by Sophia Reed
All she had to do was say she was here voluntarily and not mention the contract. She had no reason to. They had no way of knowing about it.
Except they did. I had no idea how, but they'd found a contract from a former sub. They must have used hackers and computer techs similar to my team to come up with the information they had.
They had a contract. Unbelievable.
Dark suspicion then. Annie's people had gone months with her "in rehab" and not done anything like this. Who said they decided to act and then found the contract?
What if someone provided them the contract as evidence of what their own beloved might be experiencing and then they decided to act?
What if that someone was Kie?
Kie's dead. I had seen the body.
…hadn't I?
But it had been pretty messed up. It's not like there had been time to do a DNA test which would only be useful if there was a sample to compare it to.
And I was sure she was dead. I had been then and I was now.
"I'm an adult," Annie said, staring at her fiancé rather than her father. Her cheeks bloomed the scarlet I was used to seeing when she was humiliated.
"Lots of adults get subsumed into cults," Mark said. He put his arm around her and she shrugged it off angrily, taking a step toward me.
I shook my head minutely. Not now. For now we needed to let them have what they'd think of as a victory. For me, I needed to know suddenly whether she'd come back if the choice were up to her.
Or rather, since she had in the past, if she would again.
We all stood inside her sunny but largely sterile white suite. Their faces were incredulous. Annie's prison cell had never looked as much like a prison as it did now.
30
Annie
"I have been out of my mind afraid for you. I want to take a look at you right now."
Mark wouldn't stop pawing at me. For a rescue, it felt remarkably like an arrest. Cole had insisted we let it go for now. He was relying on his money and prestige and the fact that a retired, once up-on-charges cop and a not-quite-doctor still doing rotations weren’t exactly supposed to be leading a proto-police force.
I was relying on the fact that this was my family but at the moment it was more of a problem that they were my family and what I wanted to do was put my fists in their faces and go back to Cole's side.
I'd wanted to go back to him the entire time I'd been held by Vincent but I had thought that made sense. Vincent had been torturing me. He'd been an actual kidnapper.
These were supposed to be family.
The idea of family is fairly fluid. It can change when you're not looking, the same way the concept of home can.
"Mark, let go. Give me a little space."
Mark's a big guy. He played high school football and he played in college the first two years before he became serious about being a doctor and his studies became everything. That was about the time we met, so I'd always known him as a big, strong guy – five-eleven, one-eighty – who was definitely going to have to watch his carbs later in life. Or sooner.
I could take him easily, though. Unless he was going to do some football thing – I couldn't even remember what position he played, running back, I knew that, I just didn't know what they did and it was in the past so he didn't bother to explain it – I was the one with the training and I was good at what I did.
That didn't give me free license to throw my semi-ex fiancé over my shoulder.
Mark didn't back off and give me room. He continued to guide me as if he had a fucking clue where he was going. He was steering me by one elbow and when I attempted to stop by digging my feet in, he dragged me.
Right. That got my heart pounding because it meant the so-called rescue was as problematic as I feared.
My father was right there, but he was useless to me. Every other second he raged at Cole, who answered him calmly and continued speaking even after my father began to rage again.
"Come this way," Mark said and dragged me several steps before he realized I wasn't going willingly. "Annie, please be reasonable.'
"About what?" We were in the main house of the compound, having gone from the suite through the April heat and back inside as if Mark had any fucking idea where he was going.
He looked back at me, his wire-rimmed glasses obscuring his eyes briefly and making him look like – I wasn't sure.
Something threatening. When his glasses flared white like that and I couldn't see his eyes, it seemed like he was something else. Something not human. Or something horribly possessed from some bad horror movie.
The strangeness of the day was creeping up on me. I was barefoot but wearing jeans and a t-shirt. That made me feel a little better.
"Jesus, what happened to your hair?" he asked as we stood staring at each other in the hallway.
Anger grew again. "Is that really what you want to know?"
"At the moment." He kept his head turned toward me, glasses still white, and irritably I shifted so I could see his eyes.
They looked both like the eyes of a weak man who took his victories in petty ways, and like someone determined, perhaps dangerously so.
My heart started counter-beating in my belly, like a deathwatch.
"I cut it," I said, owning it suddenly. I hadn't, but it gave me strength to know, suddenly, I'd done something that Mark had no say in.
He looked at me critically, leaning in close to look at the back of it. "Why so short?"
"Screw my hair, damn it! What are you doing here? I'm getting help and you team up with my father and just break in here?"
His face went stony. "I'm here to take you home. I've been hearing things about this guy. Things I'm having a hard time believing and hope aren't true. I need you to come with me."
"Yeah, I got that," I said. "Seattle? Portland?" Or did he have some other surprise, like "we" had moved.
Mark looked disconcerted. "No, I mean right now. I want to take a look at you."
What he was saying suddenly came through to me. He meant examination. Mark my fucking fiancé wanted to fucking get me on a damned table and play doctor.
The horror hit me so hard I gagged and my reaction was instant and unconsidered: I slammed him with both hands to the solar plexus and sent him flying backward, careening into the wall behind him before he hit it and slid down it.
"Annie!"
But I was already running.
The problem with proudly breaking into the billionaire's compound is the fact that it's now open.
The hallway we were in makes a sharp turn and there was blue sky ahead of me right out one of the main compound doors. I sprinted, pretty sure I could make it before Mark did and there hadn't been any men with guns with him because he was convinced he had me well in hand.
Plus, he wasn't going to have me shot.
But the problem with trying to escape from the now wide-open compound belonging to the billionaire is that it dropped me into southern Nevada desert. The tallest foliage around me was no more than waist height.
Mark might not be able to move, but his mercs could. They caught me easily, full of "Whoa, there, girl, everyone's trying to help!" and other jolly little lady things that made me want to scratch their eyes out and demand if they knew what I did for a living.
Of course they did. Whoa, there, girl was meant to be infuriating.
Next thing I knew I was in the center seat of another big SUV. Damned things should be banned. They were a kidnapper’s dream and the feds really did use them for their work. A world without black SUVs would be a kinder, healthier place.
My mind was doing its old ADHD stuff, throwing up random ideas and insisting we had to get out of there right then.
There wasn't any danger. It wasn't a full out panic attack but it was something along those lines. When my body and mind got together and said Go, now.
Last time had been in Paris and that had just happened.
Now I didn't have Cole with me. Again. I was realizing how grounded
he made me feel. Fight as I always would against the morning routines and the invasive humiliations and the spankings, the canings, the corner time or being tied-up, against being told not to look right at him or to call him sir – all that was trappings.
I wanted to be here.
Because, I told myself firmly, despite the fact that Mark was talking - He'd stop. He'd figure out I wasn't listening. I wanted to be here because Cole was helping me.
The last few years of undercover. The only few years. It had only been something like two years or a little more, I couldn't figure it out exactly with Mark yapping at me, but two years, and I'd been strong and indomitable. I'd gone into terrifying situations willingly.
I'd brought down bad men.
I'd slept with bad men. Sometimes I'd liked it.
But I'd been off balance the whole time. That was news from my subconscious. And now with Cole, I was getting a handle on the fact that there seemed to be two Annies inside me, one of whom wasn't quite the warrior the other was.
One of them didn't crave safety and comfort. But she craved someone to fight against. Someone with a vested interest in making her fight.
Someone who saw her as strong in all her incarnations.
"You're not listening to me," Mark said.
"You're not saying anything," I said and watched his face purple. Before he could speak again, I said, "You believe that Cole St. Martin is some kind of cult, apparently by himself, which I'm not really sure is possible. You think that I've been kept here against my will."
Mark's fists were clenched on his knees. He hunched forward in the center seat of the SUV, too close to me and looking a little like a gargoyle. "I know it's against your will."
I breathed out. "Yes. It is. But so would rehab be. That's why they ask you to voluntarily commit yourself. Once you give your permission to be held for X amount of time, you're free to rail against them holding you and they're free to keep you there." I spread my hands reasonably but he looked anything but reasonable.
31
Cole
"I ought to blow your head off, you son of a bitch."
Daniel Knox. He was older than I'd expected, even knowing he was retired. Annie and her sisters were in their twenties, all the sisters, I thought, though only Annie mattered to me. But despite their ages, Daniel Knox seemed late fifties. There were lines on his face, roadmaps of what he'd done in his life.
Annie had been explicitly on his side regarding the charges brought against him for not quite towing the line with PD over the years. I wondered if now she'd have a different take on it. She didn't believe her father had done nothing wrong. She had only believed that her father had done things wrong in the pursuit of doing what was right.
Now, he considered himself on the side of the angels, but I was willing to bet Annie would have different thoughts.
He'd dragged me off into the living room where the unfortunate swap party had gone so horribly wrong and Vincent, already on his way to being out of his mind, had put in motion the events that would lead to everything we'd just gone through.
Somehow it seemed a fitting place to be forcefully dealt with by Annie's dad. Only I didn't intend for that to happen.
"For what?" I asked.
He looked at me like I was insane. "For what you've done to my daughter."
He'd glared me into taking a seat on the couch, but he was pacing my living room and I stood, moved purposefully around him and poured myself a sparkling water at the bar. "Can I get you something?"
He looked like a bull about to charge. He was a big man, with a big moustache and big features, nothing like his daughter. "You son – "
"I know. You told me already." I toasted him with my drink. I wasn't whistling past the grave yard or being smartass. I just refused to be afraid. I drank my water, put the glass down, and addressed him where he paced.
"When Annie was brought here – "
"Don't use her name." He snarled it.
"Her name is Annie. It's a polite thing for me to call her. I'm going to be polite. You're in my home. You could learn the same thing."
He showed me his gun.
I shrugged. "When your daughter was brought here, she had a hell of a fentanyl addiction. I know you're aware of it because she told me you are. The way she got here wasn't exactly standard."
He swung around to face me. "What do you mean?"
I shrugged again, one shoulder this time. "I have no lab, no medical office. I have no way to do blood draws and nowhere to send them if I did. But I have a natural substance from the rainforest which is proving to be amazingly effective at curing addictions while not causing a secondary. It has no nasty side effects and very few positive effects other than curing addiction. It gives the person who takes it a very slight increase in feeling awake and alert, and a little bit of - not euphoria but just feeling more at ease. And it cures addiction. Period. Annie can't get that anywhere else. I've given her a place to stay where she's safe and not exposed to drugs, and isn't working undercover."
He looked a little surprised at that, and then his mind connected the dots. "You found her through Dave Samuels." It came out a statement, not a question, and he wasn't wrong.
Samuels was a crooked cop and he'd been Annie's handler when she was deep cover. He'd essentially sold her to me, not that such things were possible in this day and age.
Except they totally are. He'd gotten the money and that was enough to get her trapped, tagged and bagged and sent my way.
Money can do anything, especially when the person on the receiving end is law enforcement and dirty.
Samuels had disappeared somewhere along the line. Shit happens when your motives are that dirty.
"Samuels knew I could help her."
"Bullshit!" He was in a flat out rage now.
"No, it's not. He did know I could help her. He wasn't in any way doing it out of the goodness of his heart." When I saw he knew where I was going, I said, "He was doing it for his checking account."
"Samuels vanished," Knox said.
"How about that."
He gave me a long look. "You've had her here in a cell. Locked down. You didn't allow her to be in contact with her family. You have a lot to answer for." His face kept getting redder and I thought about what Annie had said about his heart attacks and bypass surgery.
But I didn't do much to calm him down. Just pointed out that lockdown was typical for rehab, as was being out of touch with the everyday world. That was kind of the point.
When he started up again, angry questions that were all the same and were never going to actually get to Are you fucking her? Because he really didn't want to know, or Have you hurt her? if he'd heard about my proclivities, because he was outnumbered here and couldn't take the answer, I had my men step into the room. He'd brought four.
By now I had all eight called in. I had more money, more firepower, and Annie.
But in the end, they won where Annie was concerned.
32
Annie
It was an interrogation, of course. All the way to the airport. And from the airport as we drove off in the direction of the apartment I shared with Mark.
They asked me why I was there, how I'd found out about Cole, what he did to me, who else was there, what he'd given me, where I'd been during the time I was out of touch after having been in touch for a while.
I answered what I wanted to answer and didn't answer the rest. I told them that I had heard of Cole from someone on the force but that I wouldn't say who. Frankly I'd be happy as hell if they suspected the lieutenant and went after him. He didn't have anything to do with it and probably hadn't known until all this happened, but he'd still stuck my neck out further than I wanted it. Mine, my father's, Mark's. All our necks.
The dirty cop who had initially sold me out, who had known about my addiction in the first place, he was long gone off the force, with a pocketful of Cole's money I suspected, and in the wind. Or else he was dead. I actually owed Samuels a debt. Without
him doing what he'd done, I might actually be dead by now. That didn't mean I felt indebted. He'd still done a shit thing, selling a human, and he'd have sold me whether Cole was legit or as crazy as Vincent. As it was, I was sure he'd sold me without knowing one way or the other.
If I ever ran into Samuels again – if there still was a Samuels to run into – maybe I did owe him a debt. Of sorts.
I told them I'd been out of the country when I was out of touch. I refused to say where, with whom or why.
I pointed out that Cole was the CEO of a pharmaceuticals company and probably could be trusted to know what he was giving me to help turn the tide of my addiction and to know all the side effects as well, and how to combat them.
My father and my fiancé, sounding eerily alike, found this absurd. Cole wasn't a doctor, insisted Mark, maybe feeling threatened. So therefore, even though anyone in pharma had to know all the effects of any drug on any person, they didn't think he was qualified to know this.
And then showing up at the apartment and all I could think was, Is this it? Had they really come to my "rescue," metaphorical guns blazing, only to bring me home?
No, they weren't.
Of course.
For the most part, even family members can't get someone involuntarily committed. They might be able to get someone to sign off on a 72-hour hold, but not commitment. That's something that happens in the movies when there's a need to get a character offscreen for a while, out of the way, or else to expose them to something ghastly.
Then again, if one of the people wanting the commitment is an incipient doctor and the other person a decorated police officer whose recent problems with IAD aren't known outside the law enforcement community? It's possible.
That was the plan. Mine was to run like hell the minute someone turned their back but no one did.
Mark continued to want to do a physical exam, which I was starting to think he was looking at as payback for whatever cheating he assumed I'd done. There I got lucky. The female psych ward doc thought I'd already been through enough trauma and an exam was unwarranted for now and would continue to be unwarranted where a goddamn family member was concerned, she continued when he pressed, so he should just back the hell off. Then she made him leave while she did a basic intake – blood pressure, heart rate, Q&A on drugs, suicidal ideation, desire to punch my boyfriend in the face.