by Sophia Reed
"Oh, not till you get here, sweet girl," Kie said. "If you have trouble with the chopper, call from the airport." Pause. Then in a syrupy, terrifying voice: "We're just dying to see you."
She disconnected.
The big plastic-framed clock said I had minutes to get back to my room before Zach arrived. If I tried to hurry, if I exhibited anxiety about getting there on time, I'd be held up by concerned staff and some unconcerned it's my job doctor.
I hung up. I didn't bother with meaningless pleasantries to the open line. If they were listening in, they'd have already known she'd hung up.
I knocked on the door. I stood back and waited calmly, my hands folded in front of me, for the slow-as-shit Bunny to come let me out.
"Everything all right?" she chirped and I froze for a second, but this was just Bunny, being Bunny.
"Pretty much the same as it has been. When's the wedding? How do I feel? He's testing the cakes without me!" I managed a smidgen of indignant to creep into my voice.
"He has a nerve." Bunny laughed.
I made some kind of strangled sound, thanked her, and went into my room.
Zach was there less than two minutes later. I was still shaking.
"I have to get out today."
I thought he'd freak out at that. Zach struck me as a ‘make a plan and then stick to the damn plan’ kind of person.
He surprised me. "I've been backing the bus up to the dock every time I come by," he said. "Just in case it was now."
I gave him a quick, nervous smile. "I owe you, dude."
His grin split his face wide open. "I'm having fun," he said.
He could lose his job for this. But though I felt that and thought he hadn't considered it, I said nothing.
I had to get to Cole.
Being outside even for the minutes it took to go through the hospital back entrance and to the waiting van was frightening. It's easy to become institutionalized and the hospital was one of the few places I'd been really safe in a couple years. They even kept Mark away from me. I'd never had anyone do that for me. Even I hadn't been able to do it.
Before. I thought ending the engagement would be a lot easier now.
The flesh on my back crawled, waiting to hear an alarm sound or someone shout for us to stop. But me talking to Zach had become a routine sight. The bus pulled up to loading and unloading, that was definitely familiar.
There were no alarms. There was no anything. Just Zach giving me a hand up to the back of the bus and me lying down on the stretcher and the other tech, one I hadn't met, raising a brow at Zach, getting his nod, helping me onto the stretcher, explaining briefly the straps were seatbelts of a sort. He didn't put on the wrist restraints after I growled, and sat down to start routine monitoring.
I didn't mind that. My blood pressure would probably convince the guy I actually needed to go to the hospital.
Zach slammed the back of the bus shut and jumped into the driver’s seat.
We drove away from the hospital.
Just like that.
The chopper was waiting. All I had to do was identify myself as Cole St. Martin's guest.
"His fiancée?" the desk clerk burbled.
Really? And was that Kie or Cole? Because if Cole knew where I was, he might have already been putting plans into action.
Good. Because I had to move. I had to get to him.
The chopper lifted smoothly and banked, turning in a tight circle under skilled hands, then powered up and headed toward southern Nevada.
And Cole St. Martin. Sadistic son of a bitch. "Owner." "Master."
The man who saved my life.
The man whose life I needed to save now.
I couldn't help it. It was useless, but I sat hunched forward. Trying to get there faster. Cursing the distance between us.
Cursing Kie.
Straining to get to Cole.
37
Cole
She's on her way.
She'll be here soon.
The chopper will get her here in record time.
Kie's prowling the house for food and things to destroy. As if I care what she eats or breaks.
I just need her to leave me alive until I see Annie again.
I just need her to take me out instead of Annie. Because Annie deserves a chance.
I lied. I want Kie dead before Annie's anywhere near this place. I never want her to have to see this woman again.
I don't see a solution yet. Kie has all the men and all the guns. I'm not sure how many of my men are still alive. Theoretically they've been locked in Annie's cell and I know for a fact it's escape proof.
Ariel's sometimes in the middle of this maze.
Annie's on her way back, heading straight into this mess.
At least I get to see her again.
All I can do now - is wait.
* * *
End of Book Three
The Deep Cover series
Book 4
Punished by the Billionaire
Synopsis
Annie Knox
Just free of the hospital where her father and fiancé had her involuntarily committed, suspended undercover narc Annie Knox is already on her way back to Southern Nevada and Cole St. Martin when the call comes in. Cole's being held by the psychopathic sexual submissive Kie, whose Master Annie shot and killed after he held her prisoner. Now the flight from Seattle to Vegas takes on a sense of panic. The psycho wants Annie – and she'll hurt Cole to get her.
* * *
Cole St. Martin
In business, Cole St. Martin is hard and controlling; he gets what he wants. In his personal life, Cole St. Martin is hard and controlling and he pays for what he wants: Submissives with nowhere else to go, who will bend to every whim of his sexual sadism. There's a chance that Annie can change him – but only if they both live through the psycho holding a razor to his throat.
* * *
Kie's not the only dangerous player in their lives. There are other billionaires with dark proclivities and Annie's innocence and how new she is to the lifestyle intrigues them. Cole's not the only rich sadist determined to get what he wants at any cost. After a turn of events leaves Annie under the control of another brutal Master, it's up to Annie and Cole to find a way back to each other.
* * *
And then find out
if that's where they actually belong.
1
Annie
The helicopter kicked up dust and stones as it settled onto the desert floor. April winds rocked the craft for the second half of the flight from Seattle, making me tremble with nausea and fear. Las Vegas appearing in the distance was a welcome sight.
I spent the flight hunched forward, every part of my anatomy straining in the direction we were headed. As if I could make everything move faster if I jutted my chin forward, strained my neck. We'd arrive what, two seconds faster? It's only a two hour flight between the cities, but two hours is forever when lives hang in the balance. It had taken forever to reach the airport. It felt like forever once at the airport, transferred from hiding in the back of an ambulance, sure at any second a cry would go up and security guards and Seattle PD would race in to apprehend me.
As if anyone cared about one twenty-four year old escaping a mental hospital where she'd been involuntarily committed only because two men in her life found it expedient.
As the chopper landed it was only four hours earlier that I'd been an in-patient in a mental hospital, involuntarily committed by my father and the man who would soon officially be my ex-fiancé. Logically they might have wanted to have me committed for opiate addiction, though a reputable hospital would have redirected them to a treatment facility.
Where I would not have gotten any better. Or at least not permanently better. The return rate and the number of people addicted again is insanely high.
But I had been getting help while committed. Not the help they thought I needed. The hospital dealt with an addiction I no longer had. And while my father was conc
erned with that opiate addiction, temporarily beaten or not, it wasn't his main concern once he found out the circumstances surrounding my stay in Vegas, and it had never been Mark's first priority.
Because when the addiction first took hold, I'd been "sold" to a billionaire CEO of a pharmaceuticals company by a fellow Seattle cop who had as much right to sell me as I did to sell the helicopter I'd just bailed out of.
Now my feet hit the desert floor, instantly finding the first of the rocks and stickers that would sink into my bare flesh. I'd left the hospital with no shoes, only the shapeless sweats the staff dressed us in. The EMT driver who smuggled me out, someone I'd gone to high school with who believed me when I said I was undercover in the hospital and things had gone wrong with the assignment, had brought me Walmart jeans and t-shirt but he hadn't brought me shoes.
I couldn't blame him. He thought I was Seattle PD, not a – what? - junkie returning to her "Owner" in a rural desert compound outside las Vegas.
Not that the latter sounded any more convincing. It would have been less convincing to anyone why I had remained in the desert if the addiction was cured and the contract binding me to the man who cured it was something I considered illegal and unenforceable.
I didn't believe I'd really been sold to Cole St. Martin. CEO, philanthropist, beautiful long-limbed, tall man with a smile that looked like an inverted triangle, all devilish glee.
Sexual sadist.
His investigations into using rainforest naturals to craft cures for opiate addiction were working. He'd bought me from a crooked cop because he wanted someone who would be indebted to him, someone who could disappear for a long period of time the same way an undercover, deep cover cop could, or someone going into rehab.
I was all those things, in danger of losing the career I loved and possibly my life. He'd honestly helped me. I was clean, off fet, because of him.
He'd honestly hurt me. His sadism wasn't make believe. His Master/slave, Owner/slave, Dominant/submissive or any other Control/controlled relationship that could be described wasn't a game.
It was serious.
But for a cop who cut her teeth in narcotics and then went undercover by the age of 24, but who looked 17 and sometimes still felt it, maybe a little control didn't hurt.
Insane I'd think that. I was the least likely person ever to bend her will to another's.
Then again, I was feeling panic for him, running as fast as I could because the helicopter hadn't used the helipad on the roof of the compound.
No. It had followed the directions of the psycho bitch who was holding Cole hostage in his own home, threatening to kill him if I didn't come back to Southern Nevada, didn't answer her demands.
Kie. If she had a last name, I didn't know it. If she'd been married to the other man who'd hurt me but who, having kidnapped me, meant for that hurt to end in death, then her last name was Geddes.
I wasn't convinced they'd been married. More likely bound in some bond of blood – hers and that of the people they hurt together. Kie was a masochist, that was certain, and had given herself or been given to Vincent. But she was also a sadist, both sexually and otherwise. What she had done to me during a gathering under Cole's roof had caused massive pain. When she'd been punished for it, a punishment even the masochist in her didn't enjoy, I had no doubt she had become fully invested in Vincent kidnapping me from Cole.
Then once Vincent had me prisoner in Paris, Kie hurt me again, but this time, not held back by any other person, she herself panicked at the amount of pain she put me in and ran for a way to neutralize it.
That one act would have been the only reason I showed her any mercy when Cole rescued me and together we killed Kie's Master. I would have let her live as a fellow survivor of Vincent Geddes.
But Vincent had supposedly left her for us to find. Kie was supposed to be dead.
She wasn't. Just as Cole discovered where I was and was preparing to do something to get me out of the hospital and back to Southern Nevada with him, Kie who was supposed to be a dead body in Paris, showed up as a live bitch in Nevada.
For two hours between Seattle and Vegas I've been picturing all sorts of scenarios. Because it was supposed to be Cole who called the hospital pretending to be my fiancé, relaying a plan to free me and take me back to Vegas via helicopter. If it had worked that way, I'd have been taken out directly and not hidden in a series of ambulances that smuggled me to the airport. Likely I'd have been flown directly from the roof of the hospital to the compound itself. Cole had money and money had a way of getting Cole the results he wanted.
I wouldn't have been dropped barefoot in the desert two miles from my destination.
The Nevada desert is full of ram's head thorns that feel like thick needles when stepped on, full of foxtails which are like the tops of wheat when it's growing, but all hard and sharp and designed to catch on things.
Every growing thing wants to spread itself around, get planted somewhere new where it can thrive, and so every growing thing develops ways of transporting its seeds. In the high desert, that usually involves becoming a thorn.
So running barefoot over the desert floor, everything hurts. But Cole has hurt me more than this and I'm desperate to get to him. The only time I succumb to the pain in my feet is for one thorn too big to run with.
Then I cover two miles of trail-running in just over twenty minutes. I'm flying by the time I come around to the front entrance of the compound where it faces southeast, and the only reason I stop is the guards who draw down on me instantly, assault rifles at the ready, as if one slim, five-five female could fuck them up.
I could. Black belt Survival-trained. Hand to hand combat. And having ridden with the Brotherhood in Seattle when I was undercover with Jesse, the leader of the gang. It was that assignment that led directly to my opiate addiction, after Jesse was killed and I was out from under the assignment, back with my fiancé (ex- fiancé, he has no idea how much it's ex). That was when I found the roll of bills in one pocket of my jeans as home, theoretically, and safe and sound, I started to do laundry. One roll of bills from the pocket of a pair of jeans, and the first sample free, everybody! Baggies of fentanyl.
Everything that followed seemed almost preordained.
Except Kie. Fucking Kie.
The men with the guns trained on me are not backing down. That means they're here with her. They could just have been new guards for Cole's compound. He doesn't get attached to the help. There's a lot of turnover. The most loyal are with him the longest. I'd recognize them, like Jason who laughed at me the first time Kie hurt me and we were under Cole's roof. Cole had him beaten so bad he was hospitalized. He came back, though, and Cole handled all his medical bills. Or like the guards who always stared at me whenever Cole did something to humiliate me in front of whoever was there. Those are the long-term guards and they're exactly as long term as they do what Cole wants.
Everyone else comes and goes.
That wasn't what I was facing, newbies unprepared for my arrival, and my arrival at her demand wasn't a ruse. Kie was truly here, alive, inside, with Cole.
Slowly, I put my hands up.
It only took an instant for the men with guards to pat me down. Clearly I wasn't carrying much. So far no one had spoken, not a word had been exchanged. There was no reason to. Their guns said Stop where you are and that the situation was out of my control and out of Cole's. The very presence of these men said both Your enemy is inside and You're fucked.
They started for the door and I didn't move. When the largest of the men turned to look at me – of the four, he was the only one who had to be six-six or taller – I put my hands gingerly against the siding of the main structure and leaned up onto one leg. The other I crossed over my knee.
"Stickers," I said, and then, "Fucking ram's heads." There were a neat half dozen in that foot. At least they came out easily. Moving slow so as to not freak out the men who were now circling me from behind – not my favorite place to have people with guns – I did
the same with the other foot.
The whole time everything inside me screamed to get to Cole. But I had to be as ready to face Kie as I could. I couldn't be hampered by sudden, intense pain from a thorn when I went up against her.
Kie. And not Vincent. Facing Vincent might have made me fall. He had hurt me when he kidnapped me and dragged me to Paris. There was nothing soft about Cole, and his sexual sadism was no joke.
But Vincent. Vincent was pure psychopath. There was not an ounce of kindness in him. So it was important for me to understand that Vincent was dead. Cole had shot him in the head at the same time I had used the palm heel of my hand to drive the cartilage of his nose up into his brain.
Still, digging thorns out of my feet, I took a second to whisper a chant to myself, tenets of TaeKwon-Do – courtesy, integrity, perseverance, strength, indomitable spirit – and when I found that didn't help, because none of them fit for facing off against Kie, well, maybe all but courtesy, which she didn't deserve – I murmured to myself, Kill the bitch.
I stood and nodded thanks to the guard who had given me space to clear my head as well as my feet. Maybe he'd been ordered to do that. I didn't know. Kie was trained in something. Maybe she wanted some kind of grudge match.
If so, bring it.
I nodded again and the guard unlocked the compound doors.
For no good reason, I had some kind of weird post apocalyptic image in my head. I'd go through the doors and Kie would be sitting at the top of some high perch, like high school gym bleachers. There would be guards in weird clothes and the weapon held on Cole would be indescribable.
Or there'd be vast wastelands inside the house. Or wild animals. Clearly I'd been watching too much SyFy in the hospital.