Lucy. Her brunette hair sits on top of her head in a loose ponytail and her cheeks fill with pink life as she gazes up at me.
“Hi,” she says, smiling.
Just two letters and my heart skips. I bend down to kiss her forehead and she leans into it, welcoming the soft embrace.
I gesture behind me as I sit down next to Lucy, making note of Elijah and Lilah’s black bags lying stacked near the front door. “Going somewhere?” I ask.
“We have a little business to tend to.” Elijah nods, laying the last of the bandage around Lucy’s little wrist.
“What kind of business?”
Lilah swallows a large gulp of her coffee. “Nothing to worry your pretty little head about—”
“Lilah—”
She laughs. “Seriously. It’s nothing. More than anything, we just want to give the two of you some privacy.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Lucy says. “This is your house more than it is mine.”
“We disagree,” Elijah says.
“And…” Lilah shrugs. “We need to take a little time for ourselves. Snake Eyes was a part of us for so long. Living off-mission feels… strange.”
I nod. “I know what you mean.”
“Maybe it is time to start over,” she says. “Build a new life somewhere.”
“Maybe it is,” I say.
I reach for Lucy, laying my hand on her shoulder. Her lips twitch as I run my thumb over her skin, and she looks at me with love.
Elijah reaches into his bag and pulls out a cellular phone. “We set up a secure line for all of us to keep in touch,” he says, sliding it across the table at me. “Just in case.”
“Exactly what everyone needs when easing into civilian life,” I joke.
He chuckles. “It’s an interesting transition.”
I take the phone and fight the urge to give them instructions. They stare across the table at me, expecting me to give them orders, but I keep quiet. My days of trying to control them are long over. I’m not even sure if I ever had them at all.
Lilah grins. “We’ll be careful.”
“I know.”
She stands up and walks over to me. I join her in a hug, and I brace myself for her tight, unyielding squeeze.
“Take care of each other,” I say.
“Ditto,” she says.
Elijah takes her place. “Please stop letting Lucy hurt herself…” he jokes, but not really. “My medkit is only so big.”
“I would if I could,” I say, looking at her mischievous face.
Lucy laughs and shrugs her little shoulders. “I’ll try and behave.”
“Liar,” I say.
The twins say their goodbyes to Lucy and grab their bags by the door. I sit with her, staring into her green eyes while listening to their bikes take off down the drive.
“You think they’ll be back?” she asks.
“Someday.” I nod. My lips curl. “But not for a while.”
I grab her hand and pull her toward me. She slides off her chair and over mine, straddling my waist as our lips press together. I touch her little body and a powerful urge rises in me to take her here and now.
Lucy moans against my mouth, tasting my tongue as she sways her hips on me. Her hand falls south, and she cups the growing bulge, massaging me the way I like it.
The phone vibrates, tittering softly against the table.
I reach for it, sighing. “What do they need now?”
Lucy’s mouth falls to my neck, silently teasing me with kisses as I bring the phone to my ear.
“Yeah?” I answer it.
“I heard you were looking for me.”
I slide Lucy off my lap, leaving her in confusion as I step outside onto the porch.
His voice — young but hard with experience — twitches a nerve deep in my brain.
“Fox Fitzpatrick.” I say his name and my tongue tastes like bile. “How did you get this number?”
“I know a guy who knows some things.”
I snort. “So I heard. What do you want?”
“To talk.”
I listen for any background noise — anything that might hint at where he is — but Fox is too well-trained for a screw up like that. “From what I’ve heard, you’ve been doing a lot more than talking lately, Fox. There’s an awfully long line of dead agents behind you right now.”
“They tried to take someone important from me. I reacted. Perhaps you know a thing or two about that.”
My gaze pulls toward the house. “I might.”
“Then, it shouldn’t be too far of a stretch to suggest a truce between us.”
I chuckle. “And here I thought you called to threaten me.”
“I thought about it. There’s only one way Mercer could have known about her.”
I go quiet. He hears it.
“It’s all right, Dante,” he says.
“Cut the crap, Fox,” I say. “What I did doesn’t compare to what you’ve done. What you did brought a great deal of pain on me and my family and that’s not something I’m prepared to forgive.” I hear his breath, calm and steady. “Actions have consequences.”
“I know that,” he says. “My life is nothing but consequences as of late, but I have people who depend on me. I’m betting you do, too.”
“You’re not wrong about that.”
“I’m not asking for forgiveness. Just a little distance.”
I glance around my childhood home and fill my lungs with clear, forest air. “Well, as it stands, distance isn’t too far out of my way right now… but I suppose you already know that, too.” He says nothing. “I have more important things to worry about than you, Fox.”
“Same goes for me.”
“But if I ever see you again face-to-face, well…” I pause. “You know how that will end up, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then.” I take a breath, forcing my rage into the background and locking it away. “Good talk.”
I hang up and stuff the phone into my pocket. My ears readjust, taking in the noises of wildlife and the steady rolling of water against the dock.
“Dante?” Lucy stands in the doorway with twitching green eyes. She tilts her head at me. “You okay?”
I smile, looking her up and down. “Yeah.”
“Who was that?”
I bridge the short gap between us and lay my palm against her cheek. “No one who matters.”
My lips find her skin, gently grazing the smoothness of her forehead. Her scent fills my nose and her warmth changes my cold skin. She turns her face up and I kiss her softly, absorbing as much of her as I can.
“Wanna play cards, Mr. Hart?” she asks, holding a deck in her hand.
I bend down and pick her up. Joy spreads across her face as she wraps her arms around my neck. “Whatever you want, Ms. Vaughn.”
I carry her over the threshold and kick the door closed behind us.
Chapter 36
Boxcar
One Week Ago
Rob from the rich. Give to the poor.
It’s an ideology so beloved people have written songs about it. The classic tale of heroic vigilantism that people usually have no moral issues with despite it going against most standards of basic American economics.
But I ain’t Robin Hood.
And this rich prick had it coming anyway.
Ian Botsford is the latest in a long line of assholes. In the Chicago branch of the family, anyway. The Las Vegas boys have a decent reputation and I haven’t dug up any skeletons in the sand that tell me otherwise. They give vast amounts of their wealth to charity. Two of them work for the family business, one of them is a baseball player, and the other plays bass for a rock band. Their mother comes from a political family and — surprisingly — actually uses those powers for good. I’ve got nothing against them.
This guy, Ian, on the other hand…
What a prick.
On the surface, he seems like a decent guy but you start peeling back the layers
and you discover a few particularly creepy traditions passed down to him from when his father ran the Chicago location, including one annual party that’s so skeevy even I won’t touch it.
Mr. Ian Botsford and his wealthy, social elite buddies like to lure young ladies (the more jail-baity, the better) into his hotel to be auctioned off to the highest bidder for the night. I mean, I’m not exactly the picture of healthy morality, but come on…
Gross.
If the mainstream media found out about this little moral abomination, the good branch of the Botsford family will surely suffer the consequences for Ian’s creepiness. Luckily, guardian angel Boxcar discovered it before the press did and I’m more than willing to keep this information quiet.
For a price.
I’ve spent the last several weeks traveling to various Botsford Plaza Hotels around the country, inserting a special, completely undetectable, line of code into their payroll systems. Nothing too crazy, just a worm that eats up one percent of every dollar that passes through. Each Botsford Plaza moves — on average — one million dollars each month through their payroll accounts. So far, I’ve uploaded this worm to twenty-five hotels throughout North America. One percent of one million dollars times twenty-five. Let me do the math for you.
Two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
And I don’t even have to leave my desk.
In the morning, Ian will receive an untraceable letter from a courier explaining what I’ve done and why. It’ll be up to him to figure out how to keep his CEO cousin happy but in the grand scheme of things, this will be little more than a parking ticket for him. Not really my problem. I’ll be in Fiji doing Jell-O shots off an islander’s voluptuous tits by then.
Sure as hell beats the hell out of Boston.
I sit back in my desk chair and stare at the clock on the wall. Three minutes until midnight. The payroll department finalizes its transactions at 12:01 east coast time every payday. They never miss it. It’s the very definition of clockwork and quite possibly the most impressive thing about the staff at Botsford Plaza Hotels. They know their shit. From management to maids, those places are run tight as virgin priestesses.
12:00. Almost there…
I crack my knuckles and sit up, looking through my own reflection staring back at me in my desktop computer monitor. It’s been a few days since I’ve shaved and even longer since I’ve hit the gym, but I’ve been busy, dammit. What’s your excuse?
I slide my glasses off and wipe the fingerprints clean before clacking the keyboard, preparing to activate the rather hungry worm slipping its way through twenty-five separate payroll systems. All I have to do is tell it to start chomping and my bank account fills up like magic.
12:01.
It’s showtime, Synergy.
I move to activate the worm and my security system alerts loudly from my phone.
Well, shit.
I spin around in my chair and roll over to my second desk to check the monitors. Someone is outside of my apartment door — make that two someones — and they aren’t here to sell me Girl Scout cookies, that’s for sure. Unless the ladies changed their uniforms to include spec-ops black.
One is male, mid-twenties with ash brown hair in desperate need of a trim — not that I’m one to talk about that. The other is female. She’s petite but muscular with hair that looks like a beaten-up red crayon. She stands in front of the security panel with a screwdriver in her hand, thinking she can probably brute force her way through my system. She can’t, but it’s cute she’s trying.
I enable voice decryption and flick on the microphone. “Um… Excuse me, madam,” I say. She instantly pauses and stares straight ahead into the camera. “I don’t mean to alarm you two, but the police have been notified and they’re on their way to this location.”
She smiles at the camera. “No, they aren’t.”
Say cheese.
I open my facial recognition software and it goes to work, scanning every point and dimple of her little face. Now, I just have to keep her talking while it checks her against every law enforcement and identification database in the world.
“Open the door, Mr. Carson,” she says. “We just want to talk.”
“Oh, I’d love to chat with you, sweetheart,” I say. “Ditch the shadow and we’ll go have a drink. My treat.”
She glances back and rolls her eyes at the guy as he chuckles softly. “Mr. Carson, we’re looking for a friend of yours.”
I glance back at the facial recognition software. Sixty percent finished and not one damn match? That’s odd.
“I don’t have any friends,” I say.
“Oh, sure you do.”
“Which agency are you with?” I ask. “Let me see some credentials.”
“We’re not with any agency. Our interests are more personal.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific...”
The software halts, matching her face to one name: Lilah Anne Hart.
Deceased. Born in Madison, Wisconsin. Died in Madison, Wisconsin.
And yet… here she is.
“How’s this for specific, Bart?” she says, her tongue sharper. “Either you open this door and answer my questions right now or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll kick your fucking teeth in.”
I raise my brow. “You talk a lot of smack for a dead girl, Lilah.”
She flexes her jaw in anger as I speed-read her file.
Her parents died when she was five, leaving her and her two brothers in the care of their ailing grandparents. No record of a home address, which is extremely strange…
They went through a lot of trouble to erase it from existence.
Why?
I look at the monitor again. “And the gentleman behind you must be Elijah, your also dead twin. Hello there.”
“Where is Fox Fitzpatrick?” she asks, cutting right to the damn chase.
Holy shit.
I cross-check their names against the master file — yeah, the master file, the one I cracked into to help Fox expose his former employer, only the deadliest criminal organization on the planet.
Snake Eyes.
The news was hard to miss that week. It all started with a dead presidential candidate and a kidnapped movie starlet. It ended with her in the hospital and several news outlets accidentally receiving the master file from an anonymous source. The FBI confirmed it a few days later: an underground organization of mercenaries exists and they’re just waiting to do your dirty work. Just name your price.
If that weren’t bad enough, anyone could be among them. Your child’s teacher. Your weird neighbor. The barista making your morning coffee. Even your representative in Congress might have ties to them.
The country has been a mess ever since.
And now, Lilah and Elijah Hart have come knocking on my door.
I scan their files again. Elite Snake Eyes agents. He’s a medic, for the most part, and she’s…
Ah, crap.
A chill of fear crawls down my spine. I don’t feel it often anymore, but it definitely makes itself known whenever Snake Eyes is involved and right now there’s two of them standing at my damn door.
“Who?” I ask, stalling.
“Fox Fitzpatrick,” she repeats. “We know you know him. We know you were with him at the hotel in Colorado. Just tell us where he is now, and I’ll leave your index fingers intact so you can keep tapping away at those keys.”
I stand up and grab my messenger bag off the floor. “I assure you, you are quite mistaken,” I say, rushing to unplug my laptop and shove it inside.
Again, her lips curl on her smug, little face. “That’s all right. Our mistake. We’ll just go ask your wife instead. Perhaps she knows where her old army buddy is.”
I freeze.
“I don’t have a wife,” I say.
“Oh, we both know that’s not true.”
Fuck.
My chest tightens. I bite my tongue until I taste blood.
Lilah’s eyebrow inches up
ward. “Mr. Carson?”
I throw my bag over my shoulder and grab my phone, feeling completely torn in half by the fight-or-flight stand-off wrecking my sympathetic nervous system. There are two options here: I can stay and fight or I can crawl through the window and slide down the fire escape before they realize I’m gone — hopefully.
I should stay. It’s the heroic thing to do, right? Stand my ground. Protect what’s mine. Once more unto the breach—
“Mr. Carson?”
I step over to my desktop computer and activate the worm, filling my account with a quarter of a million untraceable dollars to run away with.
See? I told you I wasn’t Robin Hood.
My name is Bartholomew Eugene Carson, but you can call me Boxcar.
Everyone else does.
* * *
Thank you so much for reading TAINTED LOVE! The next chapter of the Killer Love saga is on its way…
I married Boxcar two years ago. I haven’t seen him since.
BROKEN LOVE, Book 4, is coming on October 8, 2019!
Pre-order now to receive it on release day!
Books by Tabatha Drake
Killer Love Saga
Killer Love
Secret Love
Tainted Love
Coming Soon…
Broken Love
Mad Love
Cruel Love
Endless Love
For more, go to
tabathadrake.com/books
About the Author
Tabatha Drake is the dark and dirty alter ego of USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Tabatha Kiss! She lives in Chicago, Illinois. You can probably catch her huddled up in a hoodie, reading a good romance beneath a tree with her trusty husky by her side. She enjoys roller derby, sushi, and is always searching for her forever bad boy. In the meantime, she writes.
Contact Tabatha:
[email protected]
Tainted Love Page 19