my temples and probably to hers. Now there was the sound of those guns being brought to bear. Now there was the promise of what could so easily be the next and the last sounds.
Still, I didn't move. For a minute I met him face to face, eye to eye. There were rules in our charitable games, enforceable treaties.
"Nothing permanent." My voice was like ice. I felt Annie tense all over behind me and realized she'd moved close enough to touch me.
"Nothing permanent," Vincent agreed with a carelessness meant to nettle.
"Nothing broken."
"Most likely," he said. "Old boy, you have no bargaining room. I will return your property marked but not permanently, possibly broken, but not in a way that won't heal. Eventually. Nothing will be cut off or dug out. Haven't those always been the rules?"
Behind me, Annie was shaking.
Behind me, the men with guns had grabbed her arms and she cried out and now I turned, letting go of Vincent's shirt, not caring if he struck at me again, but he didn't.
The pain he'd already inflicted had been more than enough for him.
She screamed and struggled as they shoved her into the SUV. The instant his men began moving to the vehicles my men were surrounding me, their guns again in their hands.
Exactly what they were supposed to do. I wanted to go after Vincent and they stood in my way.
I had to let them. I couldn't get her back if I were dead.
When the cars started to pull away, I came out from behind them, knelt, aimed and shot at the tires. The men around me shot at the vehicles she wasn't in. But of course a billionaire has the money to armor plate his cars. Several of the tires were hit but anyone going off-road in the desert is going to go with the kind of tires that would get them out of the back country and to a service station, still hard, waiting to be replaced.
The minute I stopped firing, I started shouting orders. For helicopters to go up. There's one at the compound and the pilot was already sprinting for it before I finished the order.
There were two other choppers I called in, launching from the city no more than fifteen minutes away from our location, but that was too long.
Another guard took a dirt bike, streaking out in the direction they'd gone.
Another went with me, in one of our own SUVs, and I was still on the phone, shouting now to the police, to the officers I knew who understood the lifestyle and understood the occasional bribe and all of it was far, far too late.
By the time the chopper was up, the bike was out, we were following, the police were called, they'd already convened in the desert in a different direction than Annie and I had come running from. The guards watching us were watching us as we ran. They'd done everything right. Everything had gone wrong anyway.
Out in the desert, in a direction she and I hadn't been, Vincent and his men had changed vehicles. The black SUVs would show nothing until closely inspected and then there'd be some trace evidence that she had been in one of them but probably nothing more. Whatever vehicle she was in now, it wasn't a black SUV.
I had been to Vincent's house. I had fucked his wife and beaten his girlfriends and he'd had similar times in my company. I had been to the houses of others in our circle, and interacted with Vincent there.
None of the others would be a part of this. But none of the others would be a part of this in my defense, either. This was predators going after each other's prey and everything was already outside the law. Only the bribed members of the metro PD and those who didn't know she wasn't my girlfriend but something else would act. It would all be treated with kid gloves.
Both sides.
At our level of wealth and power, either one of us could make the other disappear. But either one could disappear himself and Vincent had already done so, and taken Annie with him.
When I first became a part of our so-called philanthropic circle, I knew none of the men I now routinely interacted with. Of all of them, I'd say Claude was closest to a friend. I didn't believe he'd step in and take sides.
Times like these I understood that money doesn't ensure friendship. Or safety. Or any of the things that matter in life. Whatever games I played with Annie, I would never have hurt her beyond her capacity to endure. There was her addiction to worry about.
There was her loss to fear. Like I had lost my sister. To drugs and to men who didn't deserve to walk the surface of the earth.
There were other men out there with secret pasts and frightening presents. Men whose specialized training and horrific backgrounds made them ill-suited to modern life in polite society but who, as vigilantes and mercenaries, I could hire to go where I couldn't and do what I was incapable of.
"Take me back," I told the driver.
Paul turned without question and headed back to the compound. "What can I do now, boss?"
"Call everyone in." I had six guards though Keith was on his way to the hospital with the shoulder wound, and Jason was still shaky, not so much physically but he'd had a hard time comi
ng back from being whipped. That left Paul and three others. I wanted a short, fast meeting where they’d present their ideas and then get out there and search again.
Useless but they had to be somewhere. Though if I were Vincent – the thought made me grind my teeth, thinking what I'd do to Kie if I ever got my hands on her – I'd already be at the airport.
"We've covered the airport?" I said it flat because there could not be any question.
"Yes, boss."
So I would call them in and we would meet and they would go to work. And I would trigger the number I had in reserve and bring down the mercs and send them out into the world, financed to find and drag Vincent back to deal with my anger and bring Annie safely home.
And if they couldn't bring Annie safely home, then Vincent wouldn't return alive, either.
Because I could find her. I'd be a step behind, racing to catch up, but he couldn't keep her from me forever. The pinch she'd felt during the exam, the one that made her cry out in pain – that had been a tracker being injected into place.
There was nowhere he could take her I couldn't find her eventually. And when I did, there was nothing I wouldn't do to bring her back.
Nothing.
45
Annie
The first ride took only minutes. The black Honda sped into the desert, kicking up rocks and dust. Cranking my head around, I could see Cole was still standing. The other men had their guns drawn but there was no gunfire.
Vincent shook me and I turned back around. He was in the middle seats with me and on my other side, where I'd been thrown into the vehicle, Kie sat grinning, a truly horrifying, gory sight.
"We're going to have so much fun with you," she cooed in a voice that sent chills up my spine.
I'd gone deep cover in gangs where the slightest misstep could have seen me tortured and killed. I'd fucked Jesse for - how many months? - and he'd dislocated my jaw. I'd been in more than one firefight undercover where, if killed, I might never be found by friends and family.