“Tell me where Kate Donovan is.”
“I don’t know.”
“I know you’ve been working with the Kincaids. I know the brothers went after her.”
“Then talk to them, because I don’t know where they went.”
“You arranged transportation to Hidalgo.”
“Did I?”
“You’re on thin ice, Peterson.”
Quinn stared at his superior. He had several choice words for him, but limited his verbal assault. “You’re after Kate because of what happened to Paige, and that’s it. Revenge. But nothing you can do to Kate is worse that what she’s been doing to herself.”
“I’m after Kate Donovan because she disobeyed orders and got Evan Standler and Paige Henshaw killed. Her intel is shit and you know it.”
“Her intel is all we have—better than what we’ve been able to uncover. Better than what your deep-cover agent has gotten us. Everyone went into that op eyes open, Merritt, and you know it. Paige was just as much to blame for the screwup as Kate. And maybe if your people out on the East Coast had taken them more seriously, they wouldn’t have gone in without proper backup.”
“Don’t you dare put this at my feet.”
“Put the shoe on, Merritt. It fits.”
Quinn left. Taking a deep breath, he called his wife, Miranda, as he ran up the stairs to the roof, where the helicopter waited. Just hearing her voice would calm him down.
Jeff Merritt sat down at the computer in the task force room, looking for Kate Donovan’s whereabouts.
He glanced at the computer screen where the Kincaid girl was restrained, naked. But instead of seeing the eighteen-year-old, he saw Paige.
She’d fought until the end, but she’d still died.
If only he had told her he loved her. Instead, they had fought.
“You have to give us backup! We’re so close!” she’d insisted.
“You’ve been ‘close’ a half-dozen times and come up empty,” he’d responded. “No more. Drop this case. You shouldn’t be working in Violent Crimes anymore. Let me get you a job at Quantico.”
Paige had glared at him. “I knew this was going to happen. I knew you’d do this. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“You would have lied to me? About something as important as this?”
“If I knew you’d get all Neanderthal on me just because I’m pregnant, yes. Please, Jeff. For me. One last time.”
“Last time?” He’d snorted, having heard that before. “Is Kate pushing you to do this?”
“Of course not! But we both believe we have him nailed. He’s going to show.”
“Trask doesn’t even exist.”
“Yes, he does.”
“Fine,” he’d said. “You’ll have your backup. But this is the last time, hear me? If nothing happens, you and Kate drop the investigation.”
“Promise.” Paige had smiled. “Eleven o’clock tonight. The warehouse on the corner of Sixth and Madison.”
She’d given him a quick kiss and left.
Jeff Merritt stared at the phone. He hadn’t believed Trask existed. He hadn’t believed April Klinger was dead. Kate and Paige had had a bee in their bonnet because they couldn’t stop the proliferation of pornography online. So they had created something that just wasn’t there. The time, man-hours, and money they’d wasted going after a phantom named Trask.
Then and there, he had decided to put a scare into Paige. After that, she’d quit, take a nice quiet desk job, be a good mom to their child. A good wife to him.
That was five years ago. Now Merritt slammed his fist on the desk, eyes moist. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the diamond ring he’d been carrying all these years. He kissed the cold gem.
Paige was dead and it was his fault. But he wasn’t alone in the blame. Kate Donovan was culpable, too.
And for that she would pay.
TWELVE
TRASK SAT ON THE DECK of the cabin he’d rented months before. The sun had long passed its zenith, but it was still hours from sunset.
Though he’d grown up on the opposite coast, he’d always appreciated the Pacific Ocean. Vast, endless, powerful. This particular island was different. Calm. No crashing waves, since he was in the middle of an archipelago, one of hundreds of small islands, most privately owned. Quiet, peaceful. He could retire here.
Retire? That was a long, long way off. He was in his prime, and he had no reason to give it all up now.
Still, he should have bought this island for his own private use when he’d first rented it as an escape five years ago. At first he’d told no one about it, so he had a secret place to disappear to every now and again. Away from Roger, Denise, and the others.
They were albatrosses around his neck at times, their identities known to the authorities. All it took was one slip and they’d be in custody. There was no doubt Denise would keep her mouth shut or kill herself. But Roger? He played the loyalty card often enough, but Roger would turn on Trask in a heartbeat to save his own life.
He had no one to trust. And it had always been that way. But the hypocrisy of others had really hit home when, at the age of thirteen, he’d discovered that his father—upstanding and righteous and the strictest bastard on the Eastern Seaboard—regularly visited prostitutes.
An only child, Trask was a master at blending into his surroundings. It was why he knew things he should never have known, learned the darkest secrets of the adults in his life. Not just his parents, but everyone he came in contact with. He was often in the room when conversations about him, or his peers, or his parents’ peers took place. Conversations where his parents would have freaked out had they known he’d overheard them. They would have punished him severely for eavesdropping.
This talent had served him well from an early age, at home, at school, and even now with his lucrative business. He picked up on the nuances, the unspoken words, the truth among the lies.
He’d watched his father all the time. There was not much to love in the stern man. They’d lived on an estate, on more than an acre of land north of Manhattan, quietly wealthy. Old money. Antiques. Lush furnishings. Stonebridge Academy and the right friends. But because Trask was an observant child, he’d always suspected something about his dear old dad. Something dark clawing beneath the skin. A darkness he also saw whenever he looked into the mirror.
So he’d watched and waited. He could disappear for hours in the bowels of the city and his parents never knew. He’d mastered the security system years before—a child prodigy, the headmaster had called him when he was six—and had disabled the entire school’s security system. His parents only trusted him because they’d whip him into submission.
He didn’t fear his father’s belt. It fueled the darkness inside.
One evening when he was thirteen, his mother had gone to one of her many charity events in the city. Trask was supposed to be safely stowed away at Stonebridge Academy. Thanksgiving break was over and his parents had driven him back there—doing so only because they had to meet with the school’s headmaster.
Your son has a genius-level IQ, but a disturbing contempt for authority.
Because everyone in authority was an idiot.
His father had belted him and lectured him. Trask walked first to his dorm room, then changed his mind and crawled back into the Bentley’s trunk while his parents continued to gab with the Stonebridge’s idiot headmaster.
He’d thought about killing them, but he didn’t want to get caught. A murder like that needed planning. Forethought. He’d need an alibi. But someday…
So Trask was in the trunk when his father drove to Manhattan’s Upper East Side. After dropping off his mother at her charity event, he parked on the street. His father never parked on the street. Trask followed him as he walked up to a brownstone and a woman opened the door. She was young, in her twenties. She had huge tits.
Trask waited until his father was inside, then waited a little longer just to be safe, before breaking into the ho
use by cracking the security code. He wanted to know exactly what his father was up to. Was he cheating on his mother? That information would be gold. Trask could use it to get anything he wanted.
He listened, following faint sounds to an upstairs bedroom.
There were more than two people in the room.
The door was closed but not latched. Trask quietly pushed it open a crack, just enough to see. Faint lighting illuminated the bedroom. His father was naked, a woman on her knees with his penis in her mouth. Another woman was behind him, rubbing his shoulders.
His father barked out an order.
“Down on your knees, bitch.” He pushed the woman off his dick and she got on all fours. He mounted her from behind. It was then that Trask noticed a collar and leash around the woman’s neck. His father pulled up on the leash and the woman’s neck strained.
The other woman got a paddle and slapped Trask’s father on his scrawny ass. Trask thought for sure his dad would whip around and deck her, but instead he groaned. “Harder, bitch.”
She hit him again. Soon his father’s behind was red. Welts began to form. The woman on the floor was gasping and crying out. Whether she was faking an orgasm or it was real, Trask couldn’t tell. But she collapsed on the ground and his father rose, his large dick bouncing in front of him. He pushed the second woman down on the bed and mounted her. He went at her like a piston, the woman’s head hitting the headboard, but his father paid her discomfort no mind. She didn’t protest, taking the pain with the pleasure, his needs more important than her own.
The foul words out of his father’s mouth shocked Trask. Never had the distinguished judge uttered the words fuck or cunt or whore within Trask’s earshot.
Trask walked away when his father was done, but didn’t leave the house. His dull but pretty mother wasn’t the sharpest tack in the box, but she worshipped the ground his father walked on. She did as he commanded. And here he was, fucking two whores and getting spanked. What else did he do? And were these the only two women he screwed around with? Were there others?
Trask waited until his father left. Then he walked back up to the bedroom and watched as the two women showered together, fingering each other. He stood in the steamy bathroom when they stepped out of the shower.
One screamed, but the other looked at him with curiosity. “You’re his son.”
Trask nodded. “Are you’re his mistress.”
He looked older than thirteen, having filled out the summer before, though he still hadn’t grown into his full height.
She laughed. “Oh, honey, I’m not his mistress. I’m his call girl, Mina.”
He didn’t say anything. Call girl? Prostitute?
“Are you a virgin?”
“No,” he lied.
The women looked at each other. The talkative one stepped forward and through his pants touched his throbbing dick. He came. He hated her.
“Wouldn’t you like to learn about sex from someone who knows everything about it?”
“You’re a whore,” he spat out.
She nodded, smiled, her eyes flashing something he didn’t understand. “Yes, I am. That means you can do anything you want, and if you screw it up I’ll still tell you you’re the best fuck in the world.”
“I don’t want my father’s whores. I’ll find my own.”
The woman who’d first screamed—she was much younger than Trask had originally thought—stepped forward. “Your father owns this place. We come here when he calls us. Do you like to watch?”
“No.”
They glanced at each other, then looked at his wet pants. “Give us your number and we’ll let you know the next time we’re here.”
He’d never planned on meeting them. But a month later Mina phoned. He wasn’t going to show up, but his curiosity got the better of him and he slipped away from school once more. He hadn’t been able to get the idea of fucking the whores out of his mind. Maybe just once, he thought. But he would be in charge. He might be a virgin, but he knew what to do.
He hadn’t expected what happened. He hadn’t expected to be raped by two women at the order of his father, who’d watched the entire time. And when the game was over, his father had whipped him.
“Remember who you are. My son, nothing more. Without me, you’re nothing. If you ever fuck around in my business again, I’ll disown you.”
The glass Trask was holding as he sat on the deck now shattered in his hand. He glared at it, angry with himself and angry at those damn women. They were dead now, long gone, no one would ever find them, because they no longer existed. He’d wiped them off the face of the earth.
And no woman has ever been in control since.
That’s why Kate Donovan would die by his hand. She’d fucked up his life like no woman had done since those two whores humiliated him for his father. He wouldn’t give up until he had her naked beneath him, and he fucked her dying body.
Kate slammed the folder shut.
“This is getting us nowhere.”
She got up and paced. Dillon Kincaid was driving her crazy, and they’d only met a few hours ago. He was so damn reasonable. Logical, straightforward, focused. She couldn’t stand sitting around and reading files she had practically memorized over the last five years. They knew Roger Morton’s identity and background. A lot of good that did them. He’d disappeared. Probably had a new identity. Unless someone saw him, turned him in, they couldn’t touch him.
She felt Dillon’s eyes on her back. She turned to face him. “What?”
He looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead, pointed to the file. “Roger Morton is from a wealthy Northeast family.”
“So?”
“Seems like an unusual background for being the CEO of a pornography company.”
“Sociopaths know no economic limit.”
“True. But why porn? How did he meet Trask? They were in it together since the beginning of Trask Enterprises thirteen years ago. Back when the Internet was still relatively new, and online porn just starting. They pioneered a lot of the webcam technology. The files say that Roger went to Stonebridge Academy and graduated in 1989, but there are no details. I don’t even know where it is.”
Kate crossed over to her computer. She regained her focus and did what she did best. Forget people, they were too unpredictable. Computers were logical. You couldn’t love them and you couldn’t lose them. Her hard drive might crash, but she always had a backup—like a clone—to download.
People bled. They died. They disappeared.
“Stonebridge Academy is in Connecticut. Opened its doors in 1909.”
“College?”
“K through twelve. It’s a boarding school.”
“So Roger Morton went to what I’ll assume is an expensive boarding school in Connecticut. Graduates in 1989. Trask Enterprises opens its doors in 1994. According to your notes, Trask started in pornography—films—but dumped them in 1998 when the Internet provided a better distribution mechanism.”
“That’s what we believe,” she said.
“Where was Roger during those five years? There doesn’t seem to be a college degree.”
“We don’t know. He wasn’t in prison, he wasn’t in the military, and he didn’t own property under his name.”
“What about his parents?”
“His mother’s dead. His father disowned him after Morton’s association with pornography became public.”
Kate snuck a look at Dillon while he flipped through pages in her file. He was dangerous. To her. He was a shrink, dammit, and here she was sitting in a pool—an ocean—of guilt and regret and vengeance. He could probably dissect her for an entire class of psychology students, enough fodder for an entire semester.
But he was also handsome. Classically, perfectly handsome. His light-brown, sun-streaked wavy hair had probably been slicked back before he’d started the trek up the mountain. He was tall, trim, and all muscle, like he worked out regularly but didn’t live for the weight machines. She could s
ee him as a professor, like Indiana Jones before he put on the hat.
Only Dillon Kincaid was even sexier, a small, imperfect cleft in his chin highlighting his otherwise sleek, chiseled face.
She turned her head. This is what two years of isolation with only a grumpy, seventy-year-old professor for company did to you. One hot, sexy guy in the right age range comes up the mountain and she gets all twisted up.
No, the real twists came from the fact that Dillon Kincaid was a shrink. Kate feared what he might figure out about her, even more than how much she was attracted to him.
There was no hope, no future. Certainly not for them. His sister would probably be dead in thirty-one hours, ten minutes. And Kate would never see Dillon Kincaid again.
A knock on the door had her reaching for her gun. “Grand Central Station,” she muttered, crossing the room.
She opened the door, using it as a shield, her gun out and ready.
Jack Kincaid stood there.
“Jack?” Dillon couldn’t hide his surprise.
“My men went with Connor and Patrick, but I figured you two might still need some help.”
Kate frowned. The shrink was bad enough, but she didn’t trust the military goon, either. He came in anyway.
“Great,” she said sarcastically, rolling her eyes.
She slammed the door shut, turned to the computer out of habit.
Lucy Kincaid was there. Naked. Tied to the floor.
“Dear God, not again,” Dillon said.
“What god?” Kate said. Dillon turned to stare at her and she almost didn’t say what was on her tongue. But she couldn’t stop it. “If He’s up there watching, He sure as hell doesn’t care about any of us.”
Dillon looked angry. She hadn’t even known he could get angry. He seemed so even-tempered and in control, even when watching his sister onscreen. Then again, she always did bring out the worst in people.
But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he left the room.
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